Turkish Studies,

Vol. 6, No. 2, 293–310, June 2005

Christian Democracy and the AKP:

Parallels and Contrasts
WILLIAM HALE
Department of Political and International Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, UK
WilliamHale
620Taylor
wh1@soas.ac.uk
00000June
Turkish&
10.1080/14683840500119601
FTUR111943.sgm
1468-3849
Original
2005 andFrancis
2005 Group
Studies
Article
Print/1743-9663
Francis Ltd Ltd online

ABSTRACT Although the leaders of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) stress that
their party is not based on religion, a comparison with the Christian democrat parties of
Western Europe seems worthwhile, since the AKP clearly has Islamist origins, and espouses
faith-based values. This essay summarizes the history of Christian democrat parties in
France, Germany and Italy, concluding that they have tended to drift closer to classic conser-
vatism. In comparing them with the AKP, it suggests that while there are some important
similarities, significant differences also arise, thanks to the altered environment in which the
AKP was established, and some relevant differences between the Muslim and Christian reli-
gions and their attitudes towards the state.

Ever since its foundation in 2001, the leaders of the Justice and Development Party
(Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) have stoutly maintained that their party is not
based on religion, and is strictly a “conservative democratic party.” In an interview
given shortly after the AKP government came into office in November 2002, Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan, the party chairman, admitted, “Some people may think differently.
g[bevre]

They may look towards such bodies as the Christian democratic parties in Europe.
That is their view and their reality. We do not share it.”1 Shortly before the estab-
lishment of the AKP he declared that Islam would not even be a “point of reference”
(referans) for the party, although he had used this phrase earlier to explain his polit-
ical beliefs.2 In January 2004 he elaborated on this by saying that his party
supported a “conservative democracy,” which incorporated pluralism and tolerance.
In his words:

While attaching importance to religion as a social value, we do not think it

right to conduct politics through religion [or] to attempt to transform govern-
ment ideologically by using religion … Religion is a sacred and collective
value … It should not be made a subject of political partisanship causing divi-
siveness.3

Correspondence Address: William Hale, Department of Political and International Studies, School of
Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK. Email:
wh1@soas.ac.uk

ISSN 1468-3849 Print/1743-9663 Online/05/020293-18 © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/14683840500119601
294 W. Hale

Erdoğan’s caution was probably motivated by the fact that if he had suggested his
g[bevre]

party was “Islamic,” he could have rendered it liable to closure by the Constitutional
Court, as in the cases of the Welfare (Refah Partisi, RP) and Virtue (Fazilet Partisi,
FP) parties, and in accordance with the constitution and the Political Parties Law. His
description of the party is not universally accepted. Among foreign observers, for
instance, Graham Fuller refers to the AKP as “an overtly religious party … even
though it has been prudent and careful in not advertising its religious roots.”4 More
subtly, it is frequently suggested that the AKP could be considered as the Muslim
equivalent of a Christian democrat party, on the grounds that it holds to liberal demo-
cratic values, but is influenced and informed by Muslim beliefs. As the Turkish Islam-
ist writer Ali Bulaç suggested soon after the AKP’s victory in the general elections
of November 2002, there was a gap between the proclamations of the party leadership
and the attachments of its grassroots supporters. The latter had rejected an outrightly
Islamist agenda, but still gave mass support to a “Muslim democrat” party, Bulaç
argued.5 The link between the AKP and Christian democracy has also been high-
lighted by the fact that the party has applied for attachment to the European People’s
Party, which links the main Christian Democrat parties in the European Parliament.
Paradoxically, the Christian Democrats in Europe (notably in Germany) oppose
Turkey’s bid to join the European Union (EU) on “cultural” grounds; the approach
has so far been rebuffed, but the German Christian Democrats have made efforts to
build some bridges with the AKP.6
The position taken in this essay is that even though the AKP leadership denies the
identification, as it is quite entitled to do, there are sufficient similarities as well as
contrasts between the AKP and the classic Christian democrat parties of Western
Europe to make an exploration of them a worthwhile exercise. The first two sections
outline the history, identity, ideology and policies of three such parties, in France,
Germany and Italy, and the nature of their support base. The following two sections
turn the spotlight onto the AKP, assessing its ideology, policies and social basis,
within this comparative framework.

European Christian Democracy: A Summary History

Although its origins could be traced back to the nineteenth century, Christian
democracy in Western Europe was essentially a product of the period of catharsis
and reconstruction which followed the Second World War. It rapidly assumed a
crucial role in most countries outside Britain, Scandinavia and the Iberian Peninsula
(the latter being under fascist rule until the 1970s). By 1948, Christian democrat
parties had dominant or near-dominant positions in five European countries
(Austria, Belgium, France, Italy and the Netherlands),7 to be followed shortly after-
wards by the Federal Republic of Germany, established in 1949. Later, the princi-
ples of Christian democracy spread to Latin America and—after the end of
communism in Eastern Europe—to Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and
Lithuania.8 The following concentrates on what can be described as three “classic”
Christian democrat parties, in countries of roughly the same size as present-day
 Christian Democracy and the AKP 295

Turkey—the Popular Republican Movement (Mouvement républicain populaire,

MRP) in France, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU-CSU) in Germany, and the
Christian Democracy Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) in Italy.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, center-right and conservative political
forces in all three countries faced an essentially similar challenge. The old conserva-
tive parties of pre-war Europe had been fatally discredited by their role in allowing
the Fascists and Nazis to come to power, or in the French case, cooperating with the
Nazi occupiers. In most countries, communists had spearheaded the resistance to
fascism and, in the French and Italian cases, there seemed to be a real danger of a
communist takeover of the state (in Germany, the challenge was obviously different,
since communism could be seen as an external rather than internal threat). Demo-
cratic socialists also appeared to be in a far stronger position than the discredited
right or center-right. In the search for an effective alternative, Christianity, espe-
cially in its Roman Catholic version, played a crucial role. As Gabriel Almond
remarked, “[I]n the chaos of post-war Europe, the [Catholic] Church stood as the
only ubiquitous non-communist, and non-Nazi institution.”9 This was facilitated by
the fact that in 1944 the Vatican abandoned the distrust of democracy which had
been the dominant attitude in Catholicism before the war, and legitimated demo-
cratic government as the “natural” political form which, according to Pope Pius XII,
came closest to the Church’s thinking.10 The Vatican’s conversion was not entirely
convincing, since it continued to support fascist and authoritarian regimes in Spain,
Portugal and parts of Latin America. However, it gave the green light to observant
Catholics to play an active part in liberal-democratic political movements, where
this was possible. While they reflected what could be called traditional values,
Christian democrats in France, Germany and Italy could present themselves as
harbingers of a new democratic era.
Although the three parties considered here were born in similar circumstances,
their subsequent trajectories diverged. In France, the MRP was founded in November
1944, under the chairmanship of Maurice Schumann. It participated in the provisional
government headed by Charles de Gaulle in October 1945, and stayed on in govern-
ment after his resignation the following January. In the elections to the second
Constituent Assembly in June 1946 it became the biggest party in France, with 28.2
percent of the votes. However, its relations with de Gaulle proved to be a fatal hand-
icap for the party. In 1946 it broke with de Gaulle when the latter opposed the
proposed constitution of the Fourth Republic. Since a large proportion of the MRP’s
supporters had essentially been Gaullists as well as observant Catholics, much of its
electoral base was lost when de Gaulle established a separate party, the Rally of the
French People (Rassemblement du peuple français, RPF) in 1947. When de Gaulle
returned to power in 1958, the MRP presented itself as his loyal ally, but in 1962 they
again parted ways, and the party was almost wiped out in the subsequent elections. It
staggered on until 1965, when it merged with like-minded politicians to form the
Democratic Center (Centre démocrate). Hence, in spite of the important role played
by French thinkers in the development of Christian democrat principles, it turned out
to be the shortest lived and most marginal of the three parties.11
296 W. Hale

