Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power since 2002, has found itself losing support amid soaring inflation and high unemployment. Millions of Syrian refugees are at increased risk of xenophobic attacks from the nationalist segment of Turkish society who blame Syrians for the worsening economic situation. The AKP has opened the country’s border to millions of Syrians since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. Ultranationalist figures in Turkey today are recognized as the descendants of the Ottoman Empire’s Union and Progress Party (CUP), also known as the Young Turks, a political group that embraced a Turkification policy which excluded the empire’s ethnic identities such as Arab and Kurdish citizens.
