Turkey: A litmus test for the future of democracy

It was the largest support a Turkish party had gained since the 1969 legislative elections.
Erdogan faced the worst crisis of his career in April when the opposition boycotted a parliamentary vote in which his right-hand man, Foreign Minister Abdallah Gül, was almost certain to be elected president.
The crisis climaxed as the influential army warned in a stiff statement that it stood ready to step in to protect the secular system and millions of Turks took to the streets to demonstrate against the prospect of an AKP president.
The army has toppled four governments since 1960.
“The result shows that the people do not blame political tensions on the AKP”, political commentator Taha Akyol said. “The people have now authorized the AKP to elect the next president”.
The vote is “the people’s memorandum” to the army to stay out of politics, veteran journalist Hasan Cemal commented.
The AKP has disowned its roots, pledged commitment to secularism and carried out far-reaching economic and democracy reforms that ensured the start of Turkey’s European Union membership talks in 2005.
It has dismissed the opposition’s accusations that it has a secret Islamist agenda as “scare-mongering” to curb the party’s rising popularity.
Erdogan’s campaign focused on his party’s impressive economic achievements.
His government has drastically reduced inflation, maintained strong growth and attracted record foreign investment with a strong privatization drive.
It has also won credibility for easing access to medical care, providing free textbooks for schoolchildren and building cheap lodgings for the poor.
“The AKP’s economic success was the key factor in its victory”, commented economist Eser Karakas. “The army’s warning [that the secular system was under threat] was not taken seriously”.
The support the AKP garnered should translate into 339 seats in the 550-member Parliament, enough for it to once again form a government on its own.
The party had 352 members in the outgoing house and even though support for it increased by 12 percentage points compared to 2002, the number of its seats will decline because more parties will be represented in the legislature.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), a secularist party, finished second with 20.9 percent of vote and an estimated 112 seats, according to unofficial results. The right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) was third with 14.2 percent and 71 seats.
No other party passed the 10-percent national threshold needed to enter Parliament, but 28 independent candidates won seats, 24 of them Kurds campaigning for broader rights for their sizeable community.
As soon as the new Parliament opens, its first task will be to elect a new president.
Erdogan has said he will seek a compromise in the presidential election, but insists that the candidate must be from his party.

The ‘evolution’ of ex-Islamists
Erdogan’s stunning victory in the polls has firmly placed his party at the center of Turkish politics -- a rare example of a radical Islamist movement evolving into a democratic force, analysts say.
“Rather than Islamization, we saw an Islamist-rooted party entrenching itself in the democratic tradition of the right”, commented Nilufer Gole, a professor of sociology and an expert on Islamist movements.
“This is a success for Turkey’s pluralist parliamentary system. This could well be an example of the evolution of a radical Islamist movement”.
Turkish newspapers said Erdogan’s success also signalled a public backlash against the military, which threatened the government in April over the AKP’s intention to install one of its members as president.
Erdogan was forced to bring elections forward from November after the opposition boycotted the parliamentary vote to elect the next head of state and the army told the government it would intervene to preserve secularism if need be.
But unlike past leaders who bowed to military pressure, Erdogan faced up to the generals, firmly reminding them that they remain under the orders of the prime minister.
“The first message from the ballot boxes is that the people stood by their democratic choice”, the daily Milliyet said.
“The nation has had the last word”, the moderate Islamist Zaman said.
Erdogan was once a religious firebrand who, as mayor of Istanbul, banned alcohol at municipal cafes, urged Turks to choose between Islam and secularism and served jail time for religious sedition.
But in a dramatic turnaround in 2001, the charismatic 53-year-old and his dissident colleagues in a now-banned Islamist party created the AKP, describing themselves as conservative democrats and pledging allegiance to secularism.
The AKP rode to office on its own as an untested party in the 2002 elections, when voters punished center-right and center-left parties for the country’s worst recession since World War II.
Since then, the AKP government has won kudos from the business community for reducing chronic inflation, maintaining high growth and enacting several democracy reforms that allowed it launch membership talks with the European Union in 2005.
“The AKP has embraced all sections of society. Business leaders are voting for the AKP, but so are their workers”, the political commentator Fatih Altayli said.
That kind of support differs largely from past Islamist parties, which relied mainly on pious voters in rural areas and ignored the urban educated classes.
Unofficial results show that one of two voters chose the AKP, allowing it to win even in constituencies that are traditionally seen as center-left or nationalist strongholds, analysts say.
“Since the 1950s, people have voted for change and renovation, not the status quo. There is nothing more to say in the light of what the AKP has achieved in the past five years”, former Parliament Speaker Hikmet Cetin said.

