But if one looks at the freedom of the press, the picture turns dark. As documented by various international organizations, the Turkish media has become less and less free in recent years. A few anti-government papers still exist, but in the established mainstream media, whose owners feel obliged to please the government, dozens of writers who were too critical of the notoriously thin-skinned Mr. Erdogan have lost their jobs. As Bulent Kenes, the editor of Today’s Zaman, a conservative-leaning paper that used to support the prime minister, wrote in a scathing column last week, there is a “new media order” in which criticizing the government is becoming more and more unsafe.

The simple fact, that neither side wants to accept is that Mr. Erdogan’s government is advancing democracy on some levels, while curbing it on others.

This is happening because while Mr. Erdogan is a passionate defender of electoral democracy (he keeps winning), he is not terribly fond of liberal democracy. Some key principles of political liberalism, such as limited government, checks and balances, and a fully independent press, do not seem to count for much in his political vision. In fact, some members of his team have openly described these as unnecessary constraints on the “national will,” which is represented by whoever wins at the ballot box. (They might have been further persuaded by the American government’s recent shutdown, which didn’t exactly cast the system of checks and balances in the most glowing light.)

Mr. Erdogan’s patriarchal personality plays a role in all this as well. He sees himself as a loving, caring father to his nation — an attitude that resonates here. The upside of this vision has been 10 years of enormous advances in the economy, health care, education and transportation. The downside is that when his opponents don’t universally praise his achievements, he perceives them as disobedient children who deserve to be reprimanded. This has led to public outbursts about critical newspaper columnists and this summer’s heavy-handed police crackdown on anti-government protesters.

The irony is that despite many liberals’ opposition to his rule, the Erdogan era has in fact advanced a number of unmistakably liberal causes. His Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., came to power in 2002 with a bold message of change. The “Old Turkey” was too militaristic, too nationalist and too oppressive. The A.K.P. vowed to liberate not just its own voting base — the religious conservatives who feel they have been humiliated by a zealously secularist elite — but also all marginalized groups, such as the Kurds, Armenians and Greeks.