A potential savior of Islamism, Secularism and Democracy? By Splitting the AKP, Turkey is guaranteed a coalition government. A coalition is what is needed to resolve Ankara’s internal and foreign policy problems as well as to fight terror inside and outside its borders. The corruption of the Erdoğan regime, putting a toady in the Prime Minister’s office, weakening the Judiciary first to denude the military and then to undermine a Muslim movement has tarnished Islamism. Islamism is now another excuse to give power to someone who doesn’t deserve it. While I am happy to see Islamism discredit itself there remains a lot of Turks who see Islamism as the guarantor of their religious rights and economic aspirations. There is room in Turkey for a religious party that wants to put its shoulder to a secularist nation’s wheel and that party will appeal to a lot of Turks. In a coalition a Gül party would be either an important or leading voice. Political hacks and the ideological intolerant can stay in the AK party on the fringes alongside the right wing MHP party. A coalition of CHP, Gül, and the HDP will move Turkey forward, perhaps with Gül leveraging an AKP swing vote once in a while.
I’ve always saw Turkey as a pre-civil war society before and after the election of Erdoğan. Fault lines between secularism and religiousness run deep and Erdoğan struck me as “I’m an Arab too” kind of Islamist, he wasn’t bringing the live and let live kind of Turkish Islam Turkic peoples are known for and instead he wanted to out hate terrorists, out strong man dictators and simply spend Turkey’s cohesiveness as a society on imitating the Muslim Brotherhood rather than be a source of real unity. AKP is a party of zero faith, genuine religious movements have to be pro secular because people of faith will not corrupt themselves with people who are insincerely religious, religious movements do not want to be corrupted by the state. Abdullah Gül might be right man at the right time to lead Turkey into a positive future, now is the moment for the former President to take action and renew Turkey.