Turkish riot police clash with protesters on June 9, 2016 in Istanbul during a demonstration against protests and death threats towards Turkey's main opposition Republic People's Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu following the funeral of two police officers killed on a June 7 attack in Istanbul. (Photo credit should read OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images)

Treason against Turkey is a fundamental theme in pro-Erdogan propaganda. There are two kinds of traitors: Many are outside the AKP, including liberals, leftists, and Kurds who work for the evil mastermind. Others are within the AKP, and they show their true colors when they dare to criticize Erdogan or disobey his orders.

Two of the three men who founded the party 16 years ago — former President Abdullah Gul and former Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc — have recently been condemned by hardcore Erdoganists in the AKP and the pro-AKP media as traitors within the party. A hardcore Erdoganist commentator, the editor in chief of the pro-Erdogan daily Milat, even dubbed Gul as “Gulizabeth,” implying that he is a collaborator of the British Crown. Even the former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who was recently replaced by Erdogan, was accused of treason in a mysterious blog, which is believed to be written by a journalist close to Erdogan.

A protester holds up a banner with pictures of Erdogan (left) and the United States-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen (right) during a demonstration against government on December 30, 2013 in Istanbul. (Photo credit should read OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images)

Among the traitors to the nation, the “parallels” are the most wicked ones. The term is a reference to the Gülen movement, which is Turkey’s largest Islamic community. The movement has many members active in education, charity, and media across Turkey — and, most importantly, in the government bureaucracy.

The movement had a particularly strong presence within the judiciary and the police, and was in fact once Erdogan’s best ally against the secularist establishment. However, it turned into his worst enemy when police and prosecutors, who are widely believed to be Gülen followers, launched an earth-shattering corruption investigation against key members of the government in December 2013.

Since then, Erdogan has condemned the corruption investigation as a “coup attempt” and slammed the Gülen movement for attempting to create “a parallel state” within the state. He also launched a total war on the movement, calling it a “terrorist organization,” and detained thousands of its members over the past two and a half years.

The covert organization of the Gülen movement within key bureaucratic institutions was a real problem for Turkey, but the regime’s witch hunt is now a bigger one. It has allowed Erdogan and his supporters to dominate virtually every institution in the country, using rhetoric reminiscent of the hunt for “Trotskyites” in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The “parallels” are under every stone, behind every imagined sabotage. Even those who have nothing to do with the Gülen movement can be branded as “crypto-parallel” and purged from the party, the bureaucracy, or even the media, a great portion of which is under the direct control of Erdogan.

Erdogan attends Friday prayer at Istiqlal Grand Mosque on July 31, 2015 in Jakarta, Indonesia. (Photo by Jefta Images/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

Islamism is not the only facet of Erdoganism, but it is one of its main components. Yet this is an Islamism adopted to the Turkish context. Since it came to power, the AKP never advocated the introduction of shariah, or Islamic law, into the legal system — only the reinterpretation of Turkey’s constitutionally mandated secularism in a more Islam-friendly way.

But Erdogan has increasingly used religious themes and symbols heavily in his propaganda. He has presented himself as the hope of the umma, or global Muslim community. At the same time, he has employed a divisive us-versus-them rhetoric, where “us” refers to the good, pious Muslims, and “them” refers either to the imperialist West, which “loves seeing Muslim children dead,” or secular Turks, whom he at times depicts as “alcoholics,” those who “promote miniskirts,” or are even “fed by blood.”

Erdogan seems to hope to “Islamize” the nation gradually by introducing more religion in public education, minimizing alcohol consumption through heavy taxation and a ban on alcohol advertisements, and rigorously supporting Islamist organizations. Whether all this effort will lead to a more pious nation or a secular backlash remains to be seen. At this point, it certainly has helped build a more polarized nation, where most religious conservatives are joyfully united behind Erdogan’s triumph and most secular Turks are worried about the future.

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Erdogan give a salute at the International Service held at the Canakkale Turkish Martyrs' Memorial Abide on April 24, 2015 in Seddulbahir, Turkey. (Photo by TRISTAN FEWINGS/WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Erdogan’s Islamism is connected to a powerful emotion among Turkey’s religious conservatives about reviving the glory of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled much of the Middle East from its capital in Istanbul. Before their empire collapsed at the conclusion of World War I, the Ottomans were the standard-bearers and protectors of the Muslim world for centuries.

Now Erdogan presents Muslim Turks as coming back to the world stage to fulfill their destiny of Islamic leadership after 90 years of being lost in the wilderness. Erdogan, of course, is the leader of this great revival who holds in his hands the grand ambition of “making Turkey great again.” That is why all his opponents and critics are nothing but degenerates, traitors, spies — or agents of the West.

By looking at all this, it seems safe to say that Erdoganism belongs in the array of populist authoritarianisms similar to Peronism in Argentina, Chavism in Venezuela, and Putinism in Russia. It has already made Turkey, at best, an illiberal democracy where free elections take place but liberal values and institutions languish and decay.

What is the future of Erdoganism — and Turkey? Few Turks doubt that Erdogan wants to stay in power as long as he lives. He also wants to turn what Turkey’s prime minister has already termed a “de facto” executive presidency, one unconstrained by any parliament, into a constitutional reality.

Since he is only 62 years old and seemingly in good health, all this means that Erdogan could have a couple more decades at the center of Turkish politics. For that, he needs to sustain popular support, which requires him to keep dominating the national narrative.

For this reason, it is very hard to see Erdogan reversing his authoritarian rule. We will probably see more confiscations of opposition newspapers and crackdowns on political protesters, further subduing of the judiciary, and a continued conflict with Kurdish militants that will keep bleeding Turkey but also help Erdogan justify a constant state of emergency. A “New Turkey” will have thus been achieved – just not the one Erdogan promised to create.