There is an open debate among Turkey observers whether what is often rebuked as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s majoritarianism – which, in harsher critiques, is characterized as authoritarianism – can be untangled from his very public campaign to erode secularism in Turkish political life.

The international community had already months ago reached the point where German Chancellor Angela Merkel was openly suggesting that Ankara’s domestic repression was damaging Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union. In the wake of mass anti-government riots, Erdogan and his government had violently cracked down on demonstrators, suppressed coverage of the events, restricted social media, and arrested hundreds of children. In the aftermath of the protests, Edogan and officials from his Justice and Development Party (AKP) sought to further marginalize critics, accusing an array of artists, journalists, and businesspeople of engaging in a conspiracy the overthrow the government.

At a police academy graduation ceremony in June Erdogan described the police’s actions as “heroic.”

Meanwhile Erdogan backed Islamic policies both domestically and internationally, generating criticism both from Turkish citizens and from regional actors.

That criticism will certainly not be dampened by recent moves, which combine legislative moves with a broader climate of intimidation. Recent weeks have seen Turkey reverse a nearly 90-year ban on Islamic headscarves in civil service jobs. The ban had originally imposed by the government of Kemal Ataturk, and was intended to enforce a strict separation between state and religion.

Erdogan sought to paint the move as a matter of democracy and free expression, especially women’s right to free expression. The claim was difficult to align with another incident that happened roughly at the same time, in which Turkish Vice President Huseyin Celik criticized the dress of television personality presenter Gozde Kansu for immodesty. Kansu was subsequently maneuvered out of her job.

AKP opponents have pointed out the tension between:

But Erdogan’s opponents have found little to suggest he is curbing what they see as his puritanical intrusiveness into private life, from his advice to women on the number of children they should have to his views on tobacco and alcohol.. “These policies … show not only the government’s attitudes to women but also its understanding of freedoms,” said Sezgin Tanrikulu, deputy head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which was founded by Ataturk. “There are countries which interfere in the outfits worn by television presenters, but in those countries we can’t talk about democracy,” he said in a statement.

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