Talking Turkey

The AK Party, otherwise known as the Justice and Development Party, has won a decisive victory at the polls in Turkey’s parliamentary elections.

A few short months ago, tens of thousands of secular Turks rallied to demand a secular president and insist that Ataturk’s revolution remain intact. So it is both unsurprising and praiseworthy that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, keenly aware of how sensitive the issue of Islamic rule in a secular state is, has pledged following his party’s victory to preserve the secular nature of modern Turkey.

One of the many interesting facets of this election is that, far from losing favor in a secularist backlash against its Islamist designs, AK actually increased its share of the popular vote over its last showing five years ago, rising from 34 percent to 48 percent. (In Parliament, that result will be even greater, with AK controlling about 60 percent of the seats.)

As The Economist points out, this popular support has a lot do with the strong economic performance of Erdogan’s government and the judicial reforms that it has enacted.

The English-language Turkish publication Today’s Zaman adds its own interesting take on the result – namely, that AK managed to position itself as the only true “centrist” party in Turkish politics.

Whatever the case, Turkey deserves a lot more attention than it gets in the West. Although it has a loooong way to go on its attempt to join the European Union, Turkey is arguably the Muslim country that is closest – not only geographically – to Europe. The way Turkey manages to balance Islam and secularism, furthermore, will have broad implications for countries throughout the Middle East.