By Esra Taskiran
Imagine a party consecutively winning the last nine local and general elections since 2002. Imagine a feat that commands the attention of the entire world so as to become doctoral and master’s theses at numerous international universities. Without a doubt, this power originates from a strong reasoning, which is hidden in the recent history of Turkey.
In 1961, Turkey’s first democratically elected prime minister Adnan Menderes was executed at the end of the first military coup carried out in 1960. Before his execution, he stated the following in his last speech to the Court: “You should not have been scared of me that much, because my dead body will be more effective than my live soul.” Today we better understand what the true meaning of his speech on that day was. We can safely claim that today’s parliamentary structure and power of AKParti (Justice & Development Party / AKP) are natural results of those processes, which attempted to underestimate public expectations through a well-organized pressure by the mass media, legislation and the army.
There is a Turkish expression that goes “Water flows and finds its way naturally.” Even in the face of obstruction, all societies will sooner or later create their own leaders, such as Mandela and Erdoğan.
Nowadays, Turkish society, to some extent, takes revenge for those days spent under highly unpleasant pressure for supporting AKParti. The only common feature between Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Adnan Menderes is their belonging to the very heart of a major community. Both are democratically elected without intervention by the military. Both leftists and rightists, liberals and socialists, Turkish and Kurdish, and the rest of society have learned so many things from the past and nobody wants to see the soldiers in the political scene anymore. We can repress or ignore the ideas, feelings, and emotions of a society for a short while, but not for the long term. As we examine the political domain, short term refers to a period of 20-25 years in a state’s lifecycle. We can also see that the terms flow very quickly, especially in today’s highly integrated world. Diversity in mass media and net neutrality provide a platform to accelerate social transformations around the globe. Erdoğan was also sent to prison just 18 years ago. But today, he is the President of Turkey! In Turkish, we have an expression that goes “Water flows and finds its way naturally.” Even in the face of obstruction, all societies will sooner or later create their own leaders, such as Mandela and Erdoğan.
Of course, we cannot explain the current situation solely by recent history. No any party can remain in governance for 13 years without a significant performance. First of all, establishing multilingual (Arabic, Kurdish, etc.) TV channels and education facilities represents a dedicated respect to all minorities in Anatolia. Not only the affiliation in East and Southeast, but also the confidence in brotherhood has increased dramatically.
While European Union should think again about why they have consistently resisted collaboration with Turkey, the Muslim World should consider the dynamics of a real spring once more.
On the other hand, economic improvements have been manifold. Turkey had $23 billion in debt to the IMF in 2002. Long ago, this debt was reset, and meanwhile our money is honored again by removing 6 zeroes from its numbering value. After gaining freedom in economics, inflation fell to single digits. What is more, the health budget has multiplied by 9 during the last 13 years. Hospitals have been systematically united under an umbrella and provided people the opportunity to be cared for by whichever hospital they want. There are many other giant steps in various sectors, such as energy, transportation, automotive, textile, tourism, etc. However, what we care about the most are steps to democratization, which came along with the constitutional amendments and referendums. As a result of one of these referendums, our current President was elected by the majority of people living in Turkey.
In sum, we are aware of the fact that the situation in Turkey is an interesting case study for all our correspondents. While European Union should think again about why they have consistently resisted collaboration with Turkey, the Muslim World should consider the dynamics of a real spring once more. At the end of the day, we are all inhabitants of a single world. And everybody on that planet has rights to get his/her share without any external biases.
