Islamist Parties

turkey’s akp in power

Ihsan Dagi

Ihsan Dagi is professor of international relations at the Middle East Tech-

nical University in Ankara, Turkey, and the editor-in-chief of the quarterly
Insight Turkey. He is the author of Turkey Between Democracy and Mili-
tarism: Post-Kemalist Perspectives (2008).

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is unique in the Mus-

lim world by virtue of being a party whose foes charge it with pursu-
ing an Islamist agenda, yet whose commitment to democracy can be
assessed through its performance in government. In the Muslim world
at large, Islamist parties are perennially confined to opposition status,
causing observers to wonder about the “real agenda” that they would
pursue should they ever reach power. The AKP, by contrast, has been its
country’s democratically elected ruling party since 2002. So far, it has
overseen three free and fair elections, which should put to rest at least
the commonly heard worry that “Islamists” will tolerate “one person,
one vote” one time only.
This is assuming, of course, that the AKP actually is an Islamist entity.
Since its founding in 2001 it has rejected that label, preferring instead
to call itself a “conservative democratic” political movement. Yet on 14
March 2008, Turkey’s chief public prosecutor asked the Constitutional
Court to close the party on the grounds that it is a center of antisecu-
lar activities. The question that has been debated ever since the AKP
first formed has thus gained a new, legal aspect: Is this party bent on
the Islamization of Turkish society and the Turkish state? In the formal
response to the indictment that the AKP submitted to the court, the party
underlined that during its rule not only had democracy been enhanced and
freedoms broadened, but commitment to the principle of secularism had
spread to wider social groups. The case for closure, the party leadership
asserted, was a purely political maneuver with no grounding in law.
As a matter of fact, the AKP leadership did emerge from the cadres of
the first organized political representative of Islamism in Turkish poli-

Journal of Democracy Volume 19, Number 3 July 2008

© 2008 National Endowment for Democracy and The Johns Hopkins University Press
26 Journal of Democracy

tics, known as the “national view movement,” led then as now by Nec-
mettin Erbakan. Islamism refers to political activism that aims to form a
polity inspired, if not defined, by the principles of Islam, and envisages
the construction of an Islamic society through the agency of the state.
Nonetheless, to judge from the AKP’s public statements, social base,
program, and behavior over more than five years as Turkey’s ruling
party, it appears to be not an outright Islamist movement, but rather a
“conservative” one within the tradition of Turkish center-right politics.
For a better understanding of where the AKP stands on Islamism and
democracy, one needs to evaluate its political and intellectual journey
from its origin to where it has arrived today. It has been a journey that
may hold lessons regarding the story of political Islam’s transformation
in Turkey and beyond.
The first Turkish political party with an Islamic orientation was
founded in 1970 by the cadres of the “national view.” The Constitutional
Court closed this party down the following year on the ground that it
posed a threat to the constitutional principle of secularism. This subse-
quently became the standard treatment for other political parties estab-
lished by the same group, the last being the Virtue Party (shut down in
2001), whose members included the founding leaders of the AKP.
With the threat of constitutional banning hanging over their heads
for decades, Turkish Islamist movements had to learn to operate in a
restricted political environment. The threat of closure complicated at-
tempts to identify and analyze Islamist political parties because they
could not call themselves such. The practice of takiyye, hiding the true
ideas of an Islamic party to escape constitutional prosecution, was de-
ployed at the expense of clarity of political argumentation. As a result,
political parties with Islamic tendencies communicated their views to the
public through symbolic words and deeds, claiming to represent the “na-
tional view” and criticizing Westernization as a betrayal of “traditional
national and spiritual values.” The goal was to build an Islamic identity
without openly violating the constitutional principle of secularism.

Breaking with Tradition

When the Constitutional Court closed down the Virtue Party in June
2001, the movement split. While the “traditionalists” established the Fe-
licity Party (FP), the moderate wing formed the AKP. Its leading figure
was Recep Tayyip Erdo¢gan, the popular mayor of Istanbul who had been
questioning the traditionalists’ leadership, ideology, and political style.
Less than a year and a half later, the AKP won a plurality (34 percent)
of the popular vote for parliament, which the Turkish electoral system
converted into a comfortable majority of seats. After nearly five years in
office, the AKP won 47 percent of the vote in 2007, more than enough
to secure that rarest of prizes in Turkish politics, a clear-cut second-term
Ihsan Dagi 27

