Helping AKP transform itself
If any other party boasted what AKP has achieved in the last five years, with its goods and bads, it would probably win nearly half of the national vote. Are the Turks masochists? Do they have a special fetish for economic crises and poverty? What might be the reason if AKP should be the most successful Turkish government with the least voter support in history? What could possibly explain the disproportion?
Well, the polite jargon belongs to an American Armenian. “We are not fighting Turkey or the Turks,” the Armenian told a colleague, referring to the efforts by the Diaspora for U.S. (and worldwide) recognition of genocide claims. “We are only trying to help Turkey reconcile with its past.”
One may of course have the liberty of laughing at the skillfully crafted wording, or to agree with it. But the term looks conveniently applicable to the Islamist-secularist conflict in Ankara. Could it be that the state establishment is not fighting the Justice and Development Party (AKP), but is trying to help it transform itself center-wards – and to everyone’s benefit?
Whether one likes AKP’s governance or not one should admit that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his men have not done well but very well in economic management although part of the success story should be attributed to the preceding government’s recovery program and to positive externalities.
The AKP also deserves a fair praise for economic stability, city management and some of the reforms that have made Turkey a better place to live in. To be fair, we cannot claim that Mr. Erdoğan’s government is the most corrupt of all the Turkish governments although partisanism, nepotism and small-scale corruption (mostly at municipal levels) are too visible – but only as visible as they were under most of the previous governments.
Why do millions protest when everything is – almost – rosy?
Theoretically, Turks have good reasons to have faith in Mr. Erdoğan’s government. Hence the combined facts that (i) AKP has been the name of Turkey’s most stable government since Turgut Özal’s ANAP, and (ii) it will probably be the party with largest ever popular support after a term of nearly five years. We can safely predict AKP votes on July 22 at around one-third of the (valid) electorate, plus and minus a few percentage points. Thirty percent and 40 percent should be surprising, but 32 percent and 38 percent should not.
All that is fine. However there is something wrong with the situation: Why would the other two-thirds oppose AKP when everything is –almost – rosy. If any other party boasted what AKP has done in the last five years, with its goods and bads, it would probably win nearly half of the national vote.
Are the Turks masochists? Do they have a special fetish for economic crises and poverty? What might be the reason if AKP should be the most successful Turkish government with the least voter support in history? What could possibly explain the disproportion?
We can multiply these questions. Why should millions of better off Turks take to the streets and protest AKP when everything is –almost—rosy? Are they too blind ideologically? Are they brain-washed? Can all of the tens of millions of anti-AKP Turks be ideological fanatics just like football fanatics are fanatics? Why do tens of millions of Turks suspect, after five years, that AKP might have a secret (Islamist) agenda, that it is a collaborator of foreign powers? Why would the taxi driver, otherwise a devout AKP supporter, tell me in anger: “I confess, sir, the party I voted for (in 2002) is now the biggest obstacle impeding our fight against the PKK?”
Why, really, would AKP get a mere 30 percent plus on July 22 instead of a well-deserved 50 percent plus ceteris paribus? Can the discrepancy be fully/rationally/convincingly explained by the work of the propaganda arm of the ‘state establishment?’ Possibly not.
Presidential election will be the litmus test
Mr. Erdoğan’s real mentors are in fact his adversaries in Ankara. They have been trying to “show him the way;” the way in which he could get a fairer share of the vote, the way he could more easily achieve his political ambitions, but not the ideological ones. Can he ‘absorb’ the lesson, putting his ideological obsessions into the political wasteland forever? Probably he cannot.
True, Mr. Erdoğan has changed his party’s “election window display” in favor of the ‘center.’ True, Mr Erdoğan’s new election manifesto does not pledge to resolve the ‘turban dispute.’ True, also, Bülent Arınç, parliament speaker, and his fraction within the AKP will probably be less visible after July 22. But the real litmus test will be whether Mr. Erdoğan will insist on having a “religious president” like Abdullah Gül. Will he, in his next term, stick to the power struggle around the political symbol that is the Islamic turban? Will he try to run Turkey from an Islamic perspective?
Will Mr. Erdoğan talk about the Ulema (Islamic scholars) when commenting on a court verdict? Will his municipalities try to impose oblique alcohol bans? Will his parliamentary majority attempt to criminalize adultery? Will Turkey’s biggest city refuse bikini ads at its squares, citing respect for “national and moral values?”
Will Mr. Erdoğan discriminate in favor of imams when selecting bureaucrats? Will he, for example, choose criminals, crooks who are devout Muslims as top figures in state bureaucracy? Will he further clash with the institutions he perceives as threats to the advancement of his political agenda i.e. military, higher education and the judiciary?
In short, will Mr. Erdoğan, supposing his party wins another term (either single-party or a coalition), choose to dig out his tomahawk and fight his ideological opponents, or will he reconcile? Difficult to answer.
Should he choose to fight, there will be no winners but one loser: the country he says he loves. Unfortunately, his adversaries cannot be expected to reconcile ‘any further.’ Too bad, an all-out war is their ‘raison d’etre.’ So it’s up to Mr.Erdoğan to choose between being helped in transforming or being faced with a long battle full of mutual ambushes. This one is certainly not going to be a duel.