July 29, 2007	Sunday	Rajab 13, 1428

ANKARA: Sunday’s elections have elevated Turkey to the rank of mature democracy. By giving an impressive 46.7 per cent of their vote to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish citizens have expressed determination for social stability, economic growth, and political emancipation of the urban middle class and rural populations.

The results show a gain greater than a third in votes for the winning Justice and Development (AK) Party, which had scored 34.3 per cent in 2002. AKP has its roots in political Islam, but the outcome of the elections confirms that people did not cast their voices on religion only. It is hard to believe that half of the population turned Islamist in such a short period of time.

More than hailing AKP, voters seem to have disavowed the secularist and nationalist parties. The opposition leader Republican People’s Party (CHP), formed by the country’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, made tiny progress to 20.6 per cent from 19.4 per cent in the previous elections, confining itself to the west coast.

The third entrant to the Parliament, extreme Nationalist Action Party (MHP), progressed from 8.4 to 14.3 per cent, but its voters remained concentrated in two southern provinces traditionally loyal to the party’s chairman.

Joining AKP’s historical electoral base, moderate voters from the centre and right, as well as ethnic minorities, showed signs of tiredness with the secularist and nationalist. Massive participation, at 85 per cent, is indicative of the population’s willingness to speak out.

They also appear to have condemned the way the presidential elections of last May were handled by the opposition.

It would, however, be unfair to propose that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s landslide, by Turkish standards, is due to his opponents’ shortcomings rather than to his own merits. The leader of AKP has in the past five years managed Turkey skilfully and led it to economic growth at a seven per cent annual rate, low inflation, and record foreign direct investment. Although the benefits have not reached every part of the country, people from underprivileged classes for the first time believe that improving their fate is possible.

The unprecedented victory for a religion-rooted party in 2002 was credited to the population’s will to bar the corrupted traditional political class from power. Only two formations, AKP and CHP, were admitted to the parliament. But the true concerns of the people were mostly related to unemployment and the continuing impoverishment of those living in the eastern provinces and the shanty suburbs of the big agglomerations.

Turkey has a rate of employment of 35 per cent only, almost half of the EU average. As the birth rate in the least developed areas is high, the situation is aggravated year after year. The AKP has convincingly fought corruption, but pre-electoral opinion polls show that the level of citizen preoccupation about unemployment and poverty remains unchanged five years later.

Erdogan’s results will enable him to form a government without the need for coalition and alliances in the parliament, where he has 341 seats. It is less than the 363 he had in the last legislature, despite the additional two million votes AKP collected. The entry of a third party in the National Assembly changed the landscape.

Regardless of the votes reaped because of popular discontent with the opposition and the military, such a re-election for a second consecutive mandate with a higher score than in the first has not been seen in the country since the 1950s. This confers upon Erdogan additional aura and power, but also increased responsibility.

It is a fact that AKP was well funded, but it is also true that its campaign was the most effective and thorough among the 14 competing formations and 700 independent candidates. In addition to methodical marketing and mass actions, AKP members systematically visited every single household throughout the country, MPs say.

This close contact with the population has been a constant in AKP’s strategy since its creation in 2001. It is probably the reason why Recep Tayyip Erdogan comes across not only as a charismatic leader but also as the only Turkish politician who understands his constituents.

This characteristic is likely to serve Erdogan in his new mandate. Because, after Sunday’s and Monday’s celebrations, it is time for landing back to the Turkish reality. —Dawn/The IPS News Service