A resilient feature of Turkish politics, a centre- periphery divide in the use of power, long predated the republican Turkey. Historically, the loyal slaves regularly conscripted by the administration to occupy key positions in the centre of political power, guarding it against thrusts and demands from the periphery, were replaced by the latter- day bureaucrats in the nineteenth century. Yet the bureaucracy greatly continued to function within the tradition, adopting and reiterating the settled reflexes. Just as the erstwhile slaves turned power brokers for the body politic, the bureaucrats newly introduced into the system obsessed over, and zealously guarded, the ‘interests of the state’. The key part played by the bureaucracy in the enduring order not only extended into the republican era in the twentieth century, but also came to dominate politics in the new epoch arguably to a greater extent. In the absence of a fully functional democracy, the centre formed by the bureaucracy held sway over the new notables of business, media and arts to a degree that would have made Ottoman sultans green with envy. This unprecedented control was not only the result of ‘clientelism’ in a political economy with the bureaucracy allocating wealth and opportunities. More decisively perhaps, the mastery was enabled by a form of identity politics engineered by the bureaucracy that pitted those who valued a European lifestyle, and who made the bulk of the notables, against pious and practising Muslims, who initially formed the less educated and mostly rural sections in society. In time, by systematically privileging the former, the bureaucracy acquired a considerable social base for its operations, which the centre of power in Ottoman Turkey did not have.

This crucial difference with the earlier practises of the centre, linking it to a virtually indomitable social force, would often be ignored by the liberal critics of the old order during the regime change between 2007 and 2011. On this view, the bureaucracy was little more than an isolated network perched cynically over democratic politics and motivated solely by self- interest. In truth, the social base that aligned with the bureaucracy in favour of a somewhat limited and wary democracy in the country in the course of the transformation was remarkably large, regardless of the rising political mood generally that ostracised extra- political interferences in politics.