victory. Meanwhile, the FP, the party of the Islamist old guard, repeated
its 2002 performance with only 2 percent of the vote.
It is important to note that the AKP split not only from the leader-
ship but also from the ideology of the old pro-Islamic circles. Through
its claim to stand for “democratic conservatism,” the AKP declared the
end of ideologies, including Islamism, in the age of globalization. The
new leadership referred to the Democratic Party of the 1950s, the Jus-
tice Party of the 1960s, and the Motherland Party of the 1980s, mass
parties of the center-right, as the predecessors of the AKP. In line with
these ancestors, the AKP emphasized the themes of democracy, national
will, people power, and economic development. The party program was
called “Democracy and Development.” Moreover, the party declared that
securing admission to the European Union—long dismissed as a “Chris-
tian club” by “national view” leaders—would be a priority and a natural
outcome of Turkey’s history of modernization and Westernization.
Reflecting on these transformations, Erdo¢gan said that he “took off
the shirt of the national view.” What happened to the political tradi-
tion in which the founding leaders of the party had been steeped? What
brought the Islamists to “rethink” their traditional indifference toward
democracy and their hatred of the West?
Many attribute the transformation of the Islamists to the strategic
learning induced by the “February 28 process” of 1997, when the secu-
larist military brought down a coalition government headed by Erbakan,
closed his Welfare Party, and launched a concerted assault against Is-
lamic social and economic networks. Before then, Islamic groups, in-
cluding the AKP leaders then involved in the “national view” move-
ment, had never taken democracy seriously. In the wake of the February
28 process, however, the Islamists found themselves on the defensive
against the power of the Kemalist-secularist establishment. Fantasies
about Islamizing society and the state came to an end; some Islamists
declared that the idea of an Islamic state had failed.
Islamic elements in Turkey began questioning both the feasibility of
Islam as a political project and the conformity of an Islamist political
project to Islam itself. Islamic groups, noticing that the social and eco-
nomic networks of Islam had been damaged most when “political Is-
lam” was at its peak in the late 1990s, started to withdraw their support
from Islamist political movements. Many in Islamic circles opted for a
conservative-centrist approach that they expected to help them preserve
Islamic social and economic networks. The idea of a “social” rather than
“political” Islam gained ground. The way was opened for the transfor-
mation of political Islam and the emergence of the AKP. For the AKP
leaders, it was clear that the rise of political Islam had been detrimental
to Islam’s social and economic influence in Turkey. A new “conserva-
tive democratic” approach, they hoped, would offer a way out of the self-
defeating success that political Islam had experienced in the late 1990s.
28 Journal of Democracy

To understand the transformation of the AKP leaders from “Islamist

vanguards” into pragmatic politicians, one should also consider the
impact of Erdo¢gan’s experiences as mayor of Istanbul, where public-
service provision easily trumped ideology. Local voters want efficient
road and sewer repair and trash collection, not utopian endeavors to
transform society. The chief executive officer of Turkey’s largest city
learned this lesson well.
Moreover, Erdo¢gan’s favorite Islamic motto, “service to people is
service to God,” has been effective in justifying and also secularizing
the AKP’s new policy line. Islamic circles beyond the AKP also began
using more moderate language on “hot-button” issues such as the head-
scarf question. In the 1980s, Islamic groups had confidently argued that
wearing the headscarf was an “Islamic obligation” for women. By the
late 1990s, these same groups were speaking not of Muslim duties but of
human rights in order to criticize the ban on headscarf-wearing in uni-
versities. Changing circumstances and shaken self-confidence had given
“universal” norms and values a new cachet among defenders of Islamic
symbols and identity.
The strategy of seeking refuge in the universal spilled over into other
issues. The alternative to Kemalist secularism was no longer sought in
Islam, but in modern political concepts and institutions such as democ-
racy, human rights, and the rule of law. To Islamists anxious for protec-
tion against the secular-Kemalist establishment, the EU’s demands for
democracy, human rights, and pluralism seemed a badly needed source
of aid after 1997. Islamic groups “revisited” the question of “how to ac-
commodate the West and its modern political values and institutions,”
now newly valuable in light of Kemalist and secularist pressures. For
the AKP in particular, the language of human rights and democracy and
the goal of EU membership opened up the possibility of building a liberal-
democratic coalition with modern and secular sectors at home and abroad.

The AKP in Office

Especially since 1999, the European Union has been closely monitor-
ing Turkish democracy. The EU’s October 2005 decision to commence
accession negotiations with Turkey—made after the EU acknowledged
that Turkey under the AKP had “sufficiently met” the Copenhagen polit-
ical criteria—clearly constituted an approval of the AKP’s performance
according to metrics not of Islamization, but of democratization and
Europeanization. The AKP won the EU’s approval by enacting reforms
meant to broaden democratic participation, enhance freedom of expres-
sion, and improve civilian control over the military. It also signed and
ratified a number of international human rights conventions and showed
a willingness to work with the UN on solving the Cyprus question de-
spite the resistance of Turkey’s state bureaucracy.
Ihsan Dagi 29

