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AKP 2.0: Exit Conservative Democrats

27.08.2014 11:38

This week is full of symbolism and much of that is related to the past, the present and the future of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey's dominant party. Of course, we will be discussing persons and the next step in their careers: current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be inaugurated as the first directly elected Turkish president, while the incumbent, President Abdullah Gül, will step down and leave politics, at least temporarily.These individual stories epitomize, however, a much bigger narrative about the AKP, the ruling party that was founded by Erdoğan and Gül in 2001 and will now enter a new phase in its turbulent development: AKP 2.0. Like most similar conservative mass parties in the rest of Europe, the AKP was a project that united politicians with different ideologies. To highlight the break with the Islamist past of some of its founding members, the party described itself from the start as “conservative democrat.” I guess that self-denomination was no

This week is full of symbolism and much of that is related to the past, the present and the future of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey's dominant party.

Of course, we will be discussing persons and the next step in their careers: current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be inaugurated as the first directly elected Turkish president, while the incumbent, President Abdullah Gül, will step down and leave politics, at least temporarily.
These individual stories epitomize, however, a much bigger narrative about the AKP, the ruling party that was founded by Erdoğan and Gül in 2001 and will now enter a new phase in its turbulent development: AKP 2.0.

Like most similar conservative mass parties in the rest of Europe, the AKP was a project that united politicians with different ideologies. To highlight the break with the Islamist past of some of its founding members, the party described itself from the start as “conservative democrat.” I guess that self-denomination was not only a smart move to steer perceptions in Turkey and abroad, but also quite an adequate way to bridge the diverging ideas and principles of the first generation of AKP politicians. Among them, one could indeed find conservative democrats but also liberals, moderate Islamists, nationalists and populists from all directions.
Looking back, I think the first eight years of its existence -- of which seven were spent in government -- the AKP by and large spoke and acted as a conservative democrat party because an equilibrium was reached between the dominant players inside. The leading conservative democrat in the traditional sense being Gül, especially as a member of the Cabinet until 2007: moderate, pro-European, trying to bridge differences and accepting checks and balances. For many years, he managed to counterbalance and restrain the impulses coming from Erdoğan: abrasive, opportunistic, disregarding limits to his power and keen to instrumentalize some of the main dividing lines in Turkey's society.
After Gül became president and some of the other moderating forces left the party or lost influence, Erdoğan started to monopolize power in the government and in the party based on his personal charisma, the electoral successes and the growing sway of a new generation of loyal advisers he brought in who were willing to modify the party and the Cabinet into the personal instruments of an unbound and extremely assertive leader.
This week's crowning of Erdoğan and the pullout of Gül typifies the post-2009 change of the AKP from a conservative democrat party into a predominantly illiberal populist one. It is a trajectory that we can witness in other parts of Europe as well, most notably in Russia and Hungary. CNN's Fareed Zakaria, among many other commentators, has described this phenomenon as the rise of Putinism, based on some shared elements: “Nationalism, religion, social conservatism, state capitalism and government domination of the media.” As in Russian President Vladimir Putin's case, Erdoğan's turn to illiberal populism did not create his popularity (there are many other, very concrete and understandable reasons for that), but it is a strategy to sustain it.
Does the start of AKP 2.0 mean that all conservative democrats have disappeared from the party? Some leading ones have, but others are still there and trying to survive in the new political climate. For one thing, I don't consider the new prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, to be a committed illiberal populist. Looking at his background and previous views, he is more of a conservative democrat with a strong idealistic and Islamist twist. Apparently, for the moment, he agrees with most of Erdoğan's policies, and he has decided that in order to stay in power he has to sing from the current dominant song sheet.
Is the AKP lost forever? To be honest, I do not know. Whether or not the party can return to its core conservative democratic identity will depend on many factors. One will be the performance of AKP 2.0, both economically and electorally. If some of the doomsday scenarios come true and Turkey will soon be faced with a profound economic crisis, the popularity of the populist leadership will soon evaporate. The same goes for a disappointing result at the next parliamentary elections, which will make it impossible to implement the systematic change Erdoğan so desperately wants.

It will also depend on what key players like Gül decide to do: Surrender and leave politics to the populists or wait and see, and prepare for the return of the conservative democrats to prominence -- inside the AKP if possible, or from outside, if necessary?

JOOST LAGENDIJK (Cihan/Today's Zaman)



 
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