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'AKP wint Turkse verkiezingen'
De partij die in 2002 de Turkse gevestigde politieke orde deed schudden met een verrassend grote verkiezingsoverwinning, de AKP van de huidige premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan, heeft zondag opnieuw verrast. Deze uit de politieke islam voortgekomen partij van Gerechtigheid en Ontwikkeling (AK) verbaasde vriend en vijand met bijna de helft van alle uitgebrachte stemmen, zo geven de uitslagen aan.
De economisch liberale partij behaalt met circa 47,5 procent van de stemmen niet alleen veel meer stemmen dan vijf jaar geleden maar zit ook ruim boven de opiniepeilingen die circa 40 procent voorspelden.
Erdogan kan alleen verder regeren met een ruime meerderheid in het parlement van 550 zetels. Hij staat ook sterker tegenover de uiterst conservatieve hoeders van de wereldlijke orde die Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) de Turkse republiek in de jaren twintig gaf. De politieke tweestrijd met hem leidde tot deze vervroegde verkiezingen.
De oppositie blokkeerde eerder dit jaar de benoeming van een nieuwe president van AK-huize, de huidige minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Abdullah Gül. Erdogan opperde toen de president rechtstreeks te kiezen maar dat project heeft vertraging opgelopen. Naar verwachting poogt de nieuwe volksvertegenwoordiging binnenkort alsnog een overwegend ceremoniële president aan te wijzen, waarschijnlijk een compromiskandidaat want de AKP heeft wederom geen tweederde meerderheid.
Het aantal zetels dat de AK-partij heeft gewonnen kan in het Turkse kiesstelsel flink tegenvallen voor Erdogan omdat een partij die in het scheidende parlement geen zetels had, de ultra-nationalistische Partij van de Nationale Beweging (MHP), nu wel de kiesdrempel van 10 procent haalt. De MHP krijgt circa 80 zetels.
De grootste oppositiepartij is de officiële erfgenaam van Atatürks gedachtegoed, de Republikeinse Volkspartij (CHP) van Deniz Baykal. De CHP stelt opnieuw teleur met 16 tot 18 procent van de stemmen en kan op ongeveer honderd zetels rekenen.
De grote winnaar, AKP, moet door de intrede van de MHP in de Kamer mogelijk toch een stapje terug doen van ruim 350 zetels nu naar circa 335 in de nieuwe volksvertegenwoordiging. Voor de feestvreugde onder Erdogans gelederen maakt dat waarschijnlijk momenteel niet veel uit. De partij hoopte op 40 procent om de seculiere gevestigde orde die de regering-Erdogan zo vaak heeft dwars gezeten op zijn nummer te zetten. Dat is met bijna de helft van de stemmen weer verrassend goed gelukt.
ANP, 22 juli 2007
Governing party 'near Turkey win'
Supporters of Turkey's governing AK Party have begun celebrating after partial results put them on the verge of a general election victory.
Reports said the AKP, which is rooted in political Islam, had won almost 48% of the nationwide vote.
With 80% of votes counted, the main opposition party was holding second place, with up to 20% of votes.
The vote was called after disputes over a presidential candidate, and was seen as a test of Turkish secularism.
Voting was compulsory and turnout was reported to be extremely high.
Throughout the campaign the AK Party consistently denied opposition claims that Turkey's secularism was in danger.
"Our democracy will emerge from this election strengthened," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters as he cast his vote on Sunday morning.
This is a battle of different classes, as well as of religion and ideas
BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell
Some 42 million people were eligible to vote in the poll, while 14 parties are vying for seats in the 550-member parliament.
Sentiments high
Supporters of the AKP streamed onto the streets as early results after the close of polling put the party on the brink of a comprehensive win.
News channel CNN Turk projected that the AKP would win slightly less than 47% of the final vote.
But that would be enough to secure the party a majority of seats in the country's 550-member parliament, the channel predicted.
The BBC's Sarah Rainsford, in Ankara, the Turkish capital, says people streamed in to vote from the early morning.
Many people broke into applause as Turkey's military Chief of Staff, General Yasar Buyukanit, arrived to cast his vote.
The early election was called after the generals warned that Turkey's strict secular system was in danger and the army was prepared to step in to defend it.
But now that ballot boxes have been opened, early results suggest many Turks do not see the AKP as a threat after all, our correspondent says.
Turkey's relations with the outside world, ongoing fighting with separatist Kurds and speculation of an incursion into northern Iraq were also expected to influence the vote.
Record of growth
The election was called in an effort to break a stalemate over a package of constitutional reforms proposed by Mr Erdogan's current government.
Those reforms included a proposal for the country's president to be elected directly by the people, rather than by parliament.
They were put forward by the AK Party, whose candidate for the presidency, Abdullah Gul, was repeatedly rejected by parliament.
