Benchmarking the New Government, Spring 2003

The most remarkable feature of the November elections was the decisive victory of the AKP, a party associated with Islamist politics. The second distinguishing feature was the restoration of a bipolar political system, in other words the emergence of a “center”, that put an end to the series of coalition governments which had ruled since the early 1990s. Despite this political advantage, AKP’s answers to the challenges facing the country are still unclear. The priority of Turkish citizens