The AKP is conservative, but contrary to critics’ suspicions it is not a religious party. There is not a single word about religion in the party program apart from the kind of laudatory bromides one might find in the platforms of America’s major political parties, and after eight years in power the AKP has not pursued any Islamist objectives, such as establishing laws based on religious sources. …The AKP is a kind of melting pot of devout conservative forces, Turkish nationalists, economic reformers, and pious businessmen. In order to keep these diverse factions together, the party takes a political line that is primarily pragmatic—or, as some critics in Turkey would put it, a pattern of zigs and zags.
In the eyes of the old elite, however, Turkey’s 87-year-old commitment to internal Westernization is hanging in the balance. Compromise is therefore rare in Turkish politics, and debates often turn ugly. …
What is really going on, however, sounds familiar to people in Western democracies with diverse societies. The AKP is installing its supporters in the bureaucracy and other public offices and fighting for their rights and interests, perhaps most controversially by insisting that pious women who wear headscarves be free to enter universities. AKP partisans claim the same jobs, access to schools, and even concepts—modernity and democracy— that were once seen as the monopoly of the old elite. Remarkably, the AKP has assumed command of Turkey’s Westernization drive. It was Erdogan whom the European Union invited to begin membership negotiations in 2005, and Erdogan who led Turkey through a series of far-reaching reforms in pursuit of EU accession. …
Even as he struggles with Turkey’s old elite, Erdogan has embraced some of the long-standing positions of the Turkish state, taking a hard line against Kurdish separatists and clamping down on opposition news media. … During their years in the political wilderness, Erdogan and his political associates bitterly resented the centralist system set up by the Kemalists. In office, however, they have learned to like it. Access the full article>>
