Last week, political polarization came to the forefront of public debate as Pew Research Center presented findings about the partisan divide in America to establish that "Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines ... than at any point in the last two decades." The same study concluded that 27 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Republicans believed the opposite party was a threat to the nation's well-being and warned about the "rising tide of mutual antipathy." Meanwhile, the prominence of conservative views among Republicans became more visible as Tea Party candidate David Brat, who compensated his lack of fundraising skills with hel from conservative talk show hosts, defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a Virginia primary and made it clear that the GOP was still open to far-right influences. Time and again since last summer's Gezi Park protests, we have heard Western observers and opposition pundits engage in a similar criticism of Turkey's growing polarization – an attitude toward the country that stands in stark contrast with earlier comments from people like Mark LeVine, a UC Irvine historian, who declared in September 2011 that the country was "a remarkable success story in many areas, particularly compared with the political, economic and cultural state of the country less than a generation ago." A quick look into into opinion polls from the past decade, however, reveal that Turkey's polarized political scene has been years in the making. In 2010, a KONDA poll observed that Turkey "has experienced rather intense polarization in recent years" and showed that Turkish society was deeply divided over key political issues. When asked about tensions between the executive and the high courts, for instance, 53 percent stated that the government indeed pressured prosecutors and judges while another 47 percent disagreed. Two years earlier, the same pollster conducted a study of lifestyles, a leading concern among secularists, for opposition daily Hürriyet. When prompted that the military should stage a coup when necessary, 48 percent responded with "Agree" or "Absolutely agree" while 36.7 percent of participants disagreed. The same study revealed that 52.9 percent, as opposed to 31.5, believed female public employees should have the right to wear the headscarf at work. "We observe that political identity alone informs a number of decisions and preferences from newspapers to soda," KONDA noted. There was a time in the 1990s, to be sure, that the secularist military would not allow the sale of certain brands in commissaries to fight the Islamist political movement – a practice whose repercussions affect our lives today. Both in the U.S. and Turkey, blaming political polarization on party organizations and leaders represents an easy, yet unsatisfactory, solution to a significant challenge. In truth, the reproduction of polarizing attitudes takes more than just one political party or a single media outlet. Instead, the process requires input from various parties to fundamental disagreements over the country's future path. In the U.S., we observe that Fox News and MSNBC attract conservatives and liberals, respectively, to erode the middle ground and put news outlets like CNN out of business. Similarly, media stats in Turkey indicate that Sözcü, a secularist tabloid, has succeeded to outsell more moderate competitors like Hürriyet. Most recently, polarization served the opposition during their efforts to launch a joint presidential campaign based on the mutual dislike of the government among different groups. Briefly put, it takes more than one party to fight political polarization in Turkey and elsewhere. At this point, we have established that fundamental differences of opinion in Turkish society have been present throughout the AK Party government's 12-year tenure and only recently manifested itself in the form of street violence and mass demonstrations. Similarly, there is no question that growing polarization has served political parties well by clustering voters around a small number of parties and eliminating competitors. As such, expanding the middle ground in Turkish politics will take an all-party effort and strong political institutions.