No surprise” “

With 34.40 percent of the votes, the neo-Islamic party “Justice and Development” (AKP), led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, won the elections in Turkey on 3 November. It was an electoral ballot that renewed 90 percent of the whole Turkish Parliament, composed of 550 seats, and now divided between only two parties: the AKP with 363 MPs (absolute majority) and the CHP, the secular social-democratic people’s republican party”, with 19.2 of the vote. The MPs elected to the new Parliament include 24 women, 13 in the ranks of the AKP and 11 in the CHP, one more than in the previous legislature, and 9 independent candidates. All the other parties that contested the election remain excluded: they failed to reach the necessary threshold of 10 percent and therefore have no right to be represented in Parliament. They also include the democratic party of the left of former premier Bulent Ecevit; it took only 1.22 percent of the vote. “The results are no cause for surprise”. That’s the comment of Msgr. Georges Marovitch, spokesman of the Turkish Episcopal Conference (TEC), on the elections held in Turkey on 3 November. What is cause for surprise, on the other hand, according to Marovitch, is that “political forces like Motherland, Straight Way and the Democratic Party of the left failed to reach the 10% threshold prescribed by the political system and are therefore destined to remain outside Parliament. However, the TEC spokesman points out, “AKP represents moderate Islam and is open to dialogue. The party’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has himself affirmed that he and his party will work for the country’s entry into the European Union. There exists a sufficient majority to approve the necessary adjustments to meet EU membership criteria”. The hope, he concludes, is that “these results may bring benefits to the nation. In particular the laws contained in the reform package passed in August contain articles that concern the religious foundations. The procedure of the law is not sufficiently transparent, but we hope that with the new Government this may be clarified”. “Before saying what consequences the vote may have on relations with the religious minorities – says Msgr. Ruggero Franceschini, president of the Turkish Episcopal Conference – we need to see how events unfold, the posts that will be assigned within the new government and the provisions that it intends to take”. According to Father Pasquale Borgomeo, director general of Vatican Radio, “even though expected, the electoral success of the neo-Islamic AKP party is a matter for surprise in view of its scale”. “Magnified by the electoral system in force – said the Jesuit to One-O-Five live, Vatican Radio’s FM channel – the result gives the victors the absolute majority of seats in parliament and hence enables them to govern without having recourse to alliances”. It is a success, in Father Borgomeo’s view, that is destined to have repercussions on the international scenario, especially now that there is ever more insistent talk of a war on Iraq. “Now that the old nomenklatura has been swept away – he adds – there remains little scope for extremist groups. Of moderate Islamic stamp, the winning party declares itself to be democratic, and non anti-Western, indeed more anxious than ever to take Turkey into Europe, but even more unwilling than the previous government to support the USA in an attack on Iraq”. However, according to Borgomeo, “the result of the Turkish election is not the only factor to have repercussions on the alliances of the American superpower. Only a few weeks earlier a signal was received of the electoral success of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan, an allied country. More recent still is the position adopted by Saudi Arabia, another allied country, which has declared its unwillingness to grant the USA the use of its bases in the event of an attack on Saddam Hussein. Germany too, at the very time it is trying to mend its relationship with the Bush administration, has repeated its determination not to back its ally in a war on Iraq”. Daniele Rocchi