"The Education of Tayyip Erdogan August 23, 2007
By Serhan Cevik | London
What matters for a successful political career is the ability to read what the voters think. Academic credentials are not enough to make a good politician. What matters most for a successful political career is the ability to read what the voters think and say in elections. Turkish history offers many examples of the rise and fall of politicians who either captured the imagination of voters or failed to decipher the public’s mind. Take, for example, the 2002 elections that removed an entire generation of politicians. For more than a decade, Turkish voters kept supporting the same set of parties but ended up with political and economic instability in return. However, the devastating crisis in 2001 — a result of bad governance in the past — turned out to be a wake-up call and led to an unprecedented consolidation of the political landscape. That was how Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) Party gained the ‘surprising’ lead in elections and formed the country’s first single-party government in a very long while. Realising the extent of social transformation, Mr. Erdogan has moved from the fringes to the political centre and, despite occasional slippages, stayed on top of the agenda for change. A favourable external environment, prudent economic policies and wide-ranging structural and institutional reforms set the stage for the normalisation of the Turkish economy and the AKP’s landslide victory in this year’s elections."
More:Morgan Stanley - Global Economic Forum