As the dominant party of the center-right in Germany for almost 60 years, the
history of the CDU-CSU stands in sharp contrast to that of the MRP. The first
national meeting of CDU leaders from the separate occupation zones of Western
Germany was held in December 1945. In February 1947, a “working association”
was formed with the Christian Social Union (CSU), established as a separate party
in Bavaria, which has lasted to this day.12 While the CDU and CSU are formally
separate organizations, they operate as a single party at the national level, forming a
single group in the Bundestag, and campaigning together in national elections.
Under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer (until 1963) and Ludwig Erhard, CDU-
CSU held continuous power between 1949 and 1966 in coalition with small centrist
parties, overseeing Germany’s dramatic economic revival during the 1950s and
1960s. After a short-lived “grand coalition” with the Social Democrat Party of
Germany (SPD), the CDU-CSU moved to the opposition benches for the first time
in 1969, returning to government under Helmut Kohl between 1982 and 1998. The
CDU-CSU has been in opposition since 1998, but has recovered some of its
electoral support, and may return to power in future elections.13
The history of Democrazia Cristiana falls somewhere between that of the MRP
and the CDU-CSU, in that it dominated Italian government between 1945 and 1993,
but eventually collapsed in the general meltdown of the Italian political system in
the early 1990s.14 DC’s first leader, Alcide De Gasperi, became prime minister in
June 1945. Thereafter, through support from other anti-communist parties, every
Italian prime minister until 1981 was a member of DC. Even if it did not always
control the premiership, DC continued to form part of every government until 1994.
On the other hand, the party appeared to be in a steady state of decline after its high
point in the 1950s. De Gasperi’s death in 1954 removed its most effective leader,
and by 1959 the party had fallen under the control of a cluster of factional oligarchs.
More fatally, DC appeared to prove the adage that “permanent power corrupts
permanently.”15 The vast web of corruption which engulfed Italian politics in the
early 1990s was not confined to DC, since it first erupted in the Socialist Party in
Milan. Tangentopoli (“Bribesville”), which became a nickname for Milan, was then
applied to the whole of Italy. In 1993 Giulio Andreotti, seven times prime minister
and regarded as the incarnation of the old Christian democrat regime, was indicted
on charges of collusion with organized crime, though not convicted. In January
1994 DC split. Part regrouped as the “Christian Democrat Center.” Currently, the
party has been revived as the “Union of Christian Democrats” but Italian Christian
democracy clearly lacks the power it previously wielded.16

Christian Democracy: Identity, Ideology and Support Structures

A frequent comment about Christian democracy is that its ideology is very hard to
define: in fact, the term “catch-all parties” is sometimes used.17 The main feature
which makes it distinctive is its open appeal for support from committed Christians,
although in the case of the MRP this was muted.18 Both the MRP and the CDU
claimed to speak for Protestant Christians as well as Catholics. In the case of the
 Christian Democracy and the AKP 297

CDU this had some justification, as several leading members of the party (most
notably Ludwig Erhard, the Federal Republic’s second Chancellor) were from the
Protestant community. This intention was natural, given that in the former West
Germany the two confessions were evenly balanced, at least nominally.19 However,
claims such as that of Anthony Trawick Bouscaren, made in 1949, that Christian
democrats generally were “non-denominational” and “have avoided becoming asso-
ciated with any one church,” are hard to sustain.20 In practice, support for Christian
democracy in France and Italy came, almost exclusively, from Catholics, and in
Germany very largely from the Catholic community.21 Essentially, all three parties
were not just Christian in their loyalties, but predominantly Catholic.
A huge debate concerns the position of Christian democracy in the contest
between left and right—essentially, between labor and capital—which dominated
much of post-war European politics. In principle, a distinction is drawn between
Christian democracy and classic pro-capitalist conservatism, by asserting that it
seeks a “third way” between capitalism and state socialism, rejecting the “material-
ism” of both, which supposedly ignores man’s moral nature. Instead of class
conflict, Christian democrats advocated consultation between government, industry
and labor.22 In the early post-war years, Christian democrat governments in both
France and Italy had partly socialist agendas, overseeing large-scale nationalization,
and constructing alliances with Catholic (in effect, anti-communist) labor confeder-
ations.23 In Germany, there was no equivalent of the Catholic labor movement,24 but
the CDU-CSU advanced the principle of a “social market economy,” which would
“restrain the excesses of private capitalism through the independent control of
monopolies, free competitive production, and social justice for everyone.”25
As time went on, however, the distinctiveness of Christian democracy in terms of
its social and economic policies declined. Although Christian democrats in
Germany and elsewhere remained relatively unaffected by the doctrines of the “new
right” advanced in Britain and the United States during the 1980s,26 it had by this
stage become hard to say what distinguished them from moderate conservatives. In
France, Catholic trade unionism was “essentially a middle-class movement with
little appeal for industrial workers.”27 In Italy, DC became a machine for old-
fashioned patronage politics, rather than social justice. Similarly, in Germany the
CDU-CSU drew in middle-class and rural voters regardless of their denominational
affiliation.28 As Emiel Lamberts concluded in 1995, “Christian Democracy is …
gradually losing the characteristics that distinguish it from the conservative parties
in Europe.”29 There is no clear evidence that this process has been reversed since
then.
In one policy area, however, the Christian democrats followed a clear and unwa-
vering line, although it had little to do with their Catholic sympathies. In the field of
European integration, Adenauer, Schumann and De Gasperi were all strong advo-
cates of participation in NATO, and the formation of what became the European
Economic Community, now the European Union. They had all suffered under
totalitarian regimes and two devastating wars. Hence, they had every reason for
abandoning chauvinistic nationalism, embracing a new order which emphasized the
298 W. Hale