Pledge of reform
“Our democracy has successfully passed a test.... Our unity, democracy and the republic have emerged stronger from the ballot box”, Erdogan told cheering supporters outside party headquarters under a shower of fireworks.
“We will never make concessions from the basic principles of the republic. We will pursue economic and democracy reforms with determination”, Erdogan said, pledging also commitment to the secular system and Turkey’s EU membership bid.
That reform program was also stressed by the European Union, with officials holding out the carrot of membership if it was pursued.
But French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has vocally opposed Turkey joining the EU, showed no indication of changing position, even as he telephoned Erdogan to welcome “his remarkable victory”.
He hoped “our relations of trust will continue despite the divergences France and Turkey may have”, according to a spokesman.
The prospect of a new government with a strong mandate for its business- and EU-friendly policies sent Turkish shares to a record high, closing five percent up.
The polls were largely seen as a litmus test for the future of democracy in the country after the abortive presidential election.
Turkish newspapers were nearly unanimous in ascribing the AKP’s success in large part to a public rejection of military meddling in democratic politics.
“The people do not like governments that quarrel with the soldiers, but the people also do not like military intervention”, the mass-circulation Hurriyet said.

EU leaders urge redoubling of reform efforts
European Union officials welcomed the AKP’s resounding electoral win and urged the country to push ahead with reforms that could lead to EU membership.
European newspapers called the result of the vote a sharp rebuke to the secular military and a turning point for the nation’s democracy.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn urged Turkey to redouble its efforts on European Union-oriented reform.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the vote came “at an important moment for the people of Turkey as the country moves forward with political and economic reforms”.
The commission’s vice president, Franco Frattini, told Italian newspapers there was an “equilibrium” in the vote results that staved off “the risk of an extremist drift”.
Turkey was made an official candidate to join the European Union in October 2005 but its long quest to join Europe’s 27-country club has been dogged by problems.
The EU froze talks in December with Turkey on eight of the 35 policy areas, or chapters, that all aspiring members must complete because of Ankara’s ongoing trade dispute with Cyprus.
Some chapters have since been reopened.
The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant called the election “a clear no to the military”, commenting that “Turkish voters have grown weary of the old political class that has proclaimed itself guardian of the country”.
In France, the right-wing Le Figaro said the vote was “a turning point in modern Turkish history. The country can now look for new ways to try to reconcile the un-reconcilable: secularism and religion”.
The center-left daily Der Tagesspiegel in Germany, which has a large Turkish population, said Erdogan had won a clear mandate to press forward with his drive to bring Turkey closer to the European Union.
“Despite the increased Europe-scepticism of the Turks, it is a clear signal”, it wrote in a front-page editorial. “Europe must get prepared for the Turks to knock harder on the door of the EU soon”.
Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter daily agreed, saying Erdogan “can now follow through on his prudent political reforms” leading Turkey toward the European Union.
In neighboring Greece, newspapers spoke of changes in relations between the two rivals.
“The new Turkish political scene hides traps that demand we adapt our policies”, the left-leaning Ta Nea wrote in an editorial.
Greek Prime Minister Constantin Caramanlis congratulated Erdogan on his election victory and, in a clear reference to Cyprus, said he hoped it would contribute to Turkey “fulfilling all the obligations” for EU membership.
Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Robert Dekker told reporters he hoped the new government would continue with reforms “important for the development of democracy and membership of the European Union”.
In Israel, foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said: “Israel looks forward to continue expanding our relationship of cooperation and friendship with Turkey.”
Turkey has been a key ally of Israel since 1996 when the two countries signed a military cooperation deal, much to the anger of Arab countries and Iran.

Gül looks towards the Presidency
Gul hinted strongly last week that he could run for president again after his party’s victory.
Asked whether he would be a candidate again when the new Parliament meets next month for a fresh presidential vote, he told reporters that his decision was “very clear”, but declined to elaborate.
“I cannot be expected to ignore the will of the people... the signs given at the rallies,” he said, referring to supporters who cheered him as a future president at election campaign rallies.
But he stressed that “there is no need to rush things,” saying the process must continue “with great political maturity in the direction indicated by the results” of the election.
“We have a period of evaluation ahead of us... I believe the other parties in parliament will carefully consider the nearly 50 percent of the vote that we obtained”.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party, a key player in the April crisis, quickly responded that Gul’s Islamist past remained an insurmountable obstacle to his election as head of state.
“We will not support a person who comes from [a radical Islamist] tradition and who has not embraced Ataturk’s principles”, said CHP deputy chairman Mustafa Ozyurek, referring to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Secularists take special exception to the fact that Gül’s wife always wears a headscarf in public, which she would presumably continue to do if her husband was elected. They complain that the presence in the presidential palace of someone wearing a religious symbol would be in flagrant contradiction to the country secular tradition.
If Gül is again put up as a candidate, Ozyurek said his party would again boycott the presidential vote.
The third party that entered Parliament, the Nationalist Action Party, as well as 28 independents, had not yet said whether they will support Gül.
Opponents charge that with Gul in the presidential palace, the AKP will have a free hand to advance what some see as the party’s hidden policy of eroding the separation between state and religion.
Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a hard-line secularist, often vetoed laws he deemed anti-secular and blocked the appointment of senior officials he saw as Islamist government cronies.
And lingering suspicions about the party have been fuelled by its opposition to a headscarf ban in universities and public offices, its encouragement of religious schools and failed attempts to restrict alcohol sales and make adultery a jailable offense.

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