"August 1, 2007
(Kerem Öktem is a research associate at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.)
On July 23, the day after the ruling Justice and Development Party won Turkey’s early parliamentary elections in a landslide, Onur Öymen, deputy chairman of the rival Republican People’s Party (CHP), interpreted the results as follows:
If you are in need and hungry, if you are not at all content with your life, if you criticize the government every day from dusk till dawn and you then vote for the very same government, there must be something which cannot be explained with logic. What is it? It is the government’s policy to harness the religious feelings of the people for political aims. If the people, despite all these hardships, still vote for this party, that probably means that they vote for them because of religion.… If illogical reasons play such an important role in politics, this should make us think.[1]
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More:Middle East Report Online: Harbingers of Turkey’s Second Republic by Kerem Öktem