rights and welfare of the individual before those of the nation state.30 This commit-
ment to greater European integration has continued as an important part of the
philosophy of the CDU-CSU in Germany, as well as the center-right in France and
Italy.
Its policies on what could be called cultural or moral issues have also been a
distinguishing feature of Christian democracy. The question of the role of religion in
education has long been the subject of fierce dispute in many European countries,
with Christian democrats predictably supporting the principle that religious instruc-
tion should be provided in state schools, and that the state should subsidize schools
established by faith-based organizations (in most cases, the Catholic Church).31 In
Italy, the question of allowing divorce, which was opposed by the Catholic Church,
became a burning issue in 1970, when a new law permitted divorce under certain
restricted circumstances. In 1974 DC backed a referendum campaign to repeal the
law, but a majority of the voters decided otherwise. A law allowing abortion under
limited circumstances was passed in Italy in 1978: this was opposed by Christian
democrats, who supported a more restrictive law. However, their proposal was again
defeated in another referendum held in 1981.32
A characteristic claim by Christian democrats was that their parties were “class-
less,” reflecting their supposed opposition to classic parties of both the left and the
right. It also derived from their primary appeal to observant Christians (mainly
Catholics) rather than people of any particular socio-economic category. During its
relatively brief life as an effective party, it appears that the MRP achieved this aim.
Within its electorate, no social class was massively over- or under-represented, and
people of all classes were present more or less in proportion to their share of the
French population.33 In the case of DC, the position is hard to assess, since it is
argued that class has never been a good indicator of voting behavior in post-war
Italy. DC could justifiably claim that it was an inter-class party, but this did not
mean that its electorate was a mirror image of Italian society. Instead, it was dispro-
portionately drawn from people living in rural areas and small towns of Northern
Italy, from older voters and women—the last two categories being more likely to be
religiously observant.34 In Germany, the CDU-CSU has been more closely identi-
fied with farmers, the self-employed and white-collar rather than blue-collar work-
ers, although some industrial workers who are firm Catholics also support the
party.35
Especially in their early days, Christian democrat parties could also be seen as
part of a wider social movement, rather than as purely self-standing institutions.
The role of Catholic labor organizations in the rise of the MRP and DC has already
been referred to. Of the other non-governmental organizations from which Chris-
tian democracy emerged, and with which it continued an alliance, Catholic Action
was easily the most important. This has been described as a “lay apostolate,” and
was presumed to have purely spiritual and moral functions. In practice, with its
millions of members in France and Italy, as in other countries, it acted as a meeting
ground in which Catholics could develop and support political movements, and
propagate policies.36 Besides Catholic Action, both the MRP and DC drew support
 Christian Democracy and the AKP 299

from Catholic youth organizations, as well as groups of workers, agriculturalists,

students, and (in the Italian case) independent cultivators. German Christian
democracy appears to have a less widespread institutionalized social base, but the
CDU-CSU also established a number of youth groups, women’s groups and local
government organizations.37
While this network of organizations gave Christian democracy an important
social base, in the long run it was inevitably weakened by the increasing seculariza-
tion of society in all three countries. This probably strengthened the drift of the
CDU-CSU towards conventional conservatism, and contributed powerfully to the
extinction of the French and Italian Christian democrat parties. As the Jesuit father
Bartolomeo Sorge wrote in 1976, “we are living through a change of culture and a
change of civilization.”38 The startling decline in church attendance serves as a
crude yardstick. In 1956, 69 percent of adult Italians claimed to have been to Mass
in the previous week, but by 1972 this figure had fallen to 35.5 percent. Practicing
Catholics in France were estimated to account for about 30 percent of the population
up to 1956, but only about 10 percent by the 1980s. To take another indicator, Ital-
ian Catholic Action had 2.6 million members in 1966, but only half that number in
1970, and half again by 1978. In Germany, regular church attendance by Catholics
fell from 61 percent in 1953 to 32 percent by 1987, with attendance by Protestants
falling from 18 percent to only 4 percent between the same periods. As in other
countries, the influence of organized religion steadily waned during the last decades
of the twentieth century, so that by 2000 about 10 percent of the population of the
former West Germany, and half that of the former East Germany, admitted to being
non-religious.39 From this, Kees van Kersbergen has concluded that “Christian
values are increasingly represented in secular terms.”40 Existing trends caused one
to wonder whether, in the future politics of Western Europe, they will be seen as
“Christian” values at all.

The Justice and Development Party: The Cultural, Historical and Institutional
Environment
Comparing the AKP and the European Christian democrat parties simply as institu-
tions will give an incomplete comparative picture. In particular, the fact that Turkey
is a Muslim country creates striking contrasts, since there are significant differences
between traditional Islam and Christianity, both institutionally and in their attitudes
towards the state. Moreover, the historical situation in which the AKP came to
power in Turkey was fundamentally different to that of Europe in the immediate
post-war years, the birth-phase of Christian democracy.
On the first score, it seems fair to say that modern Christianity does not have a
state project comparable to that of Islam, in its more radical versions. This is not to
suggest that Christianity gives an unqualified endorsement to democracy. Indeed,
the Catholic Church condemns what it deems to be morally wrong, for example, the
use of artificial birth-control methods, or liberal laws on abortion and divorce, even
if these are legitimized by a democratically elected legislature. In the Church’s
300 W. Hale