The AKP has pursued a policy of engagement with the global econ-
omy, and has continued to work with the International Monetary Fund.
Erdo¢gan has carried out a successful privatization program and encour-
aged foreign investment, which has risen twentyfold on the AKP’s
watch. Such investment, and the boost that it gives to the growth of a
market economy, are likely to keep strengthening democracy and mak-
ing Turkish society more open. By these indications, the “Islamist” AKP
has placed Turkey on the path to globalization, not Islamization.
Full membership in the EU not only promises to anchor Turkey in the
West via treaty; such membership requires the meeting of preconditions
concerning democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and respect for
minorities. The AKP’s path toward integration with the EU marks the
end in Turkey of residual Islamic animosity toward the West. Integra-
tion into the West and the maintenance of an Islamic identity (on the
level of society as distinguished from the state) are no longer seen as
mutually exclusive—a realization that marks a radical shift from tradi-
tional Islamist attitudes. The AKP’s “yes” to EU integration, moreover,
is popular at the grassroots: The March 2008 Pollmark survey found that
68 percent of AKP voters favored EU membership, a figure nearly 10
points higher than the national average.
By seeking integration into the EU, the AKP is pushing for a struc-
tural transformation of Turkey that means turning away from Islamiza-
tion. By pursuing EU membership, the AKP leadership, despite its pro-
Islamic background, would seem to have abandoned the idea and ideal
of establishing an Islamic government in Turkey, as EU membership
almost certainly would eliminate such a possibility.
The AKP represents a shift from “political” to “social” Islam. The
party’s leaders remain individually committed to Islam as a religion, but
refrain from developing an Islamist agenda. This is not only a personal
choice on the part of these leaders, but also a realistic political strategy,
given the social, political, and institutional limits facing an Islamist en-
deavor in Turkey.
Islam as a political project lacks widespread support in Turkey. A
November 2006 report on religion and politics by TESEV, a leading
policy-research institute, found that only 9 percent of those surveyed
said that they would approve of a state based on shari‘a (Islamic law).
The AKP evidently knows what it is doing when it avoids Islamist ap-
peals.
There is evidence that voters are more concerned with practical is-
sues than with religious or even ideological questions. The polling firm
KONDA, which predicted the outcome of the 2007 election with great
precision, has found that the top two concerns leading people to cast a
ballot for the AKP that year were not religious sentiments, but rather the
party’s economic-policy performance and the attempts of the military
and the judiciary to prevent the AKP from electing its candidate for the
30 Journal of Democracy

presidency. People in Turkey appear to be more secular than had been

assumed; they bring diverse motivations and expectations to the voting
booth. The AKP is also restrained by the changing voting behavior of
the Turkish electorate, as evidenced by the general elections held over
the last twenty years. In the five general elections for parliament con-
ducted during that period (in 1987, 1991, 1995, 1999, and 2002), a differ-
ent party won a plurality each time. Such fluctuations in voter behavior
stand as stern warnings to any party, the AKP included, not to indulge in
ideological politicking at the expense of moderate public discourse.
Neither the AKP nor its voters seem to be motivated by the Islamist
cause. The party’s electoral successes cannot be explained as tokens of
Islamism’s appeal to Turkish citizens. It would be a grave mistake to as-
sume that the impressive 47 percent of the vote that went to the AKP in
2007 indicates the number of Islamists in Turkey. Rather, various pub-
lic-opinion surveys suggest that the party received votes from electors
who had voted for different political parties in previous elections. In this
competitive environment, the AKP would not risk having an exclusively
Islamist agenda, given the latter’s demonstrably narrow appeal. Instead,
the AKP continues to locate its electoral base on the center right rather
than amid the minor Islamist constituency.
It is commonly assumed that free elections will inevitably bring Is-
lamists to power in largely Muslim countries. This logic is employed
to explain the AKP’s recent electoral successes as well. To assume that
Muslims will vote with religious motivations, however, underestimates
the plurality of views, debates, and issues that influence political be-
havior and the choices of Muslims in countries such as Turkey. In this
sense, the Turkish case may exemplify the pragmatic and secular bases
of voting behavior in Muslim-majority countries. The deterministic no-
tion that Islamist parties will win any election at any time in Islamic
countries does not hold. People vote as they do for a variety of reasons.
Democratization may not necessarily lead to Islamization; rather, it will
likely lead to the reform of Islamist movements as they feel pressure
from voters to deliver services rather than grand rhetoric.
The AKP exemplifies the ability of Islamically oriented elites to re-
generate themselves by embracing democracy in a politically competi-
tive environment and in connection with European political networks
and global economic institutions. Having broken away from its origins,
the AKP today stands squarely in the center-right band of the politi-
cal spectrum, representing rising forces that have considerable numbers
and growing weight in society (due not least to economic growth), but
who have long felt relegated to the sidelines of public life by strongly
entrenched bureaucratic state elites. In sum, looking at the AKP’s plat-
form, its public discourse, its social base, and above all its record in
government, one does not see an Islamist faction, but rather a globalist,
market-oriented, pro-Western, and populist political party.