Turkey’s ruling party may prevail again, but not rule
By Hilmi Toros
ISTANBUL: Turkey’s Islamic-rooted governing party will soon put its record to test in a parliamentary election dominated by the role of religion in public life and possible military incursion into the Iraqi quagmire. It may win, but not govern.
As 44 million voters go to the polls on July 22, expectations are that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will prevail again — but with a reduced majority in the 550-member parliament.
Polls in the daily Hurriyet give AKP around 30 per cent of the vote, down from 34 per cent, and its seats dwindling to slightly above 300 from its current total of 353.
The main opposition Republican People Party (CHP), as secular as the AKP is considered religious, expects to up its 20 per cent of the vote by a few percentage points. At least one other party, the ultra right-wing National Movement Party (MHP), is expected to clear the 10 per cent barrier to enter Parliament.
The election, three months ahead of schedule due to a parliamentary impasse on election of the next president, comes after a bitter and polarised campaign pitting secular forces against the perceived Islamist agenda of AKP. The election will be held under the watchful eyes of the powerful and secular military.
In an anomaly, even if the ruling party obtains a comfortable working majority, it may actually never form a government, and the election may lead to another within weeks.
This is because the new parliament’s main task after convening will be to elect a president, who, in turn, would designate a prime minister. But AKP would need 367 seats to have its candidate elected, or it would have to go for a consensus candidate. For the time being, neither of these possibilities is considered likely, and that may lead to new parliamentary elections within two months.
Prime Minister Erdogan has announced that the next president will come from the party ranks, which would give AKP a possible sweep of the legislature, the executive branch and the presidency, and enable it to avoid paralysing presidential vetoes.
But others see risks here. “If they (the AKP) get the presidency, the republic will be in trouble,” Gulsun Zeytinoglu, former member of the Board of Women Entrepreneurs told the news agency. “There will be no checks and balances.”
“The military will not accept an AKP president,” Istanbul-based French author Jerome Bastion, analyst of Turkey’s politics, told the news group. “A direct coup is unlikely, but the military still has other means to oppose a president with Islamist views.”
Generals did just that on April 27, hours after foreign minister Abdullah Gul, a former Islamist, came within less than 20 votes of being voted in as President. In a midnight announcement on its website, since dubbed an “e-coup”, the military made it known that Gul, whose wife sports the Islamic headscarf, was unacceptable. He failed to get the required majority in successive votes, and Parliament was disbanded for new elections.
In Turkey, split between the devout masses and the secular urban elite, the military is highly regarded, and sees itself as the protector of the secular republic. It has staged two direct coups and forced two governments out of office through “coup by communiqués”.
Its relations with the ruling AKP have been stormy over the spread of Islamic influence in public life. The ruling party pushed to give the military a reduced role, citing EU norms on democratisation that Turkey must adopt in its bid to become the first Muslim EU member.
Erdogan and Gul hail from a party that was earlier banned for its Islamist views, and claim that their AKP, formed only five years ago, is neither Islamist nor “Muslim Democrat”, but only conservative. In their campaign, religion barely gets a mention, the stress being on the government’s economic record such as dropping inflation from over 50 per cent to a single digit, a slew of privatisation, and the doubling of the value of the Istanbul Stock Exchange.
What is often mentioned is terrorism. Once again, this pits the government against the military. With terrorism on the increase from Iraq-based Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) insurgents slipping into Turkey, the military has proposed incursion into northern Iraq. The government, faced with US and EU concerns, has not given the go-ahead.
Erdogan has said that Turkey must first deal with Kurdish terrorists within, before venturing into the unknown in Iraq. During the election campaign, the Prime Minister has been characterised by the opposition as being soft on Kurdish rebels, with the likelihood that some votes will be drained away to opposition parties advocating tougher action.
Once a hot topic, and now barely getting any mention is Turkey’s “impossible dream” — full EU membership. With EU cooling to further enlargement, particularly to a Muslim country of 72 million, Turks appear to be cooling off, too. “If they don’t want us, we don’t want then either,” said Zeytinoglu. —Dawn/The IPS News Service
