Photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
An article in the New York Times by Sabrina Tavernise (Sebnem Arsu contributed) today reported that the Turkish ruling party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan--the Justice and Development party (A.K.)--won a decisive victory in national parliamentary elections. The vote indicates the direction of Turkish democracy.
The vote sent a message to the secular state establishment, which opposed Erdogan's Islamic agenda. The secularists, the Republican People's Party, received only 20 percent of the vote. The Nationalist Action Party, an anti-Kurdish group, won 14 percent of the vote.
As the only non-European, Muslim NATO member and a strong American ally its stability is critical in light of chronic chaos in the Middle East. The powerful and secular military might react and it has deposed elected governments four times since the Turkish state was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923.
The A.K. arises from a religious, merchant class in rural Turkey. It advocates membership for Turkey in the European Union. It has strengthened economic ties with Israel, along with a non-vindictive policy towards the Kurdish minority.
Erdogan began as an Islamist, and for many leaders of the party, whose wives wear headscarves, comparisons were drawn to struggling administrations in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, or countries with wives whose heads were uncovered.
One ploy of Turkey’s secular state elite, backed by its military, used a legal maneuver to block Mr. Erdogan’s candidate from becoming president. And why? The wife of the candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, wears a Muslim headscarf.
It is refreshing to see a Middle Eastern Muslim political scene with a mixed crowd of headscarf and non-headscarf wearers.
The best policy is to take a `wait and see' attitude until Erdogan either steers the country in a more religious and anti-Western direction or if his victory is more simply modifying Turkey's secularity in a moderately religious direction. Not every Muslim is an Islamist and Erdogan should be given a chance to show his true colors.
In fact, if I were even more optimistic, although I frankly confess usually I am not, Erdogan's victory could be a sign that religiosity is more robust, charismatic, fervent, but mature and still soundly democratic at the same time. The best case scenario is that Turkey is Muslim, democratic, and secular all in one which would be a terrific political model to emulate in the region. The icing on the cake is that Israel is not demonized and Turkey and Israel cooperate in the region.
Is that too much to hope for?
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