view, the idea of the sovereignty of the people is not just limited by the need to
protect individual and group rights, or maintain international peace, since what is
regarded as morally wrong by the Church is still unacceptable even if it is the “will
of the people.” Nevertheless, what could be called the political agenda of the Church
is mainly limited to debates over such topics as the role of religiously defined values
in education or laws affecting sexual morality, and sometimes social justice.
In contrast, radical Islamism has an explicit vision of the state, even if this is prob-
ably not supported by more than a minority of the world’s Muslims. It is one which
could be said to be exemplified in the cases of the Islamic Republic of Iran or the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and essentially consists of the proposal that the sover-
eignty of God takes precedence over the sovereignty of the people. Hence, all the
laws of the state, in the criminal, civil and commercial spheres, should be based on
the word of God, as conveyed to the Prophet Muhammad and interpreted by those
recognized as experts in Islamic law. Laws which infringe upon this principle can be
constitutionally annulled, even if they are democratically enacted, and the state is
entitled to discriminate between its citizens on the basis of religion and gender. This
obliges democratic parties in Muslim societies to reject the articulated Islamist state
project, and to restrict the role of religion in politics to those topics, such as education
and morality, which are an accepted part of the religion–state dialogue in
non-Muslim democracies. The AKP’s claim to democratic credentials rests on
adhering to this restriction, and in this respect it can argue that it has some affinity
with Christian democrat parties.
The institutions of the two religions also differ in important respects. In particu-
lar, since the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, there has been no equivalent in
Islam to the institution of the Papacy in Catholic Christianity, claiming a trans-
national authority. Hence, Islamist political movements are relatively free to
promote their own political, social and cultural agendas, without limitations or
directives demanded by an external institution, and do not have to face criticisms
similar to those faced by Christian democrats, that they are merely the long arm of
the Vatican. There is no one in Islam to give a signal for the foundation of demo-
cratic parties, as the Pope did in 1944. This gives politicians and political thinkers in
Muslim societies a degree of flexibility and independence which is not always open
to the leaders and theorists of Christian democracy, especially in Catholic or
predominantly Catholic countries. It can be argued that the AKP has made good use
of this flexibility.
The historical circumstances of the AKP’s birth were also very different from those
of Christian democracy. Political parties often define themselves as much in terms of
what they oppose, as what they support. In post-war Europe, Christian democrat
parties projected themselves primarily as being anti-communist and anti-fascist. In
1944–49, France, Germany and Italy all had new beginnings, as states as well as soci-
eties, with new constitutions. The war had swept away old structures, as well as ideas.
There was no such institutional reconstruction in Turkey, at the time of the AKP’s
birth in 2001. Admittedly, most of the parties which had ruled Turkey during the
1990s and up to 2002 were enmeshed by a web of corruption and incompetence—a
 Christian Democracy and the AKP 301

sort of Tangentopoli alla turcha which swept them from power in the elections of
November 2002, so there were some parallels with the Italian experience of the early
1990s. However, unlike the Christian democrat parties of the 1940s, the incoming
AKP government in the Turkey of 2002 had to deal with the constitutional and
economic system which it inherited from its predecessors, and to work out its rela-
tionships with the existing powers and institutions in the state and the economy
accordingly. While the Christian democrat parties could make an open appeal for
support on the basis of Christian values, the need to stay within the secularist bounds
imposed by the Turkish Constitution, as well as the need to appeal to voters who
would have reacted against such an appeal, meant that the AKP could not give an
equal role to Islam in its public discourse. Communism had never been more than a
marginal force in Turkish politics, and was anyway fatally enfeebled after the end of
the Cold War, so the AKP did not have to concentrate on defeating it. Instead, it had
to define its position between two contradictory forces: on the one hand, the more
radical Islamist project, represented by the veteran Necmettin Erbakan’s “National
View” (Milli Görüş) tradition, to which the AKP leaders had themselves been previ-
]cs[eldi

ously attached, and on the other, the authoritarian version of secularism represented
by parts of the state bureaucracy, the armed forces and elements within the opposition
Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP).
To add to the list of differences, the steady contraction of religious observance
which had seriously affected the Christian democrat parties by the late twentieth
century does not appear to have been reproduced in Turkish Islam. A survey carried
out for the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) in 1998–99
reported that almost 63 percent of those surveyed said that they attended Muslim
communal prayers every Friday, with another 19 percent claiming to attend nearly
every week.41 With the great majority of Turks being observant Muslims (or at least
claiming to be so), it appears that the most politically important divide is not
between the observant and the non-observant, but between those who support more
fundamentalist Islamic positions, and those who do not. As an example, the TESEV
survey reported that just over 21 percent of the respondents claimed to support the
idea of a religious state dependent on the shari’a, with around 10–14 percent
expressing support for the implementation of Islamic laws on marriage, divorce and
inheritance, which discriminate against women.42 The conclusion is that although
the big majority of Turks count themselves as observant Muslims, only a small
minority or around 10–20 percent interprets this in ways which would conflict with
the basic principles of a secular democracy. One can only speculate whether formal
adherence to Islam in Turkey will decline in the future, as Christian observance has
declined in Western Europe.

Policies and Support Bases

Given these positions, how do the ideological principles and practical policies of the
AKP compare with those of Christian democrat parties, and does its social support
rest on different or similar elements? Answering these questions is not easy, partly
302 W. Hale

due to the difficulties inherent in any cross-national comparison, but more particu-
larly because the AKP has so far had a relatively short history, and important infor-
mation which would be needed for a complete comparison is lacking. Nevertheless,
some tentative answers can be given, on the basis of the party’s declared principles,
and its policies since it came into office, plus the limited conclusions which can be
drawn from the election results of November 2002.
Ideologically, a striking parallel between the proposals of the AKP and those of
the Christian democrats is that they both championed liberal democratic values, and
the rights of the individual rather than the strength of the state. For the AKP, the
implementation of these principles was made easier by the fact that the EU
presented Turkey with a road map of liberal reforms, and the improvement of
human rights, as a condition for the start of accession negotiations. Hence, the AKP
government continued an important program of constitutional and legal changes,
through a series of “Harmonization Packages,” which have continued into the
summer of 2004.43
In the field of economic and social policies, the most important difference
between the AKP and Christian democracy appears to derive from the fact that the
binary divide between left and right is of far lower salience in Turkey today than it
was in Europe of the 1940s and 1950s, so that the AKP does not have to concentrate
on defining its position within it. It thus has no pressing need to articulate a “third
way” between capitalism and socialism. More immediately, the economic crisis
which rocked Turkey in 2000–01, and the huge foreign debt which the AKP govern-
ment inherited from its predecessors, virtually obliged it to adhere to the economic
and financial remedies prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
other international financial institutions.44 The “Copenhagen criteria,” which it
implemented in its bid for eventual membership of the European Union, required it
to establish and maintain a functioning market economy.45 In these circumstances,
the AKP government had few practical options. There was almost no room for it to
develop radical or original economic strategies, even if it had wanted to.
Realizing that it had to concentrate on what was practical, the AKP abandoned
the ideas of the “Just Order” (Adil Düzen) formerly promoted by Necmettin
Erbakan, which had attacked the “capitalist system based on interest,” and had
urged the promotion of small enterprises alongside a large state industrial sector, in
which interest would be abolished.46 In its election manifesto of 2002, the party
recognized that “the strength of [our nation’s] private enterprise … is the most
important source of economic progress. The basic role of the state in the economy is
to ensure the conditions for free competition in the market, and to remove the obsta-
cles facing private enterprise.” It supported privatization of the lumbering state
industrial sector, and the integration of Turkey into the global economy, while
recognizing that globalization created new threats as well as opportunities for the
developing economies. To secure greater social justice, it also sought to reduce the
gross imbalances in income distribution, as well as unemployment.47 In its party
program, it advocated the principle of a “social state” which would ensure for needy
citizens a way of life “befitting human dignity.”48 However, its proposals appeared
 Christian Democracy and the AKP 303

