The representatives of Turkey's Jacobin tradition are relatively Western-oriented. At the time of the foundation of the Republic, the underdevelopment of the Islamic world was wholly identified with Islam and the Middle East, while all modern advances and knowledge from economic development to democracy are attributed to the West. But the fact that British colonialism injected an orientalist perspective into the veins of the newly established nation-states cannot be ignored.The Turkish intellectual that announces a subscription to Western values while at the same time decrying their own roots finds themselves caught in limbo due to a schizophrenic attitude composed of a sense of alienation from their own nation, culture and religion combined with an inability to be truly identified with the Western value system.The mentality that substitutes democracy for a one-party dictatorship, a top-down approach for people's choice and coups for freedoms, and one that cherishes an elitist view of people as an ignorant mass as if knowledge of truth was bestowed upon them by providence, has found its true identity in the Republican People's Party (CHP).The Turkish intellectual that stood after the foundation of the Republic at the "right," in the nationalist sense, of the political spectrum in its Western sense, turned out to be "leftist" due to the influence of the generation of 1968, and thus continued their Jacobinism, this time under the veil of the "left."Our intellectuals are still struggling to analyze the political issues of Turkey through the mediocre "left vs. right" dichotomy and famously regrets that no revolution, in its Western sense, can be realized in underdeveloped societies like that of Turkey.Yet Kemal Tahir, one of the few true intellectuals of Turkey, argued that no revolution relying on the duality of the oppressed and oppressor could be realized in Turkey, a country where social and economic structures bears little resemblance to those of Western countries.Likewise, Şerif Mardin, one of the few Turkish sociologists known outside the country, argues that the Western dichotomy of left and right by no means corresponds to Turkish politics, in which the so-called rightest and Islamist political parties embrace leftist values, while the so-called leftist ones are characterized by apparent nationalist and pro status quo values.The diffident Republican intellectuals with their own cultural values have looked toward the West for more than a century in order to collect a portion of success for themselves from each and every development in the West. But this mirage almost always ends up in frustration. Once having leaned toward racism during its one-party dictatorship, influenced by Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, and then turning out to be leftist and even to be on the side of the third way, the CHP is now obsessed with becoming Turkey's version of the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) following the latter's recent electoral success in Greece. Yet this new hope comes not without its difficulties.The present conditions in Greece that enabled the emergence and triumph of Syriza bear close resemblance to those of Turkey in 2002, which led to the Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) emergence as the ruling political party. At that time, Turkey's economy had collapsed, the political party system was shattered and the prime minister at the time, Bülent Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP), could have only taken 1 percent of the vote. Thus, the AK Party, pioneered by the cadre deriving from the Welfare Party (RP), which was banned by the military memorandum of Feb. 28, 1997, immediately came to power in the year of its foundation.Inspired by Greece, the CHP now announces that Turkey needs a Syriza as well. However, it also neglects the fact that Syriza is, in fact, the AK Party of Greece. Not only its conditions of emergence, but also its political promises reverberate with those of the AK Party's initial phase. Thus, it is radical, but not false to argue that the AK Party government that triggered the Arab Spring by its "sui generis" state of existence and active and innovative policies has also set an inspirational example for current Greek politics.