A member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Zürcher was also actively involved in consultations on Turkey's accession to the European Union around 2004, among other things by writing the expert opinion for the Dutch EU presidency on the question of whether Islam would be an impediment to Turkish accession.

In June 2005, Zürcher was awarded the Medal of High Distinction by Turkey’s Foreign Ministry. But in 2016 he returned the medal in protest at Ankara’s persecution of academics and publishers. For the last 15 years, Zürcher has commented regularly on Turkish current affairs to Dutch and international media, and been involved in briefings for the Dutch government and business world.

How should we understand present-day Turkey? How can we read events through the prism of Turkey’s turbulent history? Which doctrine is ruling Turkey now? Is a rupture from the Western alliance irreversible? Quo Vadis?

I asked all these questions to Professor Zürcher.

Here are his responses.

Turkey seems to have been in a constant, vicious spiral of crisis. This is the picture observed since, approximately, the 2013 Gezi Park protests till now. How should we read the current turmoil? Is there any period in Turkish history comparable to the one we are in?

“We should probably make a distinction between short-term crises like Gezi, December 17, or the failed coup d’état and the deeper long-term crisis.

“Samuel Huntington was wrong in many things, but quite right in describing Turkey as a torn country in his book Clash of Civilisations. The long-term crisis consists fundamentally of the extreme polarisation of Turkish society between a majority of some 60 percent that holds a conservative, nationalist and strongly Sunni Muslim worldview and the rest, consisting of urban liberals, Alevis and Kurds.

“The fact that the polarisation occurs around worldviews, not merely political views gives the struggle between the two sides in Turkey its special character and makes it so hard to solve. For both sides every minor issue is not merely a problem to be solved, but an episode in a fundamental struggle about the soul and the future of the country.

“Political opponents are not merely seen as political enemies; they are traitors who put the future of the country at risk. The only period in modern Turkey’s history that comes close to what we are witnessing now in terms of polarisation, is, I think, the Menderes era, particularly after 1954. Then, too, the relationship between the two major parties, the CHP and DP deteriorated so much that no meaningful dialogue was possible. The DP saw itself as representing the national will and the resistance of the CHP was a refusal to accept this. Opposition in their eyes became equivalent to treason.

“There are definitely similarities with today, although historical parallels are never perfect. The polarisation of the 1970s cost many more lives than either the Menderes or the Erdoğan regime, but it played out more among the radical fringes of society - different brands of radical socialism on the one hand and the fascism of the Idealists on the other.

“In that sense it was different from the current era when large sections of the population have been mobilised and take up a position in the struggle.”

It may be argued that politics in Turkey was all about a battle for power, not for establishing a proper democratic order. Which segment and ideology has control over the country now? Islamists, nationalists, İttihadists?

“When you look at this question in a historical perspective, it is clear that throughout modern Turkish history, democracy and the rule of law have almost never been goals in their own right. They always were seen as tools rather than aims, tools to be used in the bigger struggle to establish an ideal political and social order.

“This did indeed involve power grabs like the Unionist coup d’état of 1913, Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s Takriri Sükun Kanunu and suppression of the opposition in 1925-26, and the military coups of 60, 71, 80 and 97.

“These power grabs were in the name of a bigger ideal; saving the state in the case of the Unionists, establishing a modern and civilised society in the case of the Kemalists and re-establishing a military-controlled security state based on national unity and togetherness in the case of the military.

“Now we are witnessing something similar. It turns out that establishing a democratic state for Erdoğan and the AKP is fundamentally a tool in the service of the bigger ideal of establishing a “New Turkey”, a militarily and economically strong, deeply Islamic state, where all power is concentrated in the figure of the president as national leader.

“In terms of ideology it is important to note that the different currents are not mutually exclusive. The Young Turks were not Ottomanists, or Islamists, or Turkish nationalists. They were all three, but different aspects played a role in different situations. In the national liberation war, it was Muslim, rather than Turkish, nationalism that mobilised the population.

“Under the Kemalists, nationalism flourished, but Turkey also always remained a Sunni nation. Right now, Turkish nationalism and Islamism go hand in hand, but at the same time the AKP regime has inherited the Unionist/Kemalist veneration for the state as an entity that transcends everything else.

“Just like a century ago, the argument that the state has to be saved is still considered to trump everything else.”

Has the majority of voters chosen to vote democracy away for good? Is Turkey beyond a point of no return now?

“That is difficult to say. In the referendum of 2017, even after a very unfair campaign and considerable vote-rigging, only 51.8 percent of the population decided to transfer the powers of the National Assembly to the president. The Turkish democratic system needed to be changed urgently, because it was very problematic. The combination of a concentration of powers in the assembly with an electoral system that meant that even 34 percent of the vote could be enough to have an absolute majority (as happened in 2002), meant that the part holding 51 percent of the seats in the assembly had absolute power.

