Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s pugnacious president, is now the country’s longest-serving leader. On his way to the top, he has fought many wars. This book tells the story of those battles against domestic enemies through the lens of the Syrian conflict, which has become part and parcel of Erdoğan’s fight to remain in power.
In Erdoğan’s War: A Stongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria (Oxford University Press, 2022), Turkey expert Gönül Tol traces Erdoğan’s ideological evolution from a conservative democrat to an Islamist and a Turkish nationalist, and explores how this progression has come to shape his Syria policy, changing the course of the war. She paints a vivid picture of the president’s constantly shifting strategy to consolidate his rule, showing that these shifts have transformed Turkey’s role in post-uprising Syria from an advocate of democracy, to a power fanning the flames of civil war, to an occupier.
From the first days of Erdoğan’s rule through the failed coup against him, via the Kurdish peace process, the Arab uprisings and the refugee crisis, this compelling, authoritative book tells the story of one man’s quest to remain in power–tying together the fates of two countries, and changing them both forever.
Reuben Silverman is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Stockholm University’s Institute for Turkish Studies.
More content from this blog
- America’s Braudelian Autumn, by Benjamin Braun and Cédric Durand – 29 May 2025
- Putinism: A New Form of Fascism?, by Ilya Budraitskis – 27 October 2022
- PKK Dissolution: The Long Goodbye to Vanguardism, by Blade Runner – 19 May 2025
- The Rise of Neoliberal Public Finance, by Melinda Cooper – 2 September 2024
- How the Far-Right is Reacting to Trump’s Assault on Venezuela, by Shane Burley – 14 January 2026