The victory of the AKP: a Turkish perspective

Developing Just Leadership

Adem Yalcin

Ramadan 11, 1423 2002-11-16

Islamic Movement

by Adem Yalcin (Islamic Movement, Crescent International Vol. 31, No. 18, Ramadan, 1423)

The electoral victory of the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti, AKP) in Turkey has opened a new era in Turkish political life. The parliamentary election held on November 3 resulted in the sweeping victory of a ‘conservative’ Muslim party despite its leader, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, being banned for "inciting ethnic and religious hatred among people." The AKP won 363 parliamentary seats out of 550, the rest going to the Republican People’s Party, the main secular party in Turkey. None of the other parties, including the Saadet Party led by Necmettin Erbakan, achieved the 10 percent of the vote required for parliamentary representation. Prime minister Bulent Ecevit’s Democratic Leftist Party got only 1 percent of the vote, the Motherland Party 5 percent and Nationalist Movement Party 8 percent of the votes caste. The main opposition party, the True Path Party, got 9.5 percent and the Saadet (‘Happiness’) Party got 2.4 percent of the vote.

The AKP was founded on August 14, 2001, by leading figures of the former Refah and Fazilat parties. Their leader was Tayyib Erdogan, former mayor of Istanbul. Erdogan was born in Istanbul in 1954. His father migrated to Istanbul from Rize, a province in the Black Sea Region. His family was poor. He was brought up in a suburb, Kasimpasa, in which the poor live. He undertook many duties before he became the head of Istanbul municipality. Erdogan put on an extraordinary performance and won millions over during his term of office, before his dismissal for reciting a poem in a public meeting.

He was sentenced to a ten-month imprisonment for "inciting ethnic and religious hatred among people", and served it. After his release he founded the AKP with several comrades who forsook the Milli Gorus (‘national view’) tradition (the political line led by Erbakan since 1969). They declared that the AKP is not a religious party, although it was formed by devout Muslim individuals. They defined themselves as "conservative democrats" or "Muslim democrats", referring to "Christian democrats" in Western countries.

The Refah-Fazilat model did not work, and a new model had to be found. The established order did not allow political activity based on religious preferences, and banned both Refah and Fazilat. So the new party had to embrace the different parts of Turkish society, and its main goal was to form a "free society" in the Western sense. Individual rights and liberties must be implemented in the widest sense and Turkey must join to the European Union (EU).

The prolonged effects of the military intervention (February 28, 1997) against Erbakan’s government have worn down Turkish society. The economic collapse has been caused mostly by this intervention and its effects. Millions of people have lost their jobs, and at least 400,000 shops have closed down; many people have committed suicide. Every day the news bulletins were full of more bad news about the economy. Everybody was angry with the coalition parties, and most especially with prime minister Bulent Ecevit. But the protection of the secular order was more important than the nation’s life, according to him and his colleagues.

The attitudes and statements of the AKP are very moderate. Tayyib Erdogan and other leaders are declaring that they will never cause any tension in society and will be respectful of others’ lifestyles. Although they won a great victory at the ballot box, they are still on the defensive: having a majority in parliament is to take over but a small part of political power in Turkey, as is also the case elsewhere in the Muslim world. The greater part of political power in Turkey is held by the army and judiciary. If the AKP solves the economic problems and hijab problem in the schools, that will be good enough. Expecting more than this will probably cause great disappointment. The party itself has not promised a great transformation. People voted for it because of economic concerns rather than Islamic ones. Erdogan and his close companions are individually devout Muslims, but they cannot bring about a total transformation by working within the system.

Under these circumstances the rest of the Ummah should pray for them. Their task is difficult. The danger, however, is that their failure will be seen as the failure of the Muslims in general; people will say "there is no difference between secular Ecevit and the ‘Islamist’ Erdogan." If Turkey is to return to its leadership role in the Muslim world, this will be achieved by a Muslim leadership who emerge from among the people, not by a secular leadership who are distant from the people.

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