Turkish Democracy Gives Rise to Turkish Power
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(Selçuk, Turkey) It was election day, June 12, in this small town in Turkey’s heavily secular far west region. Opposition to the governing Justice and Development Party, the Islamic-oriented AKP, runs strong. The manager of the small hotel shook his head. “I’ve been a life-long supporter of the CHP [the main secular opposition party]. My whole family has. But how could I not vote for the AKP? Because they’re doing the best thing for this country.”
In the small town square that night, a spirited celebration cheered AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s televised “balcony speech,” and fireworks burst above the trees. The next morning, I asked a middle-aged man drinking coffee in a Selçuk café – who also said he had always supported the CHP – what would have been different in the last decade if the AKP had not been in power. “We wouldn’t have had the economic gains," he said. Unlike the CHP, the AKP “are courageous.”
Less than 48 hours after the elections, a columnist in one of Turkey’s generally pro-government dailies wrote “an era has officially ended. The dictatorship of the elites has been destroyed.”
It’s certainly possible that some time in the future the AKP’s almost 50% victory this year, its third and highest electoral win since coming to power in 2002, will be seen as consolidating a new and different kind of Turkish elite, but so far the prospects seem far brighter than that. In fact, Turkish democracy – which this year achieved an impressive 87% voter participation rate – appears far more vibrant, representative and creative than any of our flawed, struggling examples with which we in the U.S. may be more familiar.
Turkey in the Neighborhood
As Richard Falk and Hilal Elver ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
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