Last week, I had a chance to speak with a Lebanese intellectual who moved to Istanbul couple of months ago. After some small talk, she shared with me her most profound observation about Turkey: "This society is so polarized."

"You are right," I replied. "Thank God, we don't kill each other via civil wars, but yes, we Turks are very, very polarized."

This polarization has probably peaked since the Gezi Park protests last June, which unleashed loathing against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and those who support him. Erdogan and his governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), in other words, seem to be the main wedge that divides society. But similar tensions were present in the pre-AKP era, too. The '90s were an era of constant political tension, some political violence and a "soft" military coup. In the '80s, there was first a horrible, bloody coup in which torture was rampant, and then the much brighter democratic era of then-prime minister Turgut Özal, despite the fact that he, like Erdogan today, was despised by a certain part of society. In the '70s, things were much worse, as the Marxist and nationalist militants killed each other on the streets and even attacked "treacherous" fractions within their own ideological camps. In 1961, a military junta executed Adnan Menderes, the most popular Turkish politician ever, with the support of Menderes' political rivals.

For many of my fellow Turks, this constant tension is normal life and thus does not need any particular explanation. Others who seek an explanation find it in the imagined conspiracies of alleged secret forces — the "deep state," the CIA or the "interest-rate lobby." But a better answer might come from looking at society itself and its extreme polarity.