Financial Times; Oct 30, 2002
COMMENT & ANAL YSIS: Erdogan predicts victory as he tries to keep politics separate from religion
By Leyla Boulton and David Gardner
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Justice and Development party (AKP) looks likely to win Turkey's general election on Sunday, does not conform to normal models of an Islamist leader.
A tall and imposing figure, immaculately tailored with a neat moustache, self-assured with a hint of east Mediterranean swagger, he looks more like a successful football manager than a rising mullah.
He says that, while he is a Muslim, religion and politics should be kept separate - a prudent sentiment in a Muslim country that enforces a rare constitutional division between religion and state and where the arch-secularist establishment created by Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, regards him with deep suspicion.
A popular mayor of Istanbul in the mid-1990s, Mr Erdogan was jailed briefly in 1999 for "religious incitement" after reciting a nearly century-old poem by a nationalist writer - reputedly one of Ataturk's favourites - that described the city's majestic minarets as "our bayonets". The incident came after a coalition government led by the Islamist Welfare party, with which Mr Erdogan was at the time affiliated, was forced out of office after 11 months by Turkey's powerful military.
Because of that conviction, Mr Erdogan was banned by Turkey's electoral board from standing in these elections - a ruling that bars him from entering parliament or becoming prime minister. State prosecutors last week opened proceedings to ban the AKP outright unless Mr Erdogan steps down as party chairman.
This he has no plans to do. He points out that many Turkish leaders - including Bulent Ecevit, the outgoing premier, and Suleyman Demirel, his traditional arch-rival - were jailed and banned but went on to become prime ministers. They, however, were not Islamists.
"We do not accept being characterised as an Islamist party," Mr Erdogan said while campaigning in eastern Turkey. "That carries with it too many misperceptions and anti-democratic associations. If you call yourself an Islamist, it suggests you are trying to impose some sort of Jacobin and intolerant uniformity. Furthermore, we believe religion is a personal issue."
He regards himself as secular to the extent that he is sensitive to the combustible mix of religion and nationalism: "Just as no race is better than any other race, so no one religion is superior to any other."
He regards his ban on holding office -"on the basis of ideas we have or are supposed to have" - as "hugely damaging to the reputation of Turkey" just as it is putting in place constitutional reforms (including freedom of expression and association) that it hopes will win it entry into the democratic club of the European Union.
His appeal looks tailored to the socially conservative heartland of Anatolia, from which many Turkish politicians appear to have disconnected. His party's symbol is a light bulb with seven beams signifying the seven regions of Turkey - intended to be emblematic of enlightenment after darkness, a recurring theme in orthodox Muslim and Islamist literature. "This is something the people of Anatolia can understand," Mr Erdogan says.
As he throws red carnations to an adoring crowd of about 10,000 in the town of Elazig, there is no Islamist green - or any Muslim symbol at all - to be seen. Working the throng with practised ease, he tells people their party will give them strong government and more democratic rights, will fight corruption and give them a chance to build fulfilling lives. One group of women, wearing the Muslim veil, starts weeping - but soon his rhetoric and showmanship have them rocking with laughter.
The AKP caravan moves on to Malatya in the neighbouring province. He has to fight his way into a packed square heaving with AKP flags, throbbing with the party anthem - part dirge, part triumphal march - its entrance dominated by two huge banners of Erdogan and Ataturk.
He is certain he is going to win and his close aides obviously believe the AKP is going to win massively. Mr Erdogan's party leads a scattered field in all Turkey's not very reliable polls, with between 22 and 30 per cent. AKP strategists believe they could get as much as 40 per cent. But because of the fragmentation of the centre and right, and the high entry barrier of 10 per cent of the vote that means only between two and four parties are likely to get into parliament, the AKP will get a disproportionately high number of seats and may get an overall majority.
What he does with this victory will determine not only how Turkey emerges from its present economic and political turmoil but also whether democracy and Islam can be bound together - an experiment that will resonate far beyond Turkey's borders.
His aides push the idea that the AKP can pioneer a fully democratic Turkey with a Muslim identity - that they are Muslim democrats analogous to the Christian Democrats who dominated political life in Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries for much of the postwar era.
"We have a conservative outlook," Mr Erdogan says, and "many similarities" with the Christian Democrats, including "our similar attitude to family issues and to traditional values and ethics".
But, he adds, "I dislike their xenophobia; we are more universal" - a remark he declined to follow up but which appeared to refer to Edmund Stoiber, the Christian Democrat who narrowly lost the recent German election.
The AKP has taken on board a number of former aides to Turgut Ozal, the reforming conservative prime minister of the late 1980s and early 1990s, technocrats and political hacks at provincial level. But after only 14 months as a party it has no experience of governing Turkey.
Meanwhile the country is struggling to emerge from its worst recession in half a century and is deeply fearful of the political and economic consequences of a war in Iraq. Turkey also faces a showdown with the EU on resolving the Greek-Turkish division of Cyprus as well as Turkish demands for a firm date to start accession talks, which Ankara expects at December's Copenhagen summit of the EU.
Mr Erdogan will not be drawn on whether he will form a coalition, saying only: "We are the only party capable of dealing with these problems, because we have popular legitimacy. Only we can deal with the main problem that faces Turkey - political chaos."