Almost 90 years after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established a secular republic, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP party are moving Turkey backwards into Ottoman style Islamist government. This is bad news for the Middle East and for America and a possible glimpse of what will happen in Egypt. The time has come to kick Turkey out of NATO.
by Barry Rubin
The elections in Turkey mark a revolution. When Iran’s revolution happened and the Islamists took over in 1979, everyone knew it. In contrast, Turkey’s revolution has been a stealth operation. It has succeeded brilliantly, while Western governments have failed shockingly to understand what’s going on.
Now we are at a turning point – an event every bit as significant as the revolutions in Iran and Egypt. Of course, it will take time, but now Turkey is set on a path that is ending the republic established by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s. The Turkey of secularism and Western orientation is finished. The Turkey that belongs to an alliance of radical Islamists abroad and at home has been launched.
Here are the election numbers: The stealth Islamist party, Justice and Development (AKP), received almost exactly 50 percent of the vote.
Under the Turkish system, this will give it 325 members of parliament, or about 60% of the seats.
On the opposition side, the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) got about 26% of the vote and 135 seats. The right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) took 13%, giving it 54 seats.
There are also 36 independents, all of them Kurdish communalists.
Eleven parties didn’t make the minimum 10% barrier (they received only about 1% or less each).
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But the outcome is nonetheless overwhelmingly bad. As you can see above, the AKP’s percentage of voters keeps rising. Most of the people who back the party don’t want an Islamist regime, and don’t think of the AKP in those terms. It rather seems to them to be a strong nationalist party respecting religious tradition that is making Turkey an important international power and is doing a good job on the economy.
The AKP got almost – remember that, almost – everything it wanted. It increased voter support more than any other party, and will be in power for four – and perhaps many more – years, infiltrating institutions, producing a new constitution, intimidating opponents, altering Turkish foreign policy, and shifting public opinion against Americans and Jews to a larger degree.
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This is a disastrous day for the United States and Europe, as well as for the prospects of stability and peace in the Middle East. And it isn’t great news for the relatively moderate Arab states either.
It is the end of the republic as established by Ataturk in the 1920s and modified into a multi-party democracy in the 1950s.
Yet how many people in the West actually appreciate what’s happening? How many journalists will celebrate the election as a victory for democracy? Lenin once reportedly remarked that he would get the capitalists to sell him the rope with which to hang them.
The AKP has gotten the West to provide that rope as a gift.
Read the rest: Stealth Islamism in Turkey
Tags: Barry Rubin
