ISTANBUL (ABP) — Despite the fears of the nation's secular elite, Turkish voters kept a moderate Islamist party in power after parliamentary elections July 22.
The Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials as AKP, received about 47 percent of the popular vote and will fill 341 of the 550 seats in the Turkish Parliament.
That's a significant increase over the 34 percent of the popular vote that AKP candidates received in 2002 during Turkey's last national elections. However, due to the complex nature of parliamentary voting, the party will actually control 22 fewer seats than it did in the previous Parliament.
AKP also remains short of the two-thirds majority required to amend the nation's constitution or elect a president.
Nonetheless, despite weeks of turmoil and massive demonstrations in Istanbul and other cities by the secularists, the main secularist party barely increased its 2002 percentage of the popular vote.
The protests began in April, after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and AKP attempted to nominate the nation's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, for the presidency. Many secular Turks worried that Gul and other moderate Muslims were gaining too much power.
Turkey's population is 99 percent Muslim, according to most estimates. However, unlike most other majority-Muslim nations, the government has been staunchly secularist since the Turkish Republic's founding in 1923. Many Turks have criticized Gul and Erdogan, for instance, because their wives wear traditional Islamic headscarves. Under current law, such scarves are banned in Turkish government buildings.
Erdogan called for the elections following massive protests in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities, where the secularists are concentrated and from which they have traditionally dominated Turkish politics. In recent years, however, the nation's economic boom has resulted in a newly powerful middle class made up of practicing Turkish Muslims.
Erdogan's government is credited with continuing the economic reforms that have boosted the nation's wealth. It is also credited with pushing for Turkey's admission into the European Union.
The turmoil over Gul also took place against the backdrop of the brutal murders of three Christians in a small city in eastern Turkey. AKP leaders have condemned the murders, which took place April 18 in the city of Malatya.
According to Compass Direct, a news service that tracks persecution of Christians, two victims — Necati Aydin, 36, and Ugur Yuksel, 32, were Turks who converted from Islam to Christianity. The third man, Tillman Geske, 46, was a German citizen. Local authorities have described the accused murderers as militant Islamists.
In a speech following the election, Erdogan attempted to allay the fears of secularists, as well as Turkey's tiny Christian community. “We will never compromise on the basic principles of the republic,” he said, according to the New York Times. “Our joy should never be the sorrow of those who do not think like us.”
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Gruesome murders, Islamist candidate worry Turkish Christians, secularists (4/30)
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