The AKP's Underwhelming Victory

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What to Read on Turkish Politics

Ian O. Lesser

An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on Turkish politics.

In this month’s Turkish parliamentary elections, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) won almost 50 percent of the popular vote, up from 46.5 in the previous elections. The success was thanks in part to Turkey’s strong performance under the conservative AKP; since 2002, Turkey’s economic growth has been behind only that of China and India. Still, the AKP fell short by three seats of retaining the supermajority -- control of 330 out of 550 parliamentary seats, which gives a single party the ability to amend the constitution -- that the party has enjoyed since 2002, when it first came to power. (Although the AKP increased its vote share this year, the secular, social democratic Republican Peoples Party [CHP] and Kurdish nationalist Peace and Democracy Party [BDP] registered higher gains, therefore stealing some AKP seats.) This is a positive development for Turkey’s fragile democracy, which has become dangerously polarized between the conservatives and the secular liberals. For the first time in nearly a decade, the AKP will be forced to seek consensus to govern, especially in regions where its electoral performance was weak: the country’s liberal Aegean coast, Thrace, and the middle-class neighborhoods of Istanbul and other large cities.

The new balance in Turkey’s government presents both historic challenges and historic opportunities. Since Turkey became a multiparty democracy in 1946, the country has never had a constitution crafted by civilians, instead making do with a series of charters developed by military-led parliaments. Recently, driven by almost a decade of economic and political development, majorities in both the liberal and conservative parties have come to support drafting a new constitution. The fate of such an effort depended on the outcome of the elections. If the AKP’s victory had been large enough, it could have gone it alone, creating a document that would have likely enshrined social conservatism. Since the vote was split, the drafting process will have to be more consensual.

This is very good news: Turkey’s first civilian constitution should be broad based, satisfying the demands of conservative, Islamist, nationalist, and liberal Turks alike. The constitution will also have to address the concerns of the country’s nationalist Kurdish population, whose BDP almost doubled its representation in parliament this year, to 35 seats. As it is written now, the constitution reads like a list of prohibited freedoms. Turks cannot speak, publish, or associate freely. What is more, the constitution fails to prohibit ruling parties from banning or curbing the power of opposition parties. A consensus constitution will have to start with the protection of all citizens’ rights. In terms of religious practice, for example, the new constitution will need to maintain Turkey’s separation of mosque and state but allow for expressions of faith in public life. Laws should protect the rights of people who practice Islam and those who do not. Such a rights-based constitution in the region would be unprecedented and suggest that the Middle East’s only Muslim-majority democracy can continue to thrive and stand as a source of inspiration for others.

Of course, the AKP could yet decline to work with the other parties. It is just shy of a supermajority and could choose to buy a few seats to reach that threshold. Before the AKP won a supermajority through the ballot box in 2002, politicians of all stripes routinely created them after elections by paying off deputies from other parties with cash or lucrative positions and cabinet seats. If old political habits resurface and the AKP buys three more votes, it could technically draft and adopt Turkey's new constitution on its own (although the party would still need to put the document to a referendum vote). Even if the half of the country that voted for the AKP approved the new constitution, it would surely lack legitimacy in the eyes of the half that did not -- including large businesses, Kurdish nationalists, liberal and secular Turks, and many educated women who fear the party’s social conservatism. Turkey would then be back where it started, with a constitution imposed from above, lacking broad popular support.