The party's success in the July 22, 2007 elections was again put down to the reactive atmosphere generated by anti-democratic interventions, such as the e-memorandum of April 27, 2007 and the Constitutional Court's ruling on the 367 quorum. These assessments cannot be considered unfounded, because a short while before these interventions, Erdoğan's complaint that public support behind the AK Party had decreased to as low as 28 percent was published in newspapers. However, the efforts to create just another anti-democratic process through military and judicial interventions again placed the AK Party back in a victimized status, and people's reaction turned into a 47 percent popular vote. Of course, this support did not stem solely from the AK Party's victimization. It was also an effect of the AK Party's declaration of a counter statement on April 28 in a determined response to previous day's e-memorandum. It was support for the party's attempt to reclaim democracy. It is true that the closure case filed against the AK Party -- which won almost every other vote in the elections last year -- is victimizing this party once again. It is also true that support for the AK Party has risen to 53 percent in public surveys conducted following the opening of the closure case, which is viewed by the public as an anti-democratic intervention made through the judiciary. This closure case against the AK Party, the only party which managed to get votes from all regions, social classes and ethnic and religious groups, has been perceived as a direct bureaucratic intervention against the people's will, and a major portion of the people who feel insulted by this have taken sides with the AK Party, which is also the only defender of the democratic front.
Unfortunately, it is, on the other hand, impossible to say that the AK Party is repeating its former performance and adopting a proud and dignified stance during this latest process of victimization. In the ensuing process of the closure case, we are unable to find the same self-confident AK Party that put forth a dignified defense of democracy on April 28 of last year. They have failed to display the courage that would frustrate the anti-democratic judicial intervention, and they have not initiated the constitutional reforms that could make it difficult to shut down political parties. As if this were not enough, they have neither covered any distance in regard to work on drafting a new constitution nor taken a single step forward for the solution of the Kurdish problem. The AK Party, which managed previous critical processes successfully, has unfortunately given the impression that it is being dragged along by the anti-democratic process.
The AK Party has preferred to respond to the supposedly judicial process facing it by using the very instruments of this process itself. It is starting to seem unable to discharge the responsibilities of the political power vested in it by the people. Forget about pursuing efficient political strategies to ward off interventions from the outside; it has become a party that cannot even handle its internal affairs. They haven't expelled Abdüllatif Şener -- the treatment he deserves -- after he said, "I'm part of a new political formation," at the cost of "turning his dignity into a door mat" and he is still part of the essential staff of the AK Party. In addition, they didn't call Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek to account for his efforts, known to all, to undercut the party from inside. The AK Party has become helpless against the interventions from without and feeble in the face of the efforts to weaken it from within.
Now we should ask: Why should people vote again for a party that is unable to claim the political power they entrusted to it? Yes, it's true, voters dislike anti-democratic interventions and they tend to respond in the harshest fashion by taking sides with the victimized. Still, there is no guarantee that this will be the case again. What is clearly visible at this point is that the dignity of the AK Party is being eroded day by day in the eyes of the people, who expect strong democratic reflexes against anti-democratic backstabbing.
These intuitions and assessments of mine are confirmed by the results of a survey -- carried out by a surveying company I trust a great deal and whose surveys are sometimes published in this newspaper -- of 2,500 participants from three major cities governed by AK Party mayors. My academic friend who leads the team that conducted the survey in question says support for the AK Party, even in these cities governed by successful local governments, has dropped by between 6 and 7 percent.
Apparently, people are still expecting a clear stance from the AK Party. And as the AK Party delays taking this clear stance, people's trust and confidence in the party will dwindle. It is feared that this distrust might grow into an avalanche. The AK Party leadership must accurately diagnose this process, and it should take the necessary steps in line with conclusive evaluations. One should be able to see that the AK Party might not be able to get the desired results from an early election it might be forced to announce in the coming period because it is already too late to announce an early election to completely foil the anti-democratic interventions. That is, time is as valuable as gold at the moment -- for the AK Party as well as for Turkish democracy. Each wasted minute deepens the wound in the side of Turkish democracy. This wound may become so deep that even "sympathy for the victimized" may not be able to heal it, because now people may diagnose the current problem not as "victimization" but as "failure to claim the political power entrusted by the people."
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