When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power in 2002 after tumultuous years that saw the closure of its Islamist predecessors, it endorsed the rhetoric that the Turkish state was in the hands of a pro-Western, secularist, bureaucratic minority, and that the conservative masses were not represented in state governance.

On many issues, including its economic and foreign policies, the AKP broke with the Islamist tradition, but its political narrative relied heavily on notions borrowed from that tradition. According to the party’s representatives, the AKP’s coming to power was a “revolution.” For the grassroots, this was a rather alien term, but AKP leaders believed the party deserved the “revolutionary” epithet for all the courageous steps it was taking.

The AKP was in the seat of power, but at the same time, it was challenging the state establishment. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then prime minister, openly declared a war on what he called “the bureaucratic oligarchy.” The constitutional amendment package, approved in a 2010 referendum, was a major milestone in this war. The package — which, according to the AKP, challenged the existing constitution, a legacy of the 1980 military coup — contained far-reaching steps, including the promise that political parties would no longer face closure in Turkey. For the country’s Islamist and Kurdish movements — chief victims of the party bans for decades — and for all political movements at war with the state tutelage, this was a promise of a revolutionary scale.

One way or another, the AKP managed to muster popular support to win all its battles against “tutelages,” whether military, judicial or bureaucratic.