Turkey: AKP party liberal?

By SONER CAGAPTAY
July 30, 2007

While rooted in Turkey's Islamist opposition, the AKP declared itself a liberal movement when it came to power five years ago. So, as the party gets ready for another five years in office, is the AKP really a liberal party? Let's have a look at its record so far.

Under the AKP, there have been two dramatic changes in Turkey. First, the country has become a choice market for foreign investment.

However, capitalism alone does not make a country liberal. It also needs a sense of common destiny with the Western world, a sense sorely missing in the AKP's Turkey.

In addition to the FDI boom, a second and decidedly illiberal shift has taken place in Turkey under the AKP. Before the party took office, Turkey ranked first in pro-American sentiment among Muslim majority countries. According to polls, once staunchly pro-Western Turkey has now become the most anti-American country in the world ...

After years of anti-U.S. rhetoric, a negative view of America is now so pervasive that secular Turks, and their parties, are also on board ...

Finally, the AKP's appointments are driving illiberalism. I was recently in Midyat, in southeastern Turkey, to see the monasteries of the Syriac Church. Many Syriac Christians were driven out of their homes by the PKK in the 1990s. A community leader told me that before the AKP, government authorities were helpful in facilitating their return. But the new AKP-appointed officials have a negative attitude toward Christians.

When community leaders paid the newly arrived provincial governor a courtesy visit, the governor's first words were: "I am a Muslim," hardly the words befitting a liberal, secular state. And the return of Christians to Midyat has now been encumbered. In one of their villages, Elbegendi, the Christians have built new homes with the hope of returning, but the AKP governor has refused to pave their roads. So Elbegendi is a Kafkaesque site, with brand new villas, mud on the streets and no public services in sight.

From Midyat to the suburbs of Istanbul, a new Turkey is taking shape, away from the attention of Western financial markets, the glitter of Istanbul's moneyed class and the fancy drinking holes on the Bosporus. The new AKP government can prove its liberal credentials in its second turn in power by desisting from political illiberalism and anti-Westernism. This is a chance Turkey cannot afford to miss.

Mr. Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is the author of "Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey" (Routledge, 2006).