Turkey's current president and its secularist establishment have vowed to resist what they regard as the Islamist agenda of the AK Party.
Mr Erdogan's government denies the claims, saying its record in office proves the contrary.
The government has overseen almost five straight years of economic growth and opened membership negotiations with the European Union.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6910444.stm
Published: 2007/07/22 18:40:21 GMT
© BBC MMVII
Turkey's ruling AKP wins vote
Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:32PM EDT
By Hidir Goktas and Selcuk Gokoluk
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's ruling AK Party won a resounding election victory on Sunday, giving the pro-business, Islamist-rooted party a mandate for reform but potentially setting the stage for renewed tensions with the secular elite.
The result is a moral triumph for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan who called early parliamentary polls after losing a battle with the establishment, which includes army generals, who did not want his ex-Islamist ally as head of state.
With nearly all votes counted, the AK Party won 47 percent, almost half as much again as in 2002, but a more united opposition means it may end up without many extra seats.
Only two other, secularist parties crossed the 10 percent threshold into parliament -- the nationalist-minded Republican People's Party (CHP) on 20 percent and the far-right National Movement Party (MHP) on 15 percent.
A score of mainly Kurdish independents were also seen winning, the first Kurds in the 550-seat assembly since the early 1990s.
"Turkey's stability will continue," senior AK Party lawmaker Salih Kapusuz told Reuters, saying the party would now govern alone for a second five-year term in a country of 74 million that stretches from the EU east to Iran and Iraq.
The parties argued over economic reform, how to deal with Kurdish separatist violence, joining an unenthusiastic European Union and religion's place in a modern Turkey.
Voters seem to have dismissed opposition warnings that the AKP secretly sought an Iranian-style theocracy, despite mass rallies this year in defense of the rigid state-religion divide in Turkey, one of the Muslim world's few democracies.
"The controversy which we witnessed about secularism versus Islam has not materialized," Sami Kohen, a columnist for liberal daily Milliyet, told Reuters.
"The message given by the electorate is that we are happy with economic progress and European (Union) policy."
Erdogan, due to speak later on Sunday, has presided over an economic boom and in a sign of market cheer at the outcome -- one of the strongest mandates in recent Turkish history -- the lira gained almost 2 percent on the dollar in early Asian trade.
MORE REFORMS
Economists said Turkey's most popular politician, 53, could now continue free-market policies and kick-start stalled EU membership talks, despite growing disillusionment in Turkey towards joining the bloc.
"This is the best-case scenario for markets ... The question now is how is the establishment going to react and this is something the markets are going to be worried about," said analyst Simon Quijano-Evans.
The army views itself as the ultimate guarantor of Turkey's secular state and has ousted four cabinets in 50 years, most recently an Islamist-minded predecessor of the AK Party in 1997.
"I don't think (the army) is happy but they're not going to roll the tanks out. They will explore means of making themselves felt, bearing in mind it's a government with a strong mandate," said Semih Idiz, a leading Turkish columnist.
The next government will quickly face new challenges.
It must find a compromise candidate for president -- and tread carefully to keep the army at bay, speed up EU-inspired reforms or risk an economic backlash, and decide whether to send the army into northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels based there.
Turkish security forces have been battling PKK Kurdish rebels since 1984 in a conflict that has cost more than 30,000 lives. Violent clashes have increased over the past year.
That prospect increasingly worries the United States which, in early foreign reaction, called the poll a success for democracy according to CNN Turk TV.
(Additional reporting by Paul de Bendern, Gareth Jones, Emma Ross-Thomas and Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Daren Butler and Alexandra Hudson in Istanbul and Thomas Grove in Diyarbakir)
© Reuters 2006
Governing party wins Turkish vote
Supporters of Turkey's governing AK Party are celebrating after the country's prime minister claimed a comprehensive general election victory.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to work for national unity after his party won re-election with almost 50% of votes.
He told cheering crowds in Ankara that the AKP victory was a triumph for Turkish democracy.
Opponents had insisted that a win for the Islamist-rooted AKP could undermine Turkey's secular traditions.
But the BBC's Chris Morris, in Ankara, the Turkish capital, says the AKP have scored a stunning victory, and those who still believe it is a threat to the secular system are clearly in a minority.
Unity call
Speaking in Ankara, Mr Erdogan said his party would continue pursuing Turkey's ambitions of joining the European Union.
In front of cheering crowds waving Turkish flags and the blue flags of the AKP, Mr Erdogan said he would work for all Turkish people, no matter who they had voted for.
This is a battle of different classes, as well as of religion and ideas
BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell
"Democracy has passed a very important test," he said, pledging to continue economic and democratic reforms.
"Whoever you have voted for... We respect your choices. We regard your differences as part of our pluralist democracy. It is our responsibility to safeguard this richness."
He also vowed to continue the fight against Kurdish rebels in the east of Turkey.
