In all of the outrage, counter-outrage, and the rest of the discussion surrounding the “Gaza flotilla,” one group has gone largely unnoticed – the Turkish electorate.
It has become conventional wisdom that the rise of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey (AKP) has been an inevitable result of Turkey’s transition from a military-dominated secular republic to a more democratic one, and as such, the AKP has carte blanche from the Turkish people to move in a more Islamist and anti-Western direction.
There’s only one problem: the voters have’t weighed in yet, and if recent polls are any indication, they are not happy. In order to understand why, we have to go back to how the AKP was elected in the first place.
The 2002 elections in Turkey (AKP’s first win) were held amidst a revulsion against elite corruption. Of the five parties who held seats in Parliament (the smallest had 85 seats), none elected a single MP. Under Turkish election rules, a party must win at least 10% of the vote to get seats, which are than allocated basically under proportional representation. Only two parties passed the threshhold in 2002 – the AKP and the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the party of secularist founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Thus, the AKP was nearly two-thirds of the seats despite scoring less than 35% of the vote. Given the freakish nature of the election, most assumed it was a one-off.
However, the AKP, apparently well aware of its precarious position, played their cards close to the vest in government. Any movement away from secularism was portrayed as a move toward religious freedom, not the imposition of Wahabbist-like Islam. While the Turkish parliament refused to allow the American military to launch the liberation of Iraq from Turkey (whether due to incompetence or design, the AKP MPs split on the measure, allowing the CHP to defeat it), the use of airspace was OKed. In 2007, the AKP got the mandate it wanted, scoring an impressive 47% of the vote. While its majority in MPs was reduced (the nationalist MHP became the third party to get more than 10%), the AKP also had far more political capital – which it has since used to move away from the West (culminating, so far, in the Gaza flotilla) and to crack down heavily on the Turkish military.
However, while all this was going on, the CHP changed leaders, picking corruption battler Kemal Kilicdaroglu to lead them. Almost immediately after that decision, the CHP became more competitive. Three polls taken after the change showed that the CHP and MHP would have enough support to block the AKP from power (Angus Reid, Fresno Bee, and Zalman); Sonar Arastirma (cited by Angus) even had the CHP in the lead.
Now, the next election isn’t for a year, which is several lifetimes in politics. Moreover, while the CHP is a secular, Western-oriented party, it is also a left-wing one which led the opposition to the liberation of Iraq. It is clear however that, for now, the new direction in which Turkey is headed does not yet have the support of the people in whose name it has been taken, and come this time next year, another election may lead to a swift reversal.
