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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is now Turkey’s longest-serving president. Since coming to power as Prime Minister in 2002 he has overseen a radical transformation of this pivotal country. Once a secular democracy with aspirations to join the European Union, Turkey has become a deeply nationalist, conservative country. Erdoğan has built a militaristic foreign policy abroad, intervening in regional flashpoints from Syria to Libya while dismantling democratic controls, clamping down on dissent and centralising power in the presidency at home. In September 2022, academic and writer Gönül Tol came to Intelligence Squared to shed light on how Erdoğan established an iron grip on the country, the subject of her upcoming book: Erdoğan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria. Tol is founding Director of the Middle East Institute's Turkey program and is a Senior Fellow for the Frontier Europe Initiative. She's also Adjunct Professor at George Washington University. Host for this discussion is Carl Miller, Research Director at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos.

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