to fall well short of the more radical economic program advocated, for instance, by
De Gasperi, in the early days of DC in Italy, and put far less emphasis on state inter-
vention in the economy. Instead, they were equivalent to the relatively non-interven-
tionist policies of the CDU-CSU in Germany, without articulating the idea of a
“social market economy.” They also reflected the huge changes in the global
economic system over the previous half-century, and the vastly increased degree of
transnational integration which these entailed.
The most distinctive positions developed by the AKP, which distinguished it
from its rivals in the electoral marketplace, were probably its policies in the fields
of education and culture. In 1998 Tayyip Erdoğan had enunciated the idea that
g[bevre]

secularism could not be interpreted as hostility to religion: the state could be secu-
lar, while individuals are not necessarily so.49 The AKP has continued this interpre-
tation of secularism.50 In its 2002 election manifesto, the party interpreted its
commitment to conservatism mainly in cultural terms, arguing that society renewed
itself within the context of basic institutions such as “the family, school, property,
religion and morals,” and that interference by the state in these institutions and
values would lead to conflict and disorder.51 In the field of education, the party
promised that facilities of all kinds would be made available for instruction on
religion “as a requirement of the principle of secularism.” Apart from the regular
classes on “religious culture and moral education” which are a part of the curricu-
lum in all primary and secondary schools stipulated by Article 24 of the Constitu-
tion (paradoxically, introduced by the former military regime in 1982), parents
would be entitled to ask for additional instruction on religion. A further commit-
ment by the party was that graduates of all high schools and equivalent institutions
would be treated equally in university entrance examinations.52 The significance of
the last undertaking was that it would have allowed graduates of the special state
high schools for imams and preachers (İ mam-Hatip Okulları) to enter universities
]dI[ot

on equal terms with students from other state or private schools. Originally, the
special religious schools had been set up to train Muslim religious functionaries.
However, over time their graduates have vastly out-numbered the actual need for
imams and preachers, and have been used as a means of entering non-religious
professions by families and students of conservative views.
The AKP government appeared to act on this commitment in May 2004, when the
Minister of Education Hüseyin Çelik tabled a new draft law on higher education
which, among other things, would have allowed students from “professional”
schools (a category which includes the schools for imams and preachers) to compete
for university entrance with those from other high schools. Against fierce opposition
from the CHP and the pro-secularist establishment, including the General Staff, the
AKP used its large majority in Parliament to push the bill through the house on May
13, 2004.53 However, on May 28, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer exercised his right
to return the bill to Parliament, and the government backed down. On June 1, Prime
Minister Erdoğan announced that the proposal would be shelved, at least for
g[bevre]

the time being.54 A later example of the same kind of conflict arose in August–
September 2004, when the AKP conducted negotiations with the CHP designed to
304 W. Hale

produce an agreed draft of changes to the Turkish Penal Code, which were being
required by the European Union. Most of the text was uncontroversial, since it dealt
with human rights improvements which were accepted as necessary by both sides.
However, the AKP also proposed that the “obstruction of freedom of religion”
should be made a crime, that religious functionaries should be allowed to engage in
politics in off-duty hours, and that women should be allowed to wear “Islamic”
headscarves in state institutions. All these proposals reawakened suspicions that the
AKP’s claim that it had abandoned an Islamist agenda were false, and were strongly
opposed by the CHP. As a result, after much debate, the ruling party agreed to drop
them. The headscarf issue was a longstanding and contentious one: in November
2002 and April 2003 open rows had broken out between AKP leaders and pro-secu-
larist institutions, such as the presidency and the military, when it was feared that
AKP leaders’ wives might appear clad in headscarves at official functions.55 Even-
tually it was agreed that offenders could be fined, but not imprisoned, as had earlier
been proposed.56
While these issues seemed to be resolved, at least for the time being, Tayyip
Erdoğan and his Minister of Justice, Cemil Çiçek, meanwhile put the cat among the
g[bevre]

pigeons by proposing that the new version of the Penal Code should also include a
clause making adultery a criminal offence (as it is in traditional Islamic law).57 After
some tergiversations by its leader Deniz Baykal, the CHP came out strongly against
the proposal. In the opposite camp, Cemil Çiçek claimed that there was public
support for this measure, while Tayyip Erdoğan argued that “the family is a sacred
g[bevre]

institution for us,” implying that the law was necessary to protect it. To critics who
pointed out that adultery is not a criminal offence in any Western country, he
claimed that Turkey did not have to apply “imperfect” Western morals.58 This did
not assuage his domestic critics among members of the legal profession, women’s
organizations and the media, who urged that the proposed clause would be an ille-
gitimate invasion of personal privacy by the state, and emphasized that adultery is
only an offence in ultra-conservative Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia.59 The
most effective criticisms, however, came from Brussels, where the European
Commissioner for Enlargement, Günther Verheugen, strongly attacked the proposal.
Accordingly, the proposed clause was dropped after Erdoğan visited Brussels for
g[bevre]

direct talks with the Commissioner on September 23, 2004. Parliament duly passed
the amendments to the Penal Code, without any of the controversial clauses, three
days later.60
While not all the moral or cultural issues which have divided Christian democrat
and secularist or modernist opinion in Western Europe have been reproduced in
Turkey (for example, artificial birth control and divorce, which are accepted in the
Turkish case), it is clear that the AKP’s policies on religious education mirror those
adopted by Christian democrat parties in Europe. The criminalization of adultery is
not now on the agenda of European Christian democrat parties. However, the head-
scarf question has also become a bone of contention in several European states, even
if it is not clear that Christian democrats in all countries have a distinct stand on this
issue.61 In Turkey, the evidence showed that the AKP leadership was anxious to
 Christian Democracy and the AKP 305