Reports said the AKP had won almost 48% of the nationwide vote after some 80% of votes were counted.
The main opposition party was holding second place, with just 20% of votes.
Sentiments high
The vote was called after disputes over a presidential candidate, and was seen as a test of Turkish secularism.
Voting was compulsory and turnout was reported to be extremely high.
Some 42 million people were eligible to vote in the poll, while 14 parties vied for seats in the 550-member parliament.
Poling stations were busy from early on Sunday, with supporters of the secular establishment out in force as well as AKP voters.
Many people broke into applause as Turkey's military chief of staff, General Yasar Buyukanit, arrived to cast his vote.
The early election was called after the generals warned that Turkey's strict secular system was in danger and the army was prepared to step in to defend it.
Record of growth
The election was called in an effort to break a stalemate over a package of constitutional reforms proposed by Mr Erdogan's current government.
Those reforms included a proposal for the country's president to be elected directly by the people, rather than by parliament.
They were put forward by the AK Party, whose candidate for the presidency, Abdullah Gul, was repeatedly rejected by parliament.
Turkey's current president and its secularist establishment have vowed to resist what they regard as the Islamist agenda of the AK Party.
Mr Erdogan's government denies the claims, saying its record in office proves the contrary.
The government has overseen almost five straight years of economic growth and opened membership negotiations with the European Union.
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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6910444.stm
Published: 2007/07/22 20:38:28 GMT
© BBC MMVII
Turkey's political gap
Mark Mardell 22 Jul 07, 05:22 PM Will Turkey give a vote of confidence to the new men from Kayseri, welcome the unlikely pitch-invaders? Or will whoever wins do so by default, for the lack of a third way?
It’s a broiling hot election day in Ankara. The sale and consumption of alcohol is banned during polling day, which may not be such a bad thing as you wouldn’t want your brains scrambled any more than they are by the heat. Constant draughts of water are what you need and I start my day with Duysun Beyhan, one of the men who delivers it. He used to be a taxi driver, but now has his own van and delivers water to the newly-built pink and peach houses on the outskirts of Ankara where he lives with his wife and three daughters.
He says business is going well and that is why he is voting for the government party, the AKP, and not because they have Islamic roots. He says they’ve delivered low interest rates, kept fuel prices stable and helped with access to health care.
But what about the accusation that, while the party may look pretty meek and mild, it’ll end up with a fundamentalist state and sharia law? After voting with his wife, who wears a headscarf, his finger is stained black, a precaution to make sure people don’t vote twice. He tells me: “I think peope are pretty smart and this has nothing to do with imposing Islamic law – it’s not going to happen. People aren't voting for them because of religion but because they are doing a good job.”
Women's rights
More water. Then on to meet Murat Tezcan and some of his friends, whiling their time away playing cards. He’s 25 and has just finished law school, about to embark on another professional qualification. He says the AKP is frightening, because it is undermining the republic’s most basic value, that of secularism. His argument is less black and white than many who are worried about the AKP’s rise, and more persuasive.
He says: “Maybe they're not fundamentalists but even their moderate Islamic model would take Turkish society backwards. It’s deeply conservative and opposed to our Western way of life.”
His friend Aycegul Koruyycu, who works in her dad’s insurance firm, is wavering. She has thought about voting for the AKP because they are dong the right things to get Turkey into the European Union, which she wants, but now she’s not so sure. She’s wearing a baseball cap and shades, and I can’t see her going near a headscarf, so I ask her if she feels her rights as a woman are under threat from an Islamic political party.
"In the last four-and-a-half years they haven't made any legal changes that worry me. But as a woman every day I see more people wearing the headscarf. That bothers me," she says.
"I used to be liberal about it and think they should be allowed to wear it, but the numbers are increasing every day and that's worrying. Of course undermining women’s rights is a big thing... I hope it never happens."
But how much is this a clash about religion, and how much is faith a badge, a symbol, for other social forces?
My BBC colleagues were filming the other day in Kayseri, in Turkey’s heartland. Every morning the great and good of this newly booming town get together for a healthy brisk walk up the hill before prayers. It’s a hard-working, clean-living place, evidently. There’s been an explosion of industry with a big new factory estate and a newly prosperous middle class to go with it. It’s the home town of Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s foreign minister, and in one sense the cause of these elections. Although he was the candidate of the ruling party to become president, the parliament didn’t endorse him, and the army put down its red lines because they see him as too Islamic (the symbol of that being that his wife wears a headscarf).
The mayor of Kayseri also invented the term “Islamic Calvinism” as a direct and deliberate lift from the sociologist Weber, who argued that capitalism was in a sense the product of “the protestant work ethic”. But see the post by Gul Berna Ozcan: I haven’t had a chance to read his articles yet, but certainly will do so.
