The A.K.P.'s Complex Victory in Turkey

The A.K.P.'s Complex Victory in Turkey
Drafted By: Dario Cristiani
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On July 22, 2007, the Turkish public voted in early parliamentary elections called after the parliament failed to appoint a new president. The election of a new chief of state was the reason for the political stalemate in April and May and of the harsh split between the Kemalist military establishment of the Turkish Armed Forces (T.S.K.) and the Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.), the Islamic-rooted party led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The attempt at appointing an important Islamic political personality, such as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, as the new president was the last straw between the T.S.K. and the A.K.P.

The military perceived the appointment of Gul as a presidential candidate (the president is also the commander-in-chief of the T.S.K.) as a direct menace for Turkey and its secular character. It also saw the act as one that would further weaken the power of the military. In light of these developments, the Republican People's Party (C.H.P.), the leftist party created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and whose ideology is based on a strict observance of the principles of Ataturk, moved to block the election of Gul as president and, after the second failed vote, Gul withdrew his candidacy.

The results of the July 22 elections were as follows: the A.K.P. came in first with about 46.5 percent of the vote and will have 341 seats in the next Turkish unicameral parliament, which is made up of 550 seats. The C.H.P. came in second with about 21 percent of the vote, giving it 112 seats in the new parliament. The ultra-nationalist and right-oriented Nationalist Movement Party (M.H.P.) came in third with 14.3 percent of the vote, giving it 70 seats. The independents took 26 seats and a large part of them were from the Party for a Democratic Society (D.T.P.), the Kurdish party.

The Structural Roots of A.K.P. Consensus

The elections have represented a sort of paradox for the A.K.P.: they have demonstrated how the party has strongly increased its popular support but, at the same time, has fewer seats than before the elections. That is because the M.H.P. has exceeded the electoral threshold of ten percent. Hence, while the A.K.P. has received an autonomous parliamentary majority, it does not have the capability to elect the president on its own.

The elections, however, have demonstrated again the electoral power and the consensus that the A.K.P. has among the Turkish electorate. This consensus is rooted in a series of structural and contingent factors, which explain how the A.K.P. has strengthened its popular support during the past few years.

From a structural viewpoint, the first factor that must be taken into account is the progressive Islamization of the public and political space in Turkey. Such a development, even though abhorred by the military and secularist elites, has allowed Islam, its symbols and its cultural and social values to play a stronger role in the public discourse and to be a fully recognized part, by the largest component of the population, of the Turkish political mainstream.

Certainly, the presence in power of the A.K.P. since 2002 has reinforced such a trend, with Islam and Islamic values becoming the core of the political discourse. However, the process began before the A.K.P. took power and its increasing consensus is partly a result of the resurgence of Islam in the political sphere.

The second structural factor is the presence of a new, different middle class, characterized for its Islamic roots, in search of political representation. The so-called "green capitalists," united under the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (MUSIAD), promote an Islamic, conservative vision of society associated with a liberal and market-oriented vision of the economy. The emergence of such a social and political actor is one of the more durable results of the economic liberalization process and the market-oriented reforms implemented by the Turgut Ozal-led government in the 1980s.

The appearance of such a group has created a new economic power faction, whose creation has had several important political implications. It has represented not only an economic concurrent for the secular state elite, but a political one too. This new middle class has weakened the concept of a "strong state," a stronghold of Turkey since its foundation, and one of the consequences of such a weakening has been the end of the hegemony of secularism and nationalism as the main political narratives within the Turkish political scene.

Unlike its predecessors, the A.K.P. has repudiated the Welfare Party and Virtue Party legacy, in order to avoid a new "February 28, 1997" -- the day in which the T.S.K. ousted the Welfare Party from power -- with the aim of demonstrating the clear discontinuity between these experiences and its full acceptance of the modern lifestyle, the secular nature of the Turkish republic and the parliamentary confrontation, managing, at the same time, to keep intact its credentials as an Islamic-oriented party.

Moreover, the A.K.P. has an impressive and branched party machine and a strong network of local administrators. These two elements give the party a rooted and deeper presence in the country, which is a tool for building and consolidating its consensus. The presence of many A.K.P. mayors and the control over the local administrations, strengthened after the local elections in 2004, give the party a fundamental instrument for creating several consensus networks using welfare and local services in order to reinforce the clientele networks based on the lavishing of jobs in the public sector or the redistributing of wealth, above all in the less developed areas of the country.

Contingent Factors of the A.K.P. Affirmation and the Weakness of Nationalist Responses

In the affirmation of the A.K.P. in the latest election, an important role has been played by those factors closely linked to the political and economic situation in the country. For example, the economic growth rate of the country, close to 5.5 percent in 2006, and the overall economic record of the A.K.P. government in the past five years are elements that have had a fundamental role in its victory.

Moreover, the performance of the A.K.P. as a reformist party during its first mandate in the way of European Union membership, even though such an attitude has been weakened in the past two years, has caused liberal sectors of the society to look with interest to the A.K.P.

The run toward the European Union is an important goal for Turkey; however, Erdogan and his party have used the European Union also as an instrument for changing the domestic political and institutional panorama and the internal balance of power. The power of the military establishment has been weakened by the reforms implemented with the aim of fulfilling the so-called "Copenhagen Criteria."

A clear example of such an attitude has been the popular response to the April 27 Military Memorandum, which has not been as strong as it has been in the past for a similar event. Erdogan has also used as a propaganda instrument military interference within the political arena. He has tried to show that the A.K.P. is a genuine democratic force concerned about the future of democracy in Turkey and that the party wants to "normalize" the democratic life of the country, avoiding direct interference by the army in the political sphere. Hence, it has been a tool to acquire leverage and influence over the more liberal sectors of Turkish society that do not agree with an active role of the military in politics.

Finally, the lack of electoral depth of the political adversaries was the final factor. The concern, that still exists in some sectors of Turkish society, over the possible existence of a hidden, radical Islamist agenda of the A.K.P., expressed by the military and the nationalist parties, has not been as strong as in the largest part of the electorate. The main adversaries of the A.K.P. -- the C.H.P. and the M.H.P. -- have only played the nationalist card. Such a move has been useful for securing their targeted electorate, but this has prevented them from gaining influence over the part of the electoral body farther from their positions. By choosing the card of a harsh nationalist response to the moves of the Erdogan-led party, they have polarized the electorate: on one side, there are the nationalist and secular electors, while on the other there are the rest, consisting of the conservatives, the Islamic-oriented population, the lower middle-class, the liberals and the part of the left that does not agree with the aggressive nationalist turn of the C.H.P.

Conclusion

The impressive victory of the A.K.P. in a country in which the ruling party has had historic difficulty being reelected is rooted in many structural factors. However, while this victory has reinforced the government's party from a political viewpoint, from a strictly numerical point of view the A.K.P. does not have the necessary numbers to appoint a party's candidate as chief of state. It will need the support of other parliamentarians in order to reach the threshold of 367 members.

In the end, the situation is complex and unclear. The candidature of Gul will bring further tension within the Turkish political scene. The military will try to move in to avoid an election of an Islamic-oriented president, even though they are weaker than before. The political problem correlated to the election of the chief of state could also bring some problems to the tenure of Erdogan's position within the party.

The A.K.P. clearly won the latest elections, but the problems that it is going to face are more difficult and complex than they were prior to the elections.

Report Drafted By:
Dario Cristiani