To understand Turkey's Erdogan, one has to read a book written in 1990 by his current foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, in which he says: "Islamic all-inclusive weltanschauung (worldview) is absolutely alternative to the Western weltanschauung rather than complementary".
And to understand this new Turkish weltanschauung, one has to read what is happening to a couple of ordinary commodities: the press and alcohol.
Turkey is today the country with the highest number of journalists imprisoned in the world. even more than China and Iran, two famous persecutors of information.
A new report by Ocse, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe based in Vienna, revealed a dark situation for the Turkish journalists. In Turkey's tumultuous pre-democratic past there were also prosecutions of journalists and writers, but mainstream media were off the hook. Now there are 57 journalists imprisoned in Turkey, despite the fact that Erdogan has always depicted himself as a champion of civil rights and freedoms.
The wave of arrests began in 2005, after the promulgation of the 301 code, the most effective instrument of repression extant.
Among those arrested is Nedim Şener, the author of a book in which he presented a survey about police's role in the murder of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. For that book, Şener received the title of "World Press Freedom Hero". Sener is facing a possible 32-year sentence.
Turkey imprisoned Ahmet Sik, a famous investigative journalist who was writing a book about Islamist influence in the police forces. Sik was investigating the tycoon Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the Islamist wave of Erdogan. Gulen (called "Hodja", master of Islam) is the head of an empire of charities and media, estate properties and a thousand schools around the world.
Sik's book was seized by the Turkish police, who also picked up the electronic file of the manuscript. Erdogan's government accused Sik and other journalists of taking part in a secularist plot against his government.
There is a strong suspicion that the prime minister has launched a terrific campaign of repression against the non-Islamic dissent.
A trial was initiated against Nedim Gursel, a professor of literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, because of his "blasphemous" novel "The Daughters of Allah". The charge is "insulting Islam".
Turkey has started legal proceedings also against the old archeologist Muazzez Ilmiye Cig, a devotee of Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, because she asserted that 5,000 years ago the headscarf was already a symbol in the ancient Sumerian civilization. Cig had also criticized Emine Erdogan, the wife of Turkey's prime minister, for wearing the headscarf.
The situation is so alarming that the famous pianist Fazil Say said that "Turkey is experiencing heavy fascism. Now in Turkey defending freedom is a crime".
The use of prison for the journalists was introduced by Erdogan in 2005 with a reform of the penal code established in 1926 after the Italian charter (which was in force in Italy until the fascist dictatorship).
Erdogan then filed a case against Fikret Otyam, because the famous painter published a sarcastic column in which he mocked the prime minister for promoting the Islamist policy regarding adultery. "Erdogan has successfully lowered the debate to the level of the crotch", wrote Otyam.
The new Turkish Weltanschauung is repressing alcohol as well, another emblematic symbol of "Western vice". A Turkish glass of wine is today one of the most expensive in the world. It's not because of the special quality of the wines, but because Erdogan's government since 2002, has increased the price of alcohol by 737 percent.
Between 2009 and 2010, the Turkish tax on beer increased by 45 percent. The cost of raki, the aniseed-flavored Turkish drink par excellence, has quadrupled.
According to secular observers, this is another demonstration of the Islamist agenda of Erdogan. In 2008, the Erdogan government forced Turkish consumers to make an uneasy choice: buy the whole bottle (too expensive for Turkish pockets) or decide in favor of a soft drink.
When Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Tehran, the first thing he did was to destroy the bottles of wine in the foreign embassies (not coincidentally, today Iran is a close partner of Turkey's Erdogan).
The Turkish Islamists have made no secret of hating Ataturk, not only because he was the liberty lover who defeated the Islamic brotherhoods, abolished polygamy and swept away the caliphate. Ataturk, who loved to dance and be seen with beautiful women, has been called a "drunk" by the Islamists.
His legacy of Westernization is going to die.