The Justice and Development Party in Turkey : Cambridge University Press : 9781108461658 : 1108461654 : 18 Jun 2020 : Turkish politics were remarkably reshaped in the early 2000s following the decline of the Islamist National View and the electoral breakthrough of the new Justice and Development Party (JDP) headed by Erdogan. Beside its Islamist credentials, Erdogan's JDP consistently and convincingly presented itself as the 'populist' defender of the downtrodden sectors of Turkish society. However, with Erdogan's rise as the popularly elected president in 2014, Turkey's already fragile democratic system was driven in a more authoritarian direction. Shifting the focus away from structural factors, this book analyzes the political appeal and organisation of the JDP that granted them such unprecedented electoral resilience. With critical but accessible theoretical discussions, Toygar Sinan Baykan locates the JDP within the wider literature of populism, Islamist party politics, party orga