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Turkey: A new direction with Islamic
roots
By Hilmi Toros
ISTANBUL
- Turkey closed a chapter in its history on Sunday when
voters in national elections threw out the old ruling
class and replaced it with a new party with Islamic
roots which proclaims itself as pro-European with no
intention of upsetting the secular system in place in
the country.
The Justice and Development Party
led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the charismatic former
mayor of Istanbul, placed 363 deputies in the 550-member
parliament, garnering 35 percent of the vote. The only
other party to clear the 10 percent needed to enter
parliament was the social democrat People's Republican
Party, which just missed the barrier in previous
elections in 1999. It will have 178 deputies in
parliament after winning close to 20 percent of the
vote.
All the other 16 parties that contested
fell below the 10 percent threshold. That ended the
political career of many leading figures, among them
prime minister Bulent Ecevit, whose party fell from 22
percent in 1999 to less than 2 percent this time.
"We committed collective suicide," Ecevit said,
ruing that he had failed to persuade his coalition
partners not to go for early elections. Ecevit's
bickering coalition partners in the outgoing cabinet,
the pro-European Union Motherland Party led by Mesut
Yilmaz and the far-right National Movement Party led by
Devlet Bahceli fell by the wayside. Bahceli and Yilmaz
announced that they will quit as party leaders. Tansu
Ciller of the True Path Party, who was Turkey's first
woman premier, also announced that she would quit. Her
party won 9.5 percent of 32 million votes.
Many
Turks appeared stunned by the magnitude of Erdogan's
victory. "Social explosion from the ballot box" ran the
headline in the daily Hurriyet. Many others expressed
relief that the coalition of strange bedfellows was
over. But there have been some misgivings that 16
parties who won 45 percent of the vote will have no
representation in parliament.
Despite leading
his party to an absolute majority in its first electoral
test, Erdogan cannot become prime minister. He was
barred from becoming even a member of parliament for
being convicted of a crime - writing a poem four years
ago that judges said incited religious hatred. He was
sentenced to four months in jail. The poem read:
"Minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets,
mosques are our barracks, believers are our soldiers."
Erdogan says that he has moderated his views
since then. He led a reformist breakaway group from the
hardline Islamist party and set up the Justice and
Development Party 15 months ago. He rejects any links
between religion and politics. But his wife and
daughters still wear the traditional Muslim headscarf,
which is banned in universities and government offices.
Women increased their representation from 24 to
26. Fourteen of them are from the Justice and
Development Party. A small question is whether they will
wear headscarves when they are sworn in. A woman was
booed off the floor for coming up to take the oath
wearing a headscarf in the previous parliament.
There are moves to ban the Justice and
Development Party itself because of the record of its
leader and continuing doubts about its commitment to a
secular lifestyle. There are many hardliners among its
members.
The party, called at times Muslim
Democrats to match it with the Christian Democrats of
Europe, campaigned with promises of good governance in a
country often jolted by corruption scandals. It also
promised new measures to bolster an economy kept afloat
for now with a US$16 billion rescue package from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). Hundreds of thousands
of workers have lost their jobs. Turkey's total internal
and external debt is estimated at $200 billion.
In an effort to calms fears of sudden change,
Erdogan announced that his party would intensify
Turkey's efforts to join the European Union and keep up
the recovery program required by the IMF. But there is
little doubt that Turkey is in for significant changes
as it is led by an unknown entity which has yet to set
out its economic and social programs in detail.
Erdogan has asked for victory celebrations to be
toned down. He is keen not to upset the powerful
military, which had chased Erdogan's earlier Islamist
party from power. The military considers itself the
ultimate guardian of secular order. The military made no
comment on the election results and is believed to
support Erdogan's policy of fighting corruption and the
economic malaise so long as he does not attempt to
inject Islamic views into public life.
Early
comment from EU capitals did not indicate any alarm over
the ascendancy of a party with a religious past. Erdogan
said that he would begin a new round of lobbying for
Turkey to be given a date on accession talks at the EU
summit in Copenhagen in December.
It is still
uncertain who will be prime minister. Erdogan said that
this would be decided by senior party officials within a
few days. A leading candidate is deputy leader Abdullah
Gul.
But a constitutional change to the effect
that a prime minister need not be a member of parliament
is also being considered. That would allow Erdogan to
lead both the government and the party. The ruling party
has a majority that is close to the numbers required to
change the constitution.
In his first public
statement, Erdogan spoke against "bloodshed" in Iraq, as
he sought to distance Turkey from a unilateral US strike
at its neighbor. But Turkey, which is often snubbed by
the EU, needs strong US support, while the US needs
Turkish bases for effective military operations against
the Iraqi regime. Analysts say also that the new
government may also tilt towards the Palestinian cause,
although the military has strong links with Israel.
(Inter Press Service)
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