Besides increasing its votes, it also received votes from all social levels of Turkish society. As it addresses all ethnic groups in Turkey, it also doubled its southeastern votes. This indicates that people see a possible solution to the Kurdish issue under the AK Party umbrella. While the Democratic Society Party’s (DTP) votes decreased shockingly, the AK Party has undisputedly become the biggest party in the region. The first issue to be underlined about this significant phenomenon is that those assuming that Kurds were torn away from the system in Turkey -- given the bitter events that have occurred since 1984 and the conflict’s being considered as a “low-profile war” -- saw that Kurds are right in the middle of the system. Kurds have not distanced themselves from the system, but rather they have pointed to a solution. It is possible to observe that an important portion of Alevi voters, just like Kurdish voters, have gravitated toward the AK Party. In this new term, three important Alevi figures will be working in the Parliament as AK Party deputies. Apparently a majority of our Alevi citizens did not listen to those who exhorted them to vote for the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the Young Party (GP) or the People’s Ascent Party (HYP).
Briefly, society’s main body seems to have voted for democracy. At least half of voters showed that they saw the AK Party as the sole address for democracy and civilian politics; this is bluntly and closely related to the post-modern memorandum of April 27, 2007.
The issue of whether the AK Party is heading toward becoming a “center party” still seems to be vague and needs clarification. In a 1994 report I prepared upon the request of Mr. Necmettin Erbakan, I wrote that, “The real trouble afflicting politics in Turkey is about the representation of the social center.” The tension in Turkey is between the “social center” and the “bureaucratic/administrative center.” Today the AK Party has come to represent the center of society. This is, of course, not something that can be achieved overnight. However, we should not turn a blind eye to past experience. This success can be doctrinized. The “center” is not a neutral field. The center in Turkey means the state itself. If the AK Party ever lets its mission of “social center” slip away, it gets closer to the mission of the CHP. The real center party is the CHP; whoever comes to resemble it loses esteem in the people’s eyes, and is doomed to end up like the Democrat Party (DP) and the Motherland Party (ANAVATAN). This is the greatest danger that the AK Party could expose itself to.
Another point of import is this: Although it was not openly expressed, what was in reality opposed during the presidential candidacy process of Abdullah Gül -- who served as prime minister and foreign minister and whose venerability is so self-evident -- was his wife’s headscarf, which sparked a huge public reaction. In my opinion, the first factor that earned the AK Party 15 percent more after April, when polls showed that its support rate was only 31 percent, was that Gül’s road to presidency was literally obstructed just because his wife wears a headscarf. In other words, in these elections, the headscarf turned out to be worth 15 percent of the vote.
The high rate of AK Party votes that came from the Southeast, akin to the reaction showed to the presidential vote, proves that the religion factor still plays an important role in elections. Therefore religion continues to impact politics greatly, although there don’t seem to be any religious slogans circulating; in this case the AK Party should shy away from taking up attitudes that could cause it to fall from religious grace in social and political life. We have still a long way to go in regard to poverty and unemployment. In this respect, they should develop liberal policies as well as social policies to eradicate the unfairness in income distribution. For instance, the state can afford to neglect “fiscal discipline” for a while and must invest in the Southeast. The votes that came from the Southeast are like a temporarily loaned trust.
