Myriad reasons explain why Mr. Erdoğan’s AKP won the way it did. One of the obvious reasons is that Mr. Erdoğan successfully endorsed the IMF-sponsored economic recovery program of the preceding government of Mr. Bülent Ecevit. The AKP government not only did not put the economy in disarray, but it also turned the recovery into a boom.

Despite the boom, however, AKP’s economic program has failed to turn into material gains for average Turks. Those with minimum wages have not been as fortunate as the upper and upper middle classes for the past five years. Mr. Erdoğan must make sure that the economic boom continues and trickles down to the common folks if he is to succeed in the times ahead.

AKP triumphed also because other parties were not able to come up with effective counter-arguments. Almost none of the other parties spoke out against the paradox of the current economic recovery (i.e., that the poor have not benefited from it). AKP’s main contenders – Deniz Baykal’s CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – Republican People’s Party) and Devlet Bahçeli’s MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi – Nationalist Action Party) – opposed Erdoğan on the grounds that he constituted a “threat” to secularism and that it he did not fight the terrorist group PKK. Mr. Bahçeli went so far during his campaign as to wave a hangman’s noose to the crowds, suggesting that the AKP government feared to execute the PKK’s imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan (That was a curious thing to do because it was Mr. Ecevit’s coalition government that had made the decision to spare Öcalan’s life – Mr. Bahçeli had endorsed that decision at the time in his capacity as deputy prime minister.)

AKP’s greatest strength has been its ability to portray itself as a centrist party. If the majority of the people had thought that Mr. Erdoğan endangered secularism and national security, they would not have voted for him. Everyone in Turkey – especially CHP – which hoped to see AKP defeated purely on the grounds of its “lack” of secular credentials should derive the appropriate lessons. To say that secularism is under threat when it is not is tantamount to political suicide. (This point should also be borne in mind by the esteemed members of Western media, who have misleadingly labeled recent months’ events as a secular vs. conservative confrontation.)

Another remarkable AKP achievement has been to surpass DTP (Demokratik Toplum Partisi – Democratic Society Party) in Eastern and Southeastern Turkey. DTP ran on a Kurdish nationalist platform like its predecessors, but was only able to lead the polls in 6 out of the 22 provinces of the region. That is also quite telling about the demands of Turkish Kurds and the exasperation with DTP acting as Abdullah Öcalan’s mouthpiece.

The big lesson of the recent election is that Turkish people – whatever their ethnic background, political affiliation, or religious orientation – do not care about secularism, Kurdish rights, religious values first and foremost. The man and woman on the street believe in their country’s future and its ability to address these issues. Their real priorities are better schools, better hospitals, better houses, and better jobs; a hopeful future. By promising these things and showing signs that they might deliver them, AKP has grabbed the election of last Sunday.

A final caveat to Mr. Erdoğan is in order: Turkish people did not give him a blank check but a temporary mandate to plunge the country forward. He has the historic opportunity to put Turkey on top of the world. The best way to do that is to not waste political capital on empty conservative policies such as banning alcohol or criminalizing adultery and concentrate on better schools, better hospitals, better houses, and better jobs. If he fails in this task, he may end up like his opponents on Sunday.

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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a regular contributor to the Journal of Turkish Weekly.

E-mail: kayaoglu@virginia.edu

July 2007