appease its more Islamist supporters on all these issues, but was eventually prepared
to back down in the face of strong opposition, both at home and abroad.
A final policy issue on which there is a clear correspondence between the AKP
and Christian democracy is its rejection of state-centered nationalism, and its
commitment to international cooperation—most notably, the European Union.
Breaking with the anti-European, pro-Islamist views of Necmettin Erbakan, the
party claims that it sees Turkish membership of the EU as a “natural result of our
modernization process,” and attacks those who oppose this by adhering to ideologi-
cal approaches emphasizing “national sovereignty, national security, national inter-
est [and] national and indigenous culture.”62 The party demonstrated its opposition
to hard-line nationalism by its policy on the Cyprus question, giving full support for
the Annan Plan for a settlement of the problem, even though this was in the event
rejected by the Greek Cypriots.63 As a corollary of this, the party embraces the
concept of multiculturalism within Turkey. In a section on the “East and Southeast”
(which it admits may be referred to as the “Kurdish question”), the party program
committed itself to maintaining the unitary structure of the Turkish Republic, and
keeping Turkish as the official language of the state and education. It admits,
however, that the problems of the southeast are not just those of economic underde-
velopment, and that policies “recognizing cultural differences within the principle of
a democratic state” are essential. Accordingly, it advocates that provision be made
for “cultural activities, including publication and broadcasting, in languages other
than Turkish.”64 This commitment (which was in any case required by the EU as
one of the conditions for the start of accession negotiations) was eventually put into
practice by instituting provision, albeit very limited, for Kurdish language education
and broadcasting in the spring of 2004.65 Broadcasting in Kurdish by private radio
and television channels can be expected to follow. Not all these policies were
mirrored in those of Christian democracy—ethnic differences within the indigenous
population are not an issue, for instance, in the politics of Italy and Germany, nor
were they in France during the career of the MRP. Nonetheless, they could be
seen as very similar to the liberal internationalist approach embraced by Christian
democrat parties in the post-war period.
Like the Christian democrats, the AKP also relies on a social support base among
a wide variety of non-governmental organizations. In Turkey, there are serious legal
limitations to this since, under the Political Parties Law, parties are not allowed to
engage in “political relations and cooperation” with societies, trades unions, founda-
tions, cooperatives or professional organizations “with the objective of carrying
forward or strengthening their own policies.”66 Nonetheless, a number of non-
governmental organizations can be identified with the modernist-Islamist camp in
Turkish politics, and apparently help to strengthen the AKP’s social base. In the
trades union field, the labor confederation Hak-İş may be seen as the Muslim equiv-
]dI[ot ]csle[di

alent of the Christian labor organizations of France and Italy, although it also has
relations with other Islamist and center-right parties.67 However, like Catholic union
confederations in Europe, it only enjoys the support of a minority of industrial work-
ers.68 Among business groups, the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s
306 W. Hale

Association (MÜSİ AD) is also identified with the pro-Islamist camp, although its
]dIo[t

literature carefully avoids such identification. It represents in particular smaller but

rapidly growing firms in Central and Eastern Anatolia, in contrast to the big business
establishment in Istanbul and the other industrial cities of Western Turkey, which are
]dIo[t

associated with the far larger Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association
(TÜSİ AD).69 A further significant part of the social support network which has
] dIo[t

underpinned Islamist political movements in Turkey, and which can be said to be part
of the same political stream as the AKP, is made up of the large number of philan-
thropic foundations (Vakıflar) providing welfare services to the needy in the indus-
trial suburbs of Istanbul and other cities. Their activities include traditional Islamic
]dIo[t

charity such as providing meals for the needy through public kitchens, and distribut-
ing fuel and groceries to poor families, besides establishing or equipping clinics and
hospitals, providing transport and dormitories for students, distributing furniture and
used clothing to the poor, and providing help in finding a job or even a spouse.70
These organizations give AKP politicians a base in the poorer sections of urban soci-
ety which appears to have been lacking in Christian democracy in Western Europe.
Due to the lack of survey data, it is extremely difficult to assess the class or
regional basis of AKP’s electorate. It also appears that social class is in any case a
poor indicator of voting behavior in Turkey, as in Italy. The limited evidence we
have suggests that the party has a variegated and geographically dispersed elector-
ate. Preliminary surveys of the 2002 election results indicate that the AKP was
particularly well supported in Central and Eastern Anatolia, as well as the Black Sea
region, but that it also had important support in working-class districts of big cities
in the west. From this, observers like Üzeyir Tekin have concluded that AKP is a
“classless party.” Comparison with the Christian democrat parties of Europe is diffi-
cult, but such a picture seems to parallel the support base of the MRP. It would also
indicate that the AKP is a less middle-class party than, say, the CDU-CSU in
Germany has traditionally been.71 Clearly, more research on this topic is needed.

Some Preliminary Conclusions

Some of its supporters may seek to legitimize the AKP by claiming that it is the
Muslim equivalent of a Christian democrat party, but the outline history of
Christian democracy in the earlier part of this essay suggests that it should not be
taken as a model for Turkey. In France, the MRP had a relatively short life as an
effective political movement, mainly due to the unique role of Charles de Gaulle in
French post-war politics. In Italy, DC flourished for almost five decades, but then
perished in the systemic collapse of the early 1990s. In Germany, the CDU-CSU
continues to exist as a powerful center-right party, but the “Christian” part of its
intellectual inheritance is nowadays diluted, or distorted into conventional conser-
vatism. The AKP will clearly need to avoid these pitfalls. In particular, if it achieves
long-term dominance in Turkish politics, as DC did in post-war Italy, it runs the risk
of internal factional divisions and the corruptive influences of unchallenged
long-run power.
 Christian Democracy and the AKP 307

At the same time, even if the leaders of the AKP reject the “Muslim democrat”
label, there are intriguing similarities between this party and the Christian demo-
crat parties of Western Europe in terms of policies, especially on moral, cultural
and educational issues, international attitudes, and support structures. The main
differences appear to derive from those inherent in the Christian and Muslim reli-
gions, and in the historical circumstances of their birth and development. The most
striking contrast is that while the Christian democrat movement in Western Europe
generally developed in a conservative, pro-status quo direction, the AKP, while
culturally conservative, also projects itself as an anti-establishment force in
Turkish politics, opposing the state-centered authoritarian secularists who have, it
is argued, become Turkey’s new conservatives.72 Tayyip Erdoğan is taken as a g[bevre]

fitting symbol of this resurgence—as a “man of the people” who moved up from a
humble position in society, suffered imprisonment for his political principles, and
then successfully challenged the old state establishment. He uses this biography as
a parallel narrative of his political beliefs. As he wrote shortly before the elections
of 2002:

My story … is the story of this nation [in Turkish millet, implying also “the
people”]. Either the people will win, they will get into power, or the monarchi-
cal rule of a minority which looks down upon the people from on high, which
is a stranger to Anatolia, oppressive and obstinate, will carry on. The authority
to decide rests with the people.73

Clearly, this radical élan had helped to sweep Erdoğan’s party into power. What
g[bevre]

remained to be seen was, whether, unlike its Christian democrat predecessors, it

could survive the transition, and remain an invigorating as well as dominant force in
Turkish politics in the years ahead.

Notes
1. Interview with Şeref Özgencil, The New Europe, Vol.1, No.2 (Dec. 2002), p.11.
S[]celdi

2. Ruşen Çakır and Fehmi Çalmuk, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Bir Dönüşüm Öyküsü [Recep Tayyip
]csel[di g[bev]r ]cs[eldi

Erdoğan, the Story of a Conversion] ( Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 2001), p.189. In December 1997 he had
g[bevre] d]I[ot

said, “As an individual my point of reference is Islam—just as Christianity is for President Clinton,”
quoted in ibid., p.144.
3. Turkish Daily News, internet edition, www.turkishdailynews.com, January 31, 2004.
4. Graham E. Fuller, “Turkey’s Strategic Model: Myths and Realities,” Washington Quarterly, Vol.27,
No.3 (2004), p.52.
5. Ali Bulaç, “‘İslamcı Parti’ ile ‘Müslüman demokrat parti’” [An ‘Islamist Party’ and a ‘Muslim
]dI[ot

Democrat Party’], Zaman newspaper, internet edition, www.zaman.com.tr, November 6, 2002.

