Centerfield

Importance of The AKP Victory: Turkey needs an Islamic Democratic Party

...just like many European countries have Christian Democratic Parties. A healthy democracy must represent all common points of view in a population. Every healthy democracy has both either parties or coalitions of the people or liberal politics and parties/coalitions of the wealthy or conservative. Something like both our Democrats and Republicans can be in any healthy democacy now or in history (though they're coalitions in Parliamentary democracies instead of parties).

In Turkey, many of the conservative would, of course, believe that Islam-inspired culture is a good thing, support their mosques, etc.. Until the AKP came to power, run by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's generals haven't allowed any politicians with any religious tinges to become Prime Minister. And now they've even let him have a second term after winning reelection today. But they're still hinting strongly that they'll prevent AKP candidates from becoming President (Turkey's head of state). And the generals had their ad moments during the AKP's first term. So there's a ways to go here still.

Don't get any ideas that I have AKP sympathies. I'm a liberal atheist, But I think Turkey needs free expression of the will of its voters more than eternally secular leadership. Turkey's big need is for a real multiparty democracy with a full competitive dynamic. In fact, the brief reign of the AKP has done far more for Turkish liberalism than has been done in ages, through its pursuit of EU membership and the consequent rights upgrades (presumably to upgrade the economy, a frequent conservative/wealthy-party goal). If the AKP were Islamofascist, they would never have contemplated that.

When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk took power and founded Turkey, he created it as a deliberately secular state. He created a legislature in the new capital, Ankara, and passed many anti-religious laws, and didn't allow any parties with religious tinges to come to power, and put high walls in place for new parties. Like Japan in this thread, it's an unhealthy democracy. It's another spot where human rights are behind.

Another good sign is the DTP, the Kurdish moderate party figuring out how how to get into Parliament and get better representation for the region.

Ataturk's excuse for keeping power in his hands and for having an explicitly secular state was that the Turkish people were too religious to form a European-style free and democratic state.

I think that's an excuse, since the Ottoman Empire's great strength for centuries was its tolerance. And it's hard to see how that could've been done without most Turks being tolerant as well. Certainly, Istanbul is pretty tolerant, as it's mostly been since the Turks took the town; but we didn't visit the rest of Turkey.

P.S.: Interestingly, Churchill couldn't get over the Constantinople->Istanbul rename, even though it'd happened centuries before. In WWII, he told his government to call it Constantinople(!). Though, after a course and tons of books on the Byzantine Empire, I kept doing the same thing when I was there. I didn't stop until it was about time to leave.

P.P.S.: If you ever visit Istanbul, my suggestion for vital supplies that I didn't have is a neck brace. Looking at the very cool ceilings of Hagia Sophia and tons of huge (tall) mosques took alot of upward looking, I reinjured a sore spot and made it much worse. getting bad neck twinges even today.