Turkeys choice

The ruling party led by moderate Islamists returns in Turkey with a resounding margin.

Prime Minister Recep

THE convincing victory of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the general elections held in the last week of July has laid to rest, at least for the time being, the doubts about the longevity of democracy in Turkey. For the first time in the recent history of Turkish politics a ruling party has beaten the incumbency syndrome and retained power, that too with an enhanced majority. The AKP increased its vote share to 46.8 per cent from 34 per cent in 2002, when it was one year old, and secured 341 seats in the 550-member Parliament.

A record 85 per cent of the electorate cast its vote in the July 22 elections. The AKPs support base is made up of a loose alliance between the countrys teeming underclass and the emerging entrepreneurial class from the Anatolian region. Ranged against this new force is the old white elite (a term used by the Turkish media to refer to the Kemalists), who are still in effective control of key institutions, such as the Army, the bureaucracy and the judiciary.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for early polls, three months ahead of the scheduled date, in order to pre-empt moves by the Army top brass to destabilise the government. The crisis took centre stage after Erdogan, who is also the undisputed leader of the AKP, expressed a desire to become the countrys President. The Army, which considers itself an independent centre of power and a defender of secular ideals, was quick to oppose Erdogans move to occupy the ceremonial post.

The main accusation against Erdogan and the AKP, unproven as yet, is that they have a hidden Islamist agenda. The AKP was formed in the wake of a ban, under pressure from the Army, on the Islamist Welfare Party and its successor, the Virtue Party. The AKP leadership today consists of moderate Islamists whose primary goal seems to be to steer the country towards acquiring full-fledged membership of the European Union (E.U.). Under AKP rule, the Kurds and other minorities have been given more rights.

The refusal of the spouses of Erdogan and other top AKP leaders to discard their headscarves while attending public functions has been a red rag for the Army leadership. In 1998, the Turkish authorities extended the ban on wearing the headscarf to university campuses. According to a survey by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, more than 60 per cent of Turkish women wear the headscarf. The Army, which claims to be the true inheritor of Kemal Attaturks secular legacy and modernist ideology, is insistent that all public officials and their spouses follow the dress code laid down by the founder of modern Turkey. Attaturk had imposed a Western dress code along with other wide-ranging reforms. Many secular Turks seem to believe that a first lady wearing a headscarf is an insult to the secular state. Some of them espouse the view that Army rule is more tolerable than an Islamist rule, even if the government is popularly elected.

Abdullah Gul, Erdogans

In modern Turkish history, its Army has staged coups with impunity. The Turkish Army, which is the second biggest among North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members, intervened in governance in 1960, 1971 and in 1980. However, with the rise of the AKP and its successful management of politics and the economy, the Army has seen its power being eroded gradually. With Turkeys membership to the E.U. pending, any misstep by the Army would give fresh ammunition to countries such as France and Germany to oppose the countrys entry into the Christian Club of nations.

Given the depth of the Armys animosity towards his candidature, Erdogan was quick to step aside and nominate his trusted lieutenant and number two in the party, Abdullah Gul, as the candidate for President. Under normal circumstances Gul would have been a shoo-in for the presidency because the AKP and its allies had enough votes in Parliament to elect a President. But the Army leadership, in what the Turkish media have described as an attempt at staging another soft coup, posted a statement on its website in April warning the AKP that it would use the powers invested with it to protect the principle of secularism as enshrined in the Constitution. Army Chief of Staff Yasar Buyukanit followed it up by announcing that the country would not accept an AKP man as President. We need a President who is attached to the Constitution and to secularism by more than lip service, he warned. The AKP reacted by issuing a statement reminding the military that under the Constitution it was under civilian authority.

Erdogan took the threat seriously and prepared for pre-emptive action. When the Army staged a coup in 1980, the Generals cited Article 35 of the Armed Forces internal services law, which mandates the Army to preserve and protect the Turkish homeland and the Turkish republic as defined in the Constitution.

In tandem with the Army top brass, the main Opposition Party, the Republican Peoples Party (CHP), which wears secularism on its sleeves, announced a boycott of the presidential vote and abstained from Parliament. The Constitutional Court, influenced by the Army, was quick to rule on technical grounds that the CHP boycott deprived Parliament of the requisite two-thirds quorum for the new President to be elected. In earlier elections this was not a pre-requisite. Erdogan described the verdict as a blow at the heart of democracy. Simultaneously, street protests by secular parties rocked the nation. There were calls by some respected individuals for the Army to intervene once again to save secularism and keep at bay the AKP, which, they said, had not really given up on its hard-line Islamist agenda.

