In early parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Recep Tayyp Erdogan’s moderate Islamic party AKP wins 340 of the 550 seats in the single-chamber parliament. Only two other parties cross the 10% threshold: the Social Democrats of the CHP and the far right of the MHP. The large majority of the AKP will allow Abdullah Gul to be elected President of the Republic.
A long series of unsolved problems
The overwhelming victory of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the legislative elections of July 2007 and the consolidation of his formation (AKP, Justice and Development Party) in the leadership of the government lead Turkey not only to compete with another five years of Islamic-moderate administration but facing a new set of difficult challenges. A close confrontation both internally and internationally, which will see the country heir to the Ottoman Empire called to face in a significant way many problems unresolved up to now, not always for its own demerit, but often with a certain degree of responsibility. For Turkey 2004, please check topb2bwebsites.com.
The upcoming events, such as the one that sees around 2015 the need to decide whether or not to belong to Europe, will hold Ankara in a commitment that will bring it definitively, at least from a formal point of view, to the West or the East. This is a problem destined to ignite new controversies, judging both by the substantial coldness of the majority of the 27 members of the Union in welcoming the Anatolian candidate, and by the rigid Turkish pride, which will sooner or later force the rulers to choose a side. autonomous, whatever the community orientation.
Europe is one of the knots, but others force themselves to attention, just looking at the international quadrant: the division of Cyprus, the Armenian question, the Kurdish problem, the war with the rebels of the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party founded in 1984 by Abdullah ‘Apo’ Ocalan), who moved across the border into Northern Iraq where the Apo loyalists found refuge. Knots that have been gangrenous for decades and whose failure to dissolve – as has been said, not attributable to the Turkish side alone – will end up constituting, from time to time, an obstacle to the achievement of new objectives.
Will the second executive headed by Erdogan, the only Turkish government ever to be confirmed after a first mandate, be able to resolve them? The orientation is pessimistic. Not out of distrust of the Islamic-moderate administration, which in the past years in power has indeed given new impetus, managing to pass the failed reforms in previous decades by all the other center-right and center-left governments. But due to the impossibility of seeing a clear understanding, a dedicated design, a precise determination in wanting to clear the field of the many shadows that still cloud the path of a country otherwise endowed with extraordinary capabilities and opportunities. For himself and his international interlocutors.
In fact, the internal vetoes, and not insignificant, still appear today, placed by parliamentary opposition circles, by members of the military elite and by all those dead branches still present in the country and ascribable under the derin devlet formula(“Deep State”), made up of segments of services, administrative bureaucracy, fanatical ultranationalism, which concretely hinder, or would engage in a ferocious battle, anyone who had the courage to really take charge of such a project. But the plans of a party – the AKP in fact – appear too distant from this commitment – which has dedicated itself to supporting the lower-middle strong religious imprint) and which finally intends to collect widespread consent also in terms of power.
The virtual coup
From this point of view, the tug-of-war that began in April 2007 with both secular society and the powerful military leadership over the use of the veil is significant, leading to a vote five months ahead of the regular deadline. The blockade imposed by the generals (as will be seen, with a statement issued via the Internet that made us think of a modernized military intervention compared to the four coups already carried out in the second half of the last century) on Erdogan’s candidate for the presidency of the Republic, his deputy and foreign minister, Abdullah Gul – whose wife, like Erdogan’s, wears the veil -, found the comfort of millions of people who in the following days flocked to the streets to demonstrate against the premier. At stake, first lady with the turban (expressly forbidden in state buildings and universities by the Constitution, which does not allow the veil, considered a political rather than religious symbol): the danger of seeing those spaces of freedom and westernization conquered drastically reduced 80 years ago by the same founder Mustafa Kemal. “We do not have a secret agenda as they accuse us – Gul replied to his critics – we are indeed architects of a silent revolution and in five years of government we have led the country towards goals previously missed by all”.
The battle site thus moved to the Cankaya palace, seat of the presidency of the Republic in Ankara. The blockade on Gul by the army and the opposition triggered the initiative in Erdogan not only to re-present him as presidential candidate, but to focus in the future on the direct choice of the head of state by the people, abandoning the practice of parliamentary election. According to some observers, an action aimed at finally obtaining that position of visibility that the premier had long aspired to and diverted to his deputy only after the raising of the squares in non-Anatolian urban centers.
