In drawing such parallels, we should be careful not to over-egg the pudding. Erdoğan, for all of his autocratic brutishness, has genuine ideological commitments and cultural and political ties with his base that Trump does not. Erdoğan grew up poor and even spend time in jail for his religious beliefs (a situation you could see befalling Trump, but not out of any political principle).
However, we shouldn’t let personality politics obscure the similar social and political forces driving the type of faux-populism that Trump and Erdoğan represent. They were not created in a vacuum, nor are they sustained by force of personality alone. We must also look to their enablers. [...]
In terms of their mass base, the two parties are similar in that they both draw substantial electoral support from non-elites in districts far from the centers of cultural, economic, and political power. In the US, it’s whites in rural and suburban areas, often religious and often skittish about the country’s demographic changes; in Turkey, it’s pious Muslim Turks of small town Anatolia, resentful of the Westernized cultural and political elite that historically dominated Turkish society as well as the Kurdish minority, who they deplore for supposedly destroying the unity of the Turkish republic.
Both parties mix conservative religious ethics — whether it’s “Judeo-Christian values” or “Muslim morals” — with elite-friendly economic policies. Both peddle xenophobic nationalism served with a hefty dose of conspiracy. [...]
However, at the same time their colleagues in Congress condemn Erdoğan’s assault on protesters and wax lyrical about the sanctity of the First Amendment, GOP lawmakers are busy trying to undermine people’s right to protest at the state level. Across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed imposing draconian fines on demonstrators, banning masks at protests, and even indemnifying drivers who drive into protesters. In Arizona, legislation introduced this past winter would allow protesters to be charged with racketeering.
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