Turkey: the rise of the AKP party and Islam. Last October, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan announced key political reforms, including lifting the ban on the Islamic headscarf. The moves come as critics accuse Erdogan of Islamizing the secular country. The headscarf controversy is emblematic of a long-standing rivalry in Turkish society between religious conservatives, who make up the bulk of Erdogan's Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), and secular opponents. In fact, these see the veil as a symbol of defiance against the rigid separation between state and religion, a fundamental principle of modern Türkiye. On the other hand, the AKP, while not supporting a process of Islamization imposed from above like previous Islamic parties, criticizes the traditional relations between state and society and the form of Turkish secularism, accusing it of discriminating against religious people and of inhibiting religious freedom. Turkey's secularization process began in the 1800s, when a series of reforms began to secularize and westernize the country, and which gave its name to the so-called Tanzimat (reform) era. By adopting many European codes, Sharia law began to be used less and less and disappeared completely with Mustafa Kemal. His new ideology, which bans Islam from the political sphere, led to a cultural revolution against every symbol of Islamic society. The first objective of this process concerned the state apparatus and the consequent abolition of the Sultanate and the remodeling of the entire legal and judicial system. Despite the political changes, the population, mostly peasants and Muslims, remained tied to traditions and failed to internalize modern European models. In this essay I will discuss... in the middle of the paper... spreading corruption through wiretaps of his family and the AKP. But this is not a game that simply makes Erdogan's leadership shake up Muslims too. world and affects the concept of Islamic democracy, the moderate version of which, taken as a model after the Arab revolts of 2011, was shaken by the authoritarianism of the prime minister who, to defend himself from scandals, fired 6 thousand police officers, ousted hundreds of judges and he muzzled the other powers of the state. The overwhelming electoral victories - up to 49.7% of the votes in the 2011 elections - were interpreted by Erdogan as a green light for his interpretation of democracy: who wins over everything. But civil society has also grown in Türkiye and is no longer convinced of the "sultan" Erdogan's version. Winning at the polls is no longer enough to tell the Turks: we are democrats.