Turkey's Upcoming Election

Last week the İşçi Party (Worker's Party) had a van with loudspeakers riding around our neighborhood. They are radically isolationist, communist, and vehemently anti-American. The chorus of the 'jingle' they were playing was ''America! America! Assassins! Assassins!''

Politics and Turkey's July 22nd general election are at the forefront of just about everyone's mind here right now. It looks like the AK Party, a somewhat moderate Islamist party, will maintain control of the government, although several other parties are also vying for influence.

The CHP is second most influential party and they do a lot of complaining about AK Party. They are typically a secularist, pro-democratic party with socialist leanings. They don't like the way that İslam has made inroads in the current government and they criticize the major privatization projects that AK Party have supported.

The MHP is next in line and they may gain some seats on Sunday. They are a nationalist party that resent the amount of foreign influence in Turkey... and many of them resent even the presence of foreigners in the country. Most nationalists consider Christianity to be a foreign threat.

After that there are literally dozens of fringe parties... And some of them are scary.

Most of the parties are characterized by a combination of one or more of these basic elements:

1. Nationalism: Rallying around 'Turkishness' usually to the exclusion of everyone else
2. İslamism: Working to introduce varying levels of İslamic influence into government
3. Socialism: Wanting the government to regulate the economy and/or impose economic 'justice'
4. Secularism: Keeping religion under the control of the government

It's the parties that combine İslamism with nationalism that are especially dangerous...

It's difficult to know how to feel about any of the candidates. Secularism and Nationalism are as outspoken enemies of Christianity as İslamism, and the İslamist party is the one taking religion seriously as a human rights issue...

If you want to read more about Turkish politics try one of the news links on the right or read this paper I wrote last year.


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