In the July elections, despite the Armys implicit backing and the huge protests in urban areas, the CHP could attract only 20 per cent of the votes. The Opposition ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) broke the 10 per cent threshold necessary to be represented in Parliament. It had gone unrepresented in the previous Parliament. The MHP, or the Grey Wolves, has made a name for itself by using strong-arm methods against the Left and Kurdish parties. Its cadre have carried out targeted assassinations of prominent Turks, who held progressive views, and Kurdish nationalists.

Another notable development has been the election of 28 independent Kurdish Members of Parliament. These candidates are actually Kurdish nationalist owing allegiance to the Party for Democratic Society (DTP). The party is said to have close links with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Under AKP rule, the Kurds have been enjoying greater liberties in Turkey than elsewhere. In the Kurdish cultural capital of Diyarbakir, the AKP won more than 42 per cent of the votes. This is an indication that the majority of Kurds do not favour the PKKs call for an independent Kurdistan. Many of the right-wing parties had campaigned on the plank that the Erdogan government was going soft on the Kurds. The MHP wanted the government to reinstate the death penalty and launch an invasion into northern Iraq to search and destroy PKK bases there.

The results of the elections showed that the AKP did well all over Turkey while the support bases of the Opposition parties were confined to their respective regional strongholds. An important factor behind the impressive performance of the AKP was its style of governance. When it first came to power in 2002, Turkey was just coming out of a crippling recession. The AKP government implemented studiously the economic and political reforms necessary to become a full-fledged E.U. member. Erdogan and his colleagues have earned a reputation for clean governance. Before coming to power, these leaders had successful stints running large municipalities such as Istanbul, Ankara and Konya, where they tackled corruption and were able to enhance the civic services to the less privileged citizens.

Supporters of the

Under AKP rule, there has been a scrupulous division between politics and religion, giving the Army and the Westernised elite no pretext to intervene. After China and India, Turkey is today among the fastest growing economies in the world. For the past five years, the Turkish economy has been growing at an annual rate of 7 per cent. Per capita income has almost doubled. Turkey has also become a favoured destination for foreign investment; it has attracted more than $50 billion since 2003.

Speaking after the results were announced, Erdogan said that democracy in Turkey had successfully passed a significant test in a manner that would constitute a model for the world. The winner of these elections is democracy, security and stability. He also sent conciliatory signals to the secularist parties and, indirectly, to the Army. He assured them that there would be no change in the basic characteristics of the Turkish Republic and that his government would embrace all of Turkey with no discrimination. Erdogan has reiterated that Turkey would continue on its European path. Most of the women the AKP had put up as candidates do not wear the headscarf. The AKP went out of its way to be attractive to non-Islamists.

The overwhelming mandate has for the moment silenced the AKPs critics. The immediate challenge the government faces relates once again to the issue of presidency.

After the electoral victory, Erdogan appeared with Gul to greet his supporters. On the election trail, the Prime Minister told the people that the insult to Gul by the Army and the secularists would have to be avenged. Gul himself had said that it was the militarys threat to intervene that offended the Turkish people. But after the euphoria of victory, the AKP seems to have decided that discretion is the better part of valour. The party does not have the two-thirds majority needed to elect its candidate to the presidency or change the Constitution. The AKP had proposed a change in the Constitution to facilitate the direct election of the President. It will now have to depend on one of the Opposition parties in order to place its candidate in the presidential palace.

None of the Opposition parties is expected to support the candidature of Gul, given the animosity of the Army towards the AKP in general and Gul in particular. Guls wife had appealed to a European court for the lifting of the ban on women wearing headscarves in educational institutions.

The other serious problem the Erdogan government will have to deal with is the Kurdish issue. The newly elected Kurdish legislators have warned the government that they will raise issues that were hitherto considered taboo in Turkish politics. They plan to demand substantial devolution of power to the Kurdish areas. Some prominent Kurdish legislators have even demanded that Turkey become a federal state.

The secular and right-wing Opposition, on the other hand, wants the government to take a tougher stand against the Kurdish Opposition parties and the PKK. In his victory speech, Erdogan promised to combat Kurdish separatism and reiterated his partys commitment to the territorial integrity of the country.