Reading Change in Turkey *

Turkey battles for change on all fronts

Reason dictates that this era will be replaced by an era of rational capitalism, and that the country will be integrated into the global world.

The conditions of the world order will urge the new government of Turkey to rational capitalism even if the winning Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not fully aware of the situation.

Moreover, AKP has the capacity to marry Islam and liberal democracy, the first time ever in world history. In fact, this is not the first attempt. Turgut Ozal of the Motherland Political Party (ANAP) had tried the same game but was unable to obtain the results.

In that sense the new era will be a laboratory test for the whole world: Can Islam integrate liberal democracy? Can Islam be integrated into the globalized world?

The answers to these very delicate and difficult questions are with the AKP.

Before the eyes of the Turkish people it was not important what they wanted to achieve out of this election, it was important that they got rid of what they didn’t want anymore. They openly negated the era of crony capitalism. And they have openly punished those politicians associated with it. They have run a social protest, not in the streets but in the polls.

Those politicians known as the main political actors of the last 40 years have been eliminated from the political scene:

1. Mesut Yilmaz of ANAP has been erased from the political scenery after staying in Parliament for 19 years. He succeeded in diminishing the votes of ANAP from 27 percent to a mere 5 percent in 11 years after he took over the party. He lost simply because he was the main figure of the economics of impropriety with his brother.
2. Tansu Ciller of the True Path Party (DYP) also lost for the same reason. She hasn’t been in power for the last five years, but it is obvious that people have not forgotten her alleged forgery with her husband. She did succeed nearly the impossibility. In an era deep in economic crisis, although she was in opposition, she was also associated with the crisis because of her past activities.

The results of the elections also wiped off those fatherly figures from the Turkish political scenery:

1. Suleyman Demirel, a strong figure in the last 40 years, has also been wiped out. He openly backed his old party, DYP of Ciller, and made his voice heard through his spokesman Husamettin Cindoruk. But people simply didn’t listen to his advice. I believe that people said, “It is enough with Demirel, if he does not pull out himself, we will throw him away anyway.”
   It is tragically funny that Cindoruk and Demirel used to hate Ciller until recently, before the elections, as she pulled the party out of the hands of these old-shots only eight years ago.
2. Necmettin Erbakan, the prohibited coach of the Saadet Party (SP) of Recai Kutan, has also been wiped out. For 40 years the leader of the so-called “National Sight,” the prominent pro-Islamic political group, has also been urged to retire by the will of the people.
3. Last but not least, the elderly figure wiped off the political scenery is the present prime minister Bulent Ecevit. He has been in politics for the last 40 years and has also heard from the people that “enough is enough!”

These three, over 75 years old, have been the establishment of Turkish politics since 1960 and have been simply kicked out, at last.

On the other hand, Devlet Bahceli of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Ismail Cem of the New Turkey Party (YTP) received early blows at the very start of their political career as the chairmen of their parties.

Certainly, this is an end of an era in Turkey, and what could one expect differently in a country facing a very harsh crisis accompanied by one of the worst income distributions in the world?

* This article was originally published in the Turkish Daily News under the title “How to Read the Results of the Election.

  Turkish Daily News