“That led to the situation that all other currents and communities in Turkey became completely powerless and could be neglected. That urgently needed change, but change in the other direction, to something resembling the constitution of 1961 without the political role of the military (that had also been inscribed into the constitution at that time). The choice for an all-powerful executive president is precisely the wrong choice and a complete novelty in Turkish political history.

“Is it irreversible? In the short run it is, I think, because as we can see now, the president uses the change to have all-important institutions taken over by his cronies. Undoing this after five or 10 years will demand a revolution along the lines of the end of the Cold War in Eastern Europe.

The composition of parliament confirms that a two-thirds majority of the nationalist-conservative-isolationist bloc remains rock solid. Fears of being broken up as a country go hand in hand with Anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. Is this trend a persistent, lasting phenomenon from an historic point of view? Will this collective mindset continue until the Ittihadist doctrine collapses?

“The long history of loss of territory and power though the combined actions of imperialist foreign powers and disaffected internal groups, with as the most important turning points the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878 and the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, have landed the Turkish political elite with a trauma.

“That trauma has been transferred in the form of a syndrome (as Müge Göçek describes it) to the Turkish population as a whole through education, sermons and military service indoctrination. It has been a regular feature in the Turkish media for over a century.

“As a result, political rhetoric describing Turkey as being under attack and asking for national solidarity against the enemy is extremely effective.

“Another effect is that the argument of national security overrides anything else and for the majority in Turkey makes all kinds of oppression acceptable.”

Has Turkey come to the end of the road regarding its alliance with the United States? Is a rupture imminent?

“The relationship of Turkey with its main Western allies is quite fundamentally at risk, not so much because of clashes of interest like the policies on Iran, Israel, Syria or Russia, but because the Turkish political leadership no longer shares the basic worldview that has underpinned the alliance for so long.

“From the mid-19th century onwards the aim of the political elite was to be integrated into the Western system (then the Concert of Europe) as an equal partner. That was achieved on paper at the Paris peace conference of 1856. The Kemalist republic tried to achieve the same thing by showing it was modern and civilised.

“That meant: European. It has also been true for Turkey since the start of the Cold War. The security alliance established with Turkey’s entry into NATO in 1952 was fundamentally based on a shared threat perception (communism) and let us not forget that it was that alliance that led to Turkey’s economic integration with the EEC/EC/EU after 1959.

“Underpinning this integration was the idea that there was a definite, shared, concept of modernity, which is in essence liberal (even if in practice in Turkey the political order was often authoritarian).

“Along with other important parts of the world (Malaysia, Singapore and the Gulf States, but also China, Russia, Philippines and Rwanda), the dominant current in Turkey no longer subscribes to the idea that the Western liberal idea of modernity is necessarily the only one. Like the Soviet model during the Cold War, a different model seems to be emerging which combines fast economic and technological development with an authoritarian political system.

“Many of these countries are no longer ready to accept the Western threat perception. In the case of Turkey that was particularly visible in the case of Syria. The West defined Islamic State as an existential threat, Turkey did not. For Turkey, the PKK and its offshoots were an existential threat and that perception is not shared by the West.

“I guess what I am trying to say is: yes, the separation of Turkey from the USA, and more generally the West, seems quite fundamental because it is based on a separation of worldviews and threat perception.

“At the same time, I think it will be a slow process, a drifting apart rather than a sudden rupture, because Turkey’s integration with the West is still quite deep.”

There is a view that neither policies of appeasement, nor defiance and sanctions work well to put the brakes on Turkey's drift towards fascism. That all options serve Erdoğan and the ruling clique around him. What is the most rational long-term strategy to bring Turkey back to the democratic track?

“In a word: economic crisis.

“A drift towards fascism is only possible when the institutions underpinning the separation of powers and the rule of law are fatally weakened. That process is in full swing in Turkey today. Look at higher education, media, the courts, the police, the central bank.

“But Turkey is entering a very severe financial and economic crisis because of Erdoğan’s irresponsible economic policies. It will need international support and most importantly a return of foreign investors to stabilise its economy and save its banking system from collapse. Only Western institutions, primarily the IMF, can ultimately produce the support needed, but they can and will insist on strengthening the institutions.

“The EU can play an important role by making modernising the customs union, now almost 25 years old, and visa regime conditional on strengthening independent institutions in Turkey. That will not lessen the AKP/MHP’s hold on politics.

“I agree that for the foreseeable future, power will remain with this bloc, simply because a majority in Turkey supports it. But it can halt, and in part undo the slide to a modern-day form of fascism that is now happening in Turkey.”