Snobbish elite
Some Western diplomats argue this is what is at the heart of the bitter clash in these elections. They say the secularists’ objection to the ruling parties’ religious roots is just a mask, a symbol, for a snobbish elite frightened of losing power and money. What Turks wonderfully call “the deep state” means this unchanging ruling class. The army, the judges, the bureaucracy supported by an urban elite. So, the theory of these diplomats goes, what they really dislike is brash new money with vulgar cars and conservative values coming into Istanbul and Ankara from the midlands, as much as their headscarved wives.
I think there’s a good deal to this, although the secularists’ fear and dislike of political Islam is very real and not feigned. But this is a battle of different classes, as well as of religion and ideas. Anyone think of any other countries with an urban and coastal liberal elite that feels under threat from the religious politics of the rural hinterland?
The big difference is that the Pentagon wouldn’t even dream of putting tanks on the White House lawn if George W held a prayer meeting. What my colleagues in Kayseri saw wasn’t such an intervention, more comic opera than civil strife, but perhaps telling. The vast factory complex has a works league, a series of fiercely contested football matches. In the match my colleagues were observing, in the last minute a penalty was awarded by the ref: it was a dubious call, to say the least. But the team that probably committed the foul in the first place went one up just before, as I believe they say, the final whistle. Players surrounded the ref and started arguing. About eight soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders took to the pitch.
They didn’t actually do anything. But they were there. The ultimate authority. It’s unlikely, but possible that if someone cries foul after this election, there’ll be a pitch invasion. The phrase that keeps coming up in my mind when I write about the Turkish army is Gerry Adams’ chilling warning about the IRA (some years ago): “They haven’t gone away, you know.”
Alienated youth
Thanks once again for all your comments (and earlier here, too), nearly all of them really enlightening. A couple more insightful posts from Ronald Kramer. But Ali and Deniz (in his first paragraph) raise an interesting point which echoes what a lot of people are telling me. As so often in elections all over the world they would like to vote for “none of the above”. But this is a specific, not general weariness. A few have joined the ruling party and rightly point to this interesting article in the New York Times.
The Western diplomats I was talking to think this is the next stage: the AK party will continue to reach across to the centre and build upon its strength. But there are some parts I can’t see them reaching. Many of the youngish urban middle class, pro-Western sons and daughters of loyal supporters of the republicans, could never bring themselves to vote for a conservative, religious party. But they can’t stomach the republicans. They despise its leadership as bereft of ideas and find its links with the army old-fashioned and worrying. They want a modern social democratic party, but there isn’t one. There is a gap in the market. Will it be filled by the time of the next elections?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2007/07/turkeys_political_gap.html
Ruling AK party wins Turkey polls
[AFP]
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, has pledged to work for national unity and press ahead with membership of the EU after his party won a majority of parliamentary seats in elections.
Turkey's ruling Justice and Development (AK) party won at least 341 seats in the 550-member parliament, with over 46 per cent of the vote.
Two other, secularist parties also crossed the 10 per cent threshold to enter parliament.
The Republican People's Party (CHP) with about 20.7 per cent and the National Movement Party (MHP) with about 14.4 per cent.
No other party passed the threshold, though over 20 independent Kurdish candidates also won seats.
Erdogan addressed his supporters outside AK party headquarters in Ankara, the Turkish capital, promising "to continue to work with determination to achieve our European Union goal".
The move would come despite a growing disillusionment in Turkey towards joining the European bloc.
EU agenda
Erdogan said: "I understand the message you have sent through the election."
"We will support and protect what our nation has entrusted us with. We will work to undertake the duty you have given us."
He promised to respect the "basic principles" of a "secular social and democratic republic".
"We will never compromise the basic principles of our republic. These prinicples are needed for a strong and wealthy Turkey," he said.
He stressed the importance of plurality of "political voices" and said his party would continue "in the same way as before" with its free-market policies and Turkey's stalled ambition for EU membership.
Nigar Goksel, the editor of a Turkish political magazine, told Al Jazeera: "The EU has been off the agenda for a while ... however now it looks like the prime minster has put it back, high up on his agenda."
Moral triumph
The CHP party, which was set up by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic, has become more inward looking over the years and is hostile to the idea of Turkey's membership of the European Union.
Cengiz Aktar, a political analyst, told Al Jazeera: "If Attaturk were alive today ... he wouldn't be very happy with the performance of his followers [in the CHP party]. His path was clearly a European path."
"He was clearly pro-European," he said.
The contest was viewed as pivotal in determining the balance between Islam and secularism in this nation of more than 70 million.
The result is a moral triumph for Erdogan who called early parliamentary polls after losing a battle with the establishment, which includes army generals, who did not want his ex-Islamist ally, Abdullah Gul, as head of state.
The army views itself as the ultimate guarantor of Turkey's secular state and has removed four cabinets from power in 50 years, most recently an Islamist-minded predecessor of the AK Party in 1997.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies