Erdogan's Justice and Development Party is what you might call "Islamist Lite." Still, they play to the cheap seats for votes, and rumor has it the Kemalist doctrine of hyper-secularism is on the wane in Ankara. The only encouraging sign is the putsch against presidential candidate Abdullah Gul, who's been hit with popular indignation after his wife paraded around town and in front of cameras in a headscraf. The BBC:
The opposition accuses Mr Gul of having a hidden Islamist agenda and says that if he becomes president it will threaten Turkey's secular tradition.
Also, Cihan Tugal has a fairly long piece in New Left Review entitled "Nato's Islamists" which provides a cross-section of the ruling party:
The appeal of the AKP to liberals and intellectuals in 2002 rested primarily on its pro-democratic, pro-European stance. Yet on democratization, the party has never demonstrated more than a pro forma commitment. Erdo?an is well-known for his authoritarian tendencies, and as the can-do mayor of Istanbul between 1994 and 1998 he ruled with an iron fist. [27] At its founding congress, the akp leadership had pledged itself to a regime of internal party democracy, but initial moves in this direction were soon overturned. In 2003, the akp’s Board of Founders annulled internal elections to the Central Committee and invested the party president, Erdo?an, with sole authority to appoint or dismiss members of the Central Committee. These authoritarian moves had their counterparts in the relation of the party to the people. While Erdo?an’s government legislated a series of democratic reforms at the instigation of the eu, it has also disregarded the most basic norms of representivity and accountability with regard to its electorate—most blatantly, of course, over Iraq. Rather than taking popular grievances seriously, Erdo?an will publicly scold anybody who talks to him about hunger, unemployment or housing problems. At party rallies he has told the poor to pull themselves together and do something for themselves, instead of expecting the government to do it for them.
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