I was in Istanbul, Turkey, during that country’s 2011 election. I closely followed the campaigns of its two leading parties: the ‘moderate Islamic’ AKP (or AK PART being led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan); and the centre-left, CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi).

Erdogan’s party had been in power since it first swept the elections in 2002. To present the party as a viable, robust and fresh alternative to the country’s traditional ruling party, the CHP — that was founded by the modernist founder of Turkish nationalism, Kemal Ataturk — Erdogan had largely softened AKP’s so-called ‘Islamist’ image.

Instead, he squarely focused on promising a government that was stable and entirely concerned about the uplift of the country’s then floundering economy.

In this ambitious pursuit he was more than successful, helping his party sweep the 2007 election as well. During the campaigning of the 2011 election, I heard three long speeches delivered by Erdogan — two on a Turkish TV channel in my hotel room (with English subtitles), and one at a square in Istanbul.

Not once did he mention religion. It was all about the economy, political stability and how Turkey was set to become an important part of the European Union.

Does Erdogan’s legacy have lessons for Nawaz Sharif or is it just a Turkish delight?

He was drawing the most diverse crowds as well: secular men and women in their liberal European attire; conservatives in their hijabs and beards; businessmen, shopkeepers, students, bus and taxi drivers and even artists!

I had asked a group of liberal college students at the rally to explain me why were many young people like themselves supporting a party that had supposedly emerged from an ‘Islamist’ movement?

“This is not the same party”, one of the students had replied. “This is a very functional party that is very good with economics (sic) ... “

Erdogan was saying (and more so) delivering what almost every Turk — left or right, secular or conservative — had been craving for after the political and economic chaos of the 1990s: i.e political and economic stability; an end to the long era of military-civilian power struggles; and a Turkey that would finally be accepted as a respected peer by other European nations.

Fast forward to June 2015. I was traveling between Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Copenhagen (Denmark). In Copenhagen, Danish parties were campaigning for a new election.

I was busy admiring the fact that how well the Scandinavian model of social democracy and the welfare state has done to survive the ‘neo-con’ economic onslaught of the 1990s and early 2000s; and of the resultant cultural upheavals muddling the mindset of Europe’s Muslim diasporas, when I came upon a very telling graffiti painted underneath a bridge in Copenhagen.

It was in Danish, and when I translated it (on Google translator), it read: ‘Noise gets you attention, not votes. It also leaves you deaf ... ’

Incidentally this was two days before the 2015 Turkish election. I had been scanning various websites of Turkish newspapers, mostly to see what Erdogan was saying five years after I had been so impressed by the contents of his speeches.

I was shocked. It was noise. Sheer noise. His statements were now deeply suspicious and almost incoherent rants about ‘traitors’, ‘bad Muslims’, conspiracies, et al.

He’s now the President so he wasn’t on the party ticket. But he was searching for another AKP majority in the parliament that would provide him new powers (as President).

But perhaps after realising that this was a rather tall order, he began to tear away at the image of the hard-working and highly efficient manger of Turkish economy and democracy that he had so impressively constructed ever since 2002.

Out came a man who in reckless desperation was now willing to malign his own brilliant legacy and replace it with the demagogic sound and fury of his more distant past — the one he had himself greatly softened, and had even dispensed with, 13 years ago.

The result was a drastic reduction in the seats and votes won by the AKP in 2015. It lost almost 58 seats to its rivals and is now struggling to even clobber a shaky coalition government.

Demagogic noises do get media attention and initially may also bag some votes. But the electorate anywhere in the world have continuously exhibited the fact that such noises may attract large audiences in the media (and now the social media), but they leave the voters jarred.

In my observations of elections in various developed and developing countries in the last decade or so (including, of course, Pakistan), I always notice how most voters, the moment they approach the voting booth, go into a rather practical state of mind. They are thinking, what can a candidate or a party do to address economic and social issues, both on a macro and micro levels. He or she (or at least most of them) are not concerned about any grand ideological scheme of things, as such.

Erdogan was the man who got things done. His trump card was the creation of a robust economy based on clever and pragmatic economic maneuvers instead of on any particular political ideology. In the end the same man somehow lost the plot and began with some loud holy book thumping and talk of neo-Ottomanism, whatever that is. Noise.

He should’ve known better. As one Erdogan and AKP voter proudly told me back in 2011: ‘we don’t need to be taught about our faith. That’s for us to learn from our parents and elders, and not from politicians. We need to be taught what good economics is and how it works ...’

Erdogan and AKP also became models to follow by Pakistan’s largest centre-right party, the PML(N). This party, quite like the AKP, has roots in what the West defines as ‘Political Islamism’.

But just as AKP had done in 2002, PMLN too began to evolve into becoming a moderate conservative entity that wanted to work towards building stable economic constructs that were compatible with global economic trends as well as with Pakistan’s evolving idea of nationalism.

The PML(N) has correctly gone on to eschew its demagogic past and tenor. It swept the 2013 election in Pakistan, the 2015 election in Gilgit-Baltistan, and continues to win the by-elections.

After a slow start, its government chose an astute and upfront soldier as the country’s new military chief who had an elaborate plan for tackling the issue of extremism and terrorism, giving the PML(N) regime enough space to set its economic schemes into motion.

Voters can see this, even though social media sites remain ripe with opposition sloganeering about revolution, change, outrage, flying teers, punctures, patwaris, jeeay this and jeeay that. Noise.

Beyond this noise, however, is a vague but clear feeling about certain unprecedented happenings: a regime that is slowly, but surely working; a military focused on correcting certain terrible follies of the past; and votes being won on examples and symbols of economic mobility, and not noise.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should indeed be impressed by PM Erdogan’s legacy, but must be wary of the one who is currently Turkey’s President. He should also remain assured by the fact that so far much opposition to his government is sheer noise. That’s why his party is still getting the most votes. Yes, it’s that simple, really.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 14th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play