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2 Turkey's election has no
losers By M K Bhadrakumar
Addressing an election rally on Tuesday in
the central Anatolian town of Isparta, Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan proclaimed that he
will quit politics if the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) is not returned to power
in the parliamentary elections on Sunday.
He said he is confident that the AKP will
form the government on its own. Erdogan is
notorious for his cockiness. The charismatic
53-year-old politician is entitled to remain what
he is by
temperament, given the amazing
trajectory of his life - son of a coast guard
serviceman who grew up in the working-class
district of Kasimpasa in Istanbul, he is today
Turkey's most popular national figure by far.
But this time, Erdogan was more likely
making a deadpan statement. All pre-poll surveys
have come up with the assessment that the AKP is
set to receive a handsome mandate from the Turkish
electorate. Some surveys predict that the ruling
Islamist party may secure as many as 40% of the
votes as compared with its 2002 tally of 34.4%.
As a grassroots politician, Erdogan must
have begun to feel in his bones already, after the
grueling weeks of campaigning in dusty provincial
towns like Isparta, sipping endless cups of black
tea and chatting with carpet traders and peasants,
that he is at the threshold of a fantastic
political victory against formidable odds.
However, according to poll surveys, it
seems almost certain that the AKP's seats will
stand reduced from 364 in the outgoing 540-member
Parliament to somewhere around 300 plus. That is
because Turkey's peculiar election laws provide
for representation in Parliament only if a party
polls over 10% of the votes.
By the
available trends, in Sunday's poll, besides the
outgoing Parliament's main "Kemalist" opposition
Republican People's Party (CHP), the
ultra-conservative, shadowy Nationalist Movement
Party (MHP) will also secure representation in the
new Parliament. The ensuing three-way split of
seats under Turkey's complicated proportional
system will entail the paring of a large chunk of
deputies who would otherwise have been the AKP's
contingent.
There is always a possibility
of Turkish voters springing a last-minute
surprise, and the CHP and the MHP forming a
coalition government. But most political observers
discount such a possibility. The greater
likelihood is that Turkey may drift toward
political stalemate under a single-party AKP
government, which lacks the necessary two-thirds
majority to bring about constitutional changes and
lacks the punch to push forward any major reform
program.
A new AKP government may well
find itself doggedly opposed by the CHP and MHP,
with covert backing from the Turkish military.
Indeed, in any such guerrilla war by the military,
the AKP will be forced to work for a consensus
candidate for the office of the presidency.
The veteran editor-in-chief of The New
Anatolian, Ilnur Cevik, who sympathizes with the
AKP, has forecast that the drift of events
suggests Erdogan "may soon find himself pushing
for new elections". That seems an outside chance,
even making allowance for Erdogan's famously hot
temper.
But for the present, Erdogan is
justifiably jubilant. He has reason to celebrate.
He was not to be browbeaten by the "Kemalists" and
their million-strong public rallies. He was not to
be intimidated by the Turkish military's booby
traps and ambushes.
The AKP's popularity
stems from several factors. First and foremost,
the Turkish economy has done exceedingly well
during the AKP's term in office. Turkish business
and foreign investors are immensely thrilled with
Erdogan. Turkish liberal opinion too, which is
otherwise uneasy over Erdogan's "Islamist" past,
admits that the country will be better off with
another AKP government.
The economy has
grown by an average 7.3% annually since the AKP
took over in November 2002, while inflation has
been brought down from more than 50% to less than
10% and the budget deficit stands below 1%. The
sustained growth has pushed the country's per
capita income level to an impressive US$5,000.
Turkey's gross national product crossed $400
billion, exports are soaring, and the stock market
is breaking all records.
The AKP
government successfully carried out an impressive
privatization program. For the first time, serious
banking reforms have given credibility to the
economy's faltering financial sector. Foreign
investment rose from about $6 billion in 2002 to
$88 billion during the AKP government's tenure.
Second, in the run-up to the election,
Erdogan has brought the AKP closer to the
political center. He retired almost half of the
AKP members of Parliament, most belonging to the
religious right, and instead gave party tickets to
intellectuals, professionals and even leftists and
social democrats. The newfound cosmopolitanism has
made the AKP attractive to a broader political
spectrum, which used to view the party
disdainfully as a provincial bandwagon of
religious conservatives, rural traditionalists.
and the up-and-coming Anatolian bourgeoisie.
If Erdogan's calculations prove right at
the hustings, political Islam will have taken a
great leap forward. An AKP victory would show that
Islamism and Western democracy are after all
perfectly reconcilable. In that sense, the outcome
of the Turkish elections on Sunday holds great
significance for the Middle East and the
international community as a whole.
Erdogan steered the AKP to an electoral
platform that was devoid of any sort of religious
content. This is extraordinary for a deeply
religious man who once reportedly regarded shaking
hands with a woman a necessary evil as "refusing
would upset and damage the dialogue", and prayed
to God afterward for forgiveness. Erdogan has
endeavored to make the AKP bear resemblance to the
mainstream conservative parties of Western Europe.
Yet he has managed to put together a
"reformist" platform that caught the imagination
of the electorate. His manifesto has promised to
take Turkey out of the archaic constitution of
1980 imposed under army rule. It calls for
wide-ranging civil rights and reform of the
discredited justice system. Most important, the
AKP has promised to address Turkey's high
unemployment that stands at 10%.
The
Achilles' heel of the AKP rule has been the income
disparity that its economic program created. The
AKP government put in place welfare measures to
support the weaker sections of society, but these
are palliatives. For a party like the AKP, which
claimed to represent the poor people, it is a
controversial record that the booming economy
ended up creating more wealth for the affluent
sections of society.
The AKP's
"popularity" curve among the working class,
therefore, is to be largely explained by the
uninspiring performance of
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