Even if the AKP is closed and Erdoğan is banned in the next election, he can get elected as an independent deputy in Parliament and could be appointed prime minister

- 09 / 05 / 2008 16:36

Up until a few weeks ago the Justice and Development Party (AKP) people would promptly correct anyone who would use the term “Muslim democrats” to define them. “We are not so,” they would say. “We are conservative democrats.”

The term “conservative democrats” is one of the pillars of the AKP ideology as formulated by Dr. Yalçın Akdoğan, who is one of the prime members of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan's inner cabinet. AKP people used to be proud of lecturing on the meaning of this term and also by doing that they believed they would avoid from being stamped as a religious party by the opponents.

But since Olli Rehn, the enlargement commissioner of the European Union, labeled them as Muslim democrats at his speech on May 1st at Oxford University, there is no reaction other then smiles among the AKP front. However, the speech caused some swirl in Turkish politics.

The unseen majority:

Because, “Most obviously” Rehn had commented; “there is a cleavage between the secularists – especially the extreme, rather than liberal, secularists – on the one hand, and the Muslim democrats, many of whom are reformed post-Islamists, on the other.”

Those words found echo in Turkish politics in the boldest possible way: who fails to be in the same line with the AKP is in line with the “extreme secularist.” The term “extreme secularists” was an invention of Rehn and possibly used in order to avoid the term fascist. This black-and-white picture of Turkey ignored millions of people who are neither in line with AKP, nor the Jacobin minority among Turkish elite who see every way as acceptable in order to get rid of the government.

Rehn failed to answer the questions of Semih İdiz of Milliyet, published on May 8. A liberal journalist, İdiz is one of the most candid supporters of Turkey's integration with the EU and the reform process and the feelings of the democrats in between could be read from his questions. One can describe the democrats in between are against any kind of illegitimate forcing of the elected governments, against any kind of intervention to democracy, against finding solutions by closing political parties, but also against the erosion of the secular system in Turkey which allowed a multi-party democracy to find ground in a mostly Muslim society.

In Europe and in Turkey, there are those who try to encourage Erdoğan to go further with this unique international support. Erdoğan on the other hand is very well aware of the empty pool he is being pushed. Throughout the last week he gave a series of signals that he is not going to take any radical steps. That includes a constitutional change making party closures more difficult. A similar statement is made by Ali Babacan, the Foreign Minister to the European ambassadors in Ankara during the breakfast he organized yesterday, in honor of the “European day.” Babacan reportedly explained the situation as Erdoğan's intention not to escalate the tension in the society. On the other hand Dr. Burhan Kuzu, the AK Party member chairman of the Parliament's Constitutional Commission said that under the current circumstances it would be too difficult to go to a constitutional change on that, since there is the risk of all opposition getting united against the AKP, in case of a referendum.

Erdoğan's chances:

Erdoğan has first told to a group of journalists he dined in Istanbul, then to his party executive committee, that even his party is closed by the Constitutional Court and he is banned from politics, he would not give up the mission and carry it on. In order to put an additional farcical tone to the outmoded system, a political ban bars someone only from party politics.

So, even if the AKP is closed and Erdoğan is banned in the next election, he can get elected as an independent deputy of the parliament and could be appointed by the President to form a government. If he gets the vote of confidence, he can be the prime minister again with no party membership. The only obstacle can be a conviction in the meantime from a crime since until the next election he will be stripped of parliamentary immunity and will become vulnerable to pending court cases from his times of Istanbul mayorship.

One last sentence on the increasing EU support for the AKP: Erdoğan is aware that overdose might kill, and a bad lawyer can cost you a case.