Erdoğan and Turkey"s future

What was expected has happened. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has become AK Party"s presidential candidate. During his speech, right after his candidacy was announced, he was describing the relation between his possible new stature and AK Party, and he was giving clues about this relation"s new political function and the road map it will adopt.

How?

1. Let"s start with the person...

For a while now, in both a personal and social sense, Turkey has grown accustomed to the distance between identity and politics, as well as the natural relationship between these two. These natural relationships, which made the secular segment"s, state agencies" and central media"s hair stand on end for a period, are now happening on their own and randomly.

The biggest carrier on this topic is, without a doubt, Tayyip Erdogan.

In his speech yesterday, Erdogan was addressing the country, with belief, history, cause, Muslim world indications that started with his expressions, "Thank Allah. The owner of the property, owner of the victory is Allah. Thank Allah, who conveyed this cause, this struggle to these days... Oh Allah, bring this blessed journey that we had set out on to propitious occasions, amen, amen, amen...", and within this frame, by a "religious, and even Islamist, tradition and civilization inheritor identity". Alongside the explanation related to this personal stance and political act, he was underlining matters like; indicator political projects, which are independent from the religious identity and that indirectly describe the distance between this identity and politics; full membership to EU; solution to the Kurdish issue; and the state"s restoration (struggle with the congregation).

With its content and style, the intersection of this interaction and distance forms the new face of Turkey.

This has two fronts.

This intersection, as it is supposed to be, is pointing towards normalization, to"traffic between the personal and political references that is a coming and going that leaves an autonomous area to both sides".

However, from time to time this intersection, in the sense of expression and act, paves the way, especially for political aspects, which focus on identity, oriented in the public area, or at least to the perception of these aspects. Tayyip Erdogan"s presidential candidacy announcement is actually a presidency announcement. We hope that this new phase will make Turkey"s new face"s normalization front permanent.

2. Let"s continue with representation...

Between the things that Erdogan represents, there are three matters that don"t change and form his power, despite the discussions about freedoms, the strong winds blowing since Gezi and the new social opposition.

These are AK Party"s representations of "a denominational upheaval or displacement", "a social and ensemble self reliance" and "a country"s specific weight beyond its borders".

Yesterday, Tayyip Erdogan was placing his first speech of his election campaign on these three elements:

"We did politics for all the poor people in the suburbs. We did politics in order to stop the torture at Diyarbakir prison and the oppression at Mamak. We did it for the sake of the mothers that were prohibited from speaking their native language. We did it for the upright men who were disregarded because of being poor. We did it for the Middle East, Palestine, Somali, and Iraq. We did politics for the abandoned ones (...) We dreamt of a Turkey that held his head high. We had transformed Turkey, whose self-reliance had been battered for the past 200 years, into a country that can say I exist in this region and in this world. They wanted us to give up on our claims. They wanted us to wait hand and foot in front of everyone..."

3. Let"s finish it with politics...

Politics points at two matters:

What kind of steps will be taken for an issue or future and how will these steps be taken or how will the country be managed...

Regarding the steps that will be taken, "some promises" given by Erdogan for the topics like the resolution process, the struggle with the parallel structure, juridical issues and the new constitution were important. There are no doubts that these components are forming the main elements of the future. As for the second incident... What kind of a president will Erdogan be, how will he carry out the relations with the prime minister, how will he make the constitutional interpretation, what will his attitude be on the subject of participation, will he keep his statements tough? Time will give the answers to these.

We wish that flexibility, liberalism and legitimacy would prevail on these subjects, which are forming the main issues and discussions of the past two years.