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Turkey’s Islamists win big

Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has demonstrated that his political movement of Islamist-origin is the dominant democratic force in the country. He won a second five-year term after his Justice and Development Party (or AKP to go by its Turkish initials) secured almost 47 per cent of the vote in the parliamentary election held on July 22. The two-thirds parliamentary majority the party needs might not be out of reach if it strikes deals with independen ts who fronted for Kurdish political formations. The AKP will then have the means to amend the constitution, including the provisions governing the presidential election. The question is whether Mr. Erdogan will opt for a confrontation with the military-dominated secular establishment. In his first term, the Prime Minister displayed great skills in handling the fragile relations between the democratic forces and the permanent Kemalist establishment of Turkey. In fact, the AKP chose the path of confrontation — if calling parliamentary elections some months ahead of schedule can be called confrontation — only after the establishment repeatedly rejected its nominee for the presidential poll. After his electoral triumph, Mr. Erdogan has been a picture of conciliation. He seems to be waiting for his opponents to come round after seeing the writing on the wall.

The Kemalist establishment has projected the AKP as an extremist force that cleverly uses democratic means to seize power as a prelude to enforcing a theocratic agenda. That might well have been the case with Turkish political movements of an Islamist bent in the past. However, Mr. Erdogan has given a new orientation to his party and the social base of the AKP has been transformed. Over the last decade, large sections of the devout, rural population of Anatolia that traditionally supported the Islamists have moved to the cities. While they continue to be socially conservative and religious, they have seized with both hands the economic opportunities available in a country that has close ties with the European Union. These sections are not likely to jeopardise their new-found upward mobility and prosperity by being complicit in the imposition of a social order that disenfranchises women and minorities and invites international opprobrium. The secular establishment is also not without a popular base. It can count on political support from the Republican People’s Party, which won 20.9 per cent of the vote, and the Nationalist Action Party (14.3 per cent). It should also take comfort from the unlikelihood of the charismatic Mr. Erdogan abandoning the path of moderation and emulating the ways of Islamist movements elsewhere.

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