6. See the reports in the internet editions of Hürriyet, www.hurriyetim.com.tr, September 26, 2003 and
February 16, 2004; Milliyet, www.milliyet.com.tr, October 6, 2003; and Radikal,
www.radikal.com.tr, April 21, 2004.
7. See Gabriel Almond, “The Christian Parties of Western Europe,” World Politics, Vol.1, No.1 (1948),
pp.31–2.
8. On the latter point, see Adrian Karatnycky, “Christian Democracy Resurgent: Raising the Banner of
Faith in Eastern Europe,” Foreign Affairs, Vol.77, No.1 (2001), pp.13–18.
308 W. Hale

9. Gabriel Almond, “The Political Ideas of Christian Democracy,” Journal of Politics, Vol.10, No.4
(1948), p.749.
10. Most notably, in the Pope’s Christmas radio address of 1944: see Paolo Pombeni, “The Ideology of
Christian Democracy,” Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol.5, No.3 (2000). p.297.
11. Jean-Marie Mayeur, “La démocratie d’inspiration chrétienne en France” [Democracy of Christian
Inspiration in France], in Emiel Lamberts (ed.), Christian Democracy in the European Union (1945/
1995) (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), pp.80–5; Peter Van Kemseke, “The Societal Posi-
tion of Christian Democracy in France,” in ibid., pp.174, 181–3.
12. See Geoffrey Pridham, Christian Democracy in Western Germany: The CDU/CSU in Government
and Opposition, 1945–1976 (London: Croom Helm, 1977), pp.36–44.
13. For a detailed account of the CDU-CSU between 1949 and 1976, see ibid., chs.2–3.
14. For a fuller history of DC between 1945 and 1988, see Robert Leonardi and Douglas A. Wertman,
Italian Christian Democracy: The Politics of Dominance (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), ch.3.
15. Martin Clark, Modern Italy, 1871–1995, 2nd edn. (London and New York: Longman, 1996), p.334.
16. Ibid., pp.413–21.
17. See, for example, Kees van Kersbergen, “The Distinctiveness of Christian Democracy,” in David
Hanley (ed.), Christian Democracy in Europe: A Comparative Perspective (London and New York:
Pinter, 1994), p.31; however, van Kersbergen later disputes this description, ibid., pp.35, 37–40.
18. Thus, Jean-Marie Mayeur prefers to speak of the MRP as being attached to “democracy of a
Christian inspiration,” Mayeur, in Lamberts (1997), p.79. The MRP did not refer to Christianity or
Catholicism in its title or articles of association, and never sought an organizational tie with the
Catholic Church since it feared a revival of anti-clericalism. Nevertheless, it had a distinctly Catholic
support base, Van Kemseke, in Lamberts (1997), pp.175, 178.
19. Pridham (1977), pp.26–7, 38–9; David Broughton, “The CDU-CSU in Germany: Is There Any
Alternative?” in Hanley (1994), p.106; Anton Rauscher, “Der Einfluss der Christlichen Demokratie
auf Gesselschaft und Kultur in der Bundesrepublik” [The Influence of Christian Democracy on
Society and Culture in the Federal Republic], in Lamberts (1997), p.377. The MRP also claimed to
be non-confessional, and had some Protestant members, Mayeur, in Lamberts (1997), p.80.
However, the question was fairly insignificant in the French case, given that Protestants account for
less than 2 percent of the population. It is even less significant in Italy.
20. Anthony Trawick Bouscaren, “The European Christian Democrats,” Western Political Quarterly,
Vol.2, No.1 (1949), pp.59, 61.
21. An opinion poll in 1952 found that 79 percent of the MRP electorate attended a [Catholic] church
regularly. In Italy, even in the relatively secularized 1970s at least two-thirds of DC’s supporters
claimed to have attended church the previous Sunday: In France, all the non-attenders who voted
Christian democrat also identified themselves as Catholics, Van Kemseke, in Lamberts (1997),
p.175; Clark (1996), p.329.
22. Van Kersbergen, in Hanley (1994), p.33; Bouscaren (1949), p.60.
23. Leonardi and Wertman (1989), pp.28, 31–5; Murray Edelman, “Sources of Popular Support for the
Italian Christian Democrat Party in the Postwar Decade,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol.2,
No.2 (1958), pp.156–7; Breuno Béthouart, “L’apport socio-économique de la démocratie chrétienne
en France” [The Socio-Economic Stance of Christian Democracy in France], in Lamberts (1997),
pp.339–40; Willard Ross Yates, “Power, Principle, and the Doctrine of the Mouvement Républicain
Populaire,” American Political Science Review, Vol.52, No.2 (1958), p.429; Samuel H. Barnes, “The
Politics of French Christian Labour,” Journal of Politics, Vol.21, No.1 (1959), pp.105–6, 119.
24. There are however, some “Christian” labor unions outside the German Federation of Trades Unions
(DGB) which, although officially neutral in party politics, has close ties with the SPD; Broughton, in
Hanley (1994), p.106.
25. Pridham (1977), pp.31–2.
26. Broughton, in Hanley (1994), p.112.
27. Barnes (1959), p.105.
28. Pridham (1977), pp.334–5.
 Christian Democracy and the AKP 309

29. Emiel Lamberts, “General Conclusions: Christian Democracy in the European Union (1945–1995),”
in Lamberts (1997), p.480.
30. R. E. M. Irving, “Italy’s Christian Democrats and European Integration,” International Affairs,
Vol.52, No.3 (1976), pp.400, 405–6.
31. See Yves-Marie Hilaire, “L’influence de la démocratie chrétienne dans la sphère de la religion, la
morale et la culture en France” [The Influence of Christian Democracy in the Sphere of Religion,
Morality and Culture in France], in Lamberts (1997), p.432; and Anton Rauscher, “The Influence of
Christian Democracy on Socio-Cultural Policy in Western Europe,” in ibid., p.42.
32. Clark (1996), pp.381–3.
33. Kemseke, in Lamberts (1997), p.175.
34. Mark Donovan, “Democrazia Cristiana: Party of Government,” in Hanley (1994), p.80; Clark
(1996), p.329.
35. Pridham (1977), p.335.
36. Almond, “Christian Parties” (1948), p.51.
37. Van Kemseke, in Lamberts (1997), pp.176–8; Leonardi and Wertman (1989), pp.211–12, 216–21;
Broughton, in Hanley (1994), p.107.
38. Quoted in Clark (1996), p.370.
39. Ibid., pp.370–1; Hilaire, in Lamberts (1997), p.429; Leonardi and Wertman (1989), pp.212–13;
Broughton, in Hanley (1994), p.109; Russel J. Dalton, “Politics in Germany,” in Gabriel A. Almond
et al. (eds.), Comparative Politics Today: A World View, 7th edn. (New York: Longman, 2000),
p.299.
40. Van Kersbergen, in Hanley (1994), p.43.
41. Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak, Türkiye’de Din, Toplum ve Siyaset [Religion, Society and Politics
geb[vre]

in Turkey] ( Istanbul: Türkiye Ekonomik ve Sosyal Etüdler Vakfı [TESEV], 2000), pp.42, 45.
]dI[ot

42. Ibid., pp.16, 72–3.

43. See William Hale, “Human Rights, the EU and Turkish Accession,” Turkish Studies, Vol.4, No.1
(2003), pp.107–26; reprinted in Ali Çarkoğlu and Barry Rubin (eds.), Turkey and the European g[bevre]

Union: Domestic Politics, Economic Integration and International Dynamics (London and Portland,
OR: Frank Cass, 2003), pp.107–26. For subsequent developments in 2003–04, see Economist Intelli-
gence Unit, Turkey: Country Report (London: EIU, quarterly, April 2003, June 2003, September
2003, and June 2004).
44. See the special issue of Turkish Studies, “The Turkish Economy in Crisis,” Vol.4, No.2 (Fall 2003).
45. Conclusions of the [EU] Presidency, Copenhagen, June 21–22, 1993; copy kindly supplied by
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London.
46. See Ruşen Çakır, Ne Şeriat, ne Demokrasi: Refah Partisi Anlamak [Neither Islamic Law nor Democ-
]csel[di S[]celdi

racy: Understanding the Welfare Party] (Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1994), pp.131–9; and the mani-
]dI[ot

festo issued by the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) for the 1995 elections, 25 Aralık Sabahı Türkiye
Yeniden Doğacak! [On the Morning of 25 December Turkey Will Be Born Again!], pp.13–15.
g[bevr]

47. Herşey Türkiye İ çin: Ak Parti Seçim Beyannamesi [Everything for Turkey: Election Manifesto of the
]cs[eldi ]dI[ot

Justice and Development Party] (2002), from the AKP website, www.akparti.org.tr, pp.32, 35–6.
48. AKP Party Program, AK Parti, Aydınlığa Açik … Karanlığa Kapalı [The Justice and Development
g[bevr] g[bevr]

Party: Open to Enlightenment, Closed to Darkness], Section 5.1, from AKP website,
www.akparti.org.tr.
49. Çakır and Çalmuk (2001), p.115.
50. AKP Party Program, section 2.1.
51. Herşey Türkiye İ çin, p.7.
]cs[eldi ]dI[ot

52. AKP Party Program, section 5.2.

53. Website of NTV television, Istanbul, www.ntvmsnbc.com, May 7, May 13, 2004.
54. Ibid., May 28, June 1, 2004.
55. Ibid., April 24, 2003 and Briefing (Ankara, weekly), November 25, 2002, p.9, and December 2,
2002, pp.5-6.
56. Turkish Daily News, internet edition, September 1, 2004.
310 W. Hale

57. Such a clause had been included in the Penal Code of 1926, but in 1996 and 1998 it had been struck
down by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that, in its original wording, it had discriminated
against women. The new clause proposed by the AKP would have overcome this objection, but this
did not assuage its critics, who opposed the criminalization of adultery as a general principle.
58. Hürriyet, internet edition, August 30, 2004; The Guardian (London, daily), September 6, 2004.
59. Ibid., and Radikal, internet edition, September 1 and 2, 2004.
60. Hürriyet, internet edition, September 23, 2004; NTV website, September 27, 2004.
61. For instance, France maintains the headscarf ban in schools, whereas in Britain and Germany the
decision is left to individual institutions or local education authorities.
62. See Herşey Türkiye İ çin, section IX. For a fuller discussion of the AKP’s foreign policies, see Üzeyir
]cs[eldi ]dI[ot

Tekin, AK Parti’nin Muhafazakâr Demokrat Kimli ği [The Conservative-Democrat Identity of the g[berv]

Justice and Development Party] (Ankara: Orient Yayınları, 2004), pp.198–219.

63. For an earlier discussion of this, see Tekin (2004), pp.210–14.
64. AKP Party Program, section 2.8.
65. Website of CNN Türk television, Istanbul, www.cnnturk.com.tr, April 4, 2004. ]dIo[t

66. Siyasi Partiler Kanunu [Political Parties Law], No.2820, Art.92; text in Şahver Everdi (ed.), Seçim S[]celdi

Mevzuatı [Election Laws] (Istanbul: 21 Yüzyıl Yayınları, n.d.), p.138.

67. Notably the Felicity Party (SP) and True Path Party (DYP); the author is indebted to Ersin
Kalaycıo ğlu for information on this point.
g[bevre]

68. According to statistics issued by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in January 2004, 2.8
million of the 4.9 million registered employees in Turkey were union members; however, of this, the
six unions affiliated to Hak-İş only had 322,000 members, or 11.4 percent of the total—the vast
]d[Iot ]lcesd[i

majority being in unions affiliated to the “supra-party” confederation Türk-İş, or the traditionally ]dI[ot ]lceds[i

left-wing DİSK; reported in Hürriyet, internet edition, January 17, 2004.

]dI[ot

69. See Ayşe Bu ğra, “Class, Culture and State: An Analysis of Interest Representation by Two Turkish
]csel[di g[bevre]

Business Associations,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.30, No.4 (1998), pp.521–
39; Ziya Öniş and Umut Terem, “Business, Globalization and Democracy: A Comparative Analysis
]csel[di

of Turkish Business Associations,” Turkish Studies, Vol.2, No.2 (2001), pp.94–120; Karin Vorhoff,
“Businessmen and their Organizations: Between Instrumental Solidarity, Cultural Diversity and the
State,” in Stefanos Yerasimos, Günter Seufert and Karin Vorhoff (eds.), Civil Society in the Grip of
Nationalism: Studies on Political Culture in Modern Turkey (Istanbul: Orient-Institut, 2000), ] dI[ot

pp.143–96.
70. See Jenny B. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle, WA,
and London: University of Washington Press, 2002), ch.6.
71. Tekin (2004), pp.170–1.
72. See, for instance, İ hsan D.Dağı, Batılılaşma Korkusu [The Fear of Westernization] (Ankara: Liberte
]dI[ot g[bevre] ]cs[eldi

Yayınları, 2003), pp.7–19, 178–81.

73. Yeni Şafak, October 2, 2002, quoted in Tekin (2004), p.32.
S[]celdi