“Are you a Muslim?” a pastry seller in Skopje’s Old Bazaar asks Ahmet Erdi Ozturk. “Do you like Erdoğan?” Before the author of “Religion, Identity and Power: Turkey and the Balkans in the Twenty-First Century” can answer, she points out that as a Turk he must be a Muslim and devotee of Turkey’s president. In solidarity, the woman — Baklavaci Teyze (“aunt who sells baklava”) as she’s known locally — gives him a free square of syrupy pastry. She then praises Erdoğan, whose image is plastered across the shop’s walls, and insists he will be the salvation of Muslims. “Even though she did not clearly explain from whom Erdoğan would save her,” writes Ozturk, a lecturer in politics at London Metropolitan University, “an educated guess would indicate that she meant salvation from gavur — the infidel.”
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