ABSTRACT
After six landslide victories in local and national elections, plus two referenda and a presidential election, the AK Party has shattered many commonly held beliefs regarding what was formerly viewed as a quintessentially Islamic and conservative political force. It follows that AK Party governments produced their own reality, which challenged the grandest myth of the republic, the secular Islamist divide. The AK party certainly represents a 'new genre of politics' in Turkey in a specific sense: it has succeeded in exalting to a respectful level the category of those who suffered at the hands of the secular regime by being kept out of the central decision-making processes. The pronounced increase in attacks against democratic pluralism and civil liberties since 2011 by the members of the AK Party in their public addresses have added fuel to the pervasive antipathy and skepticism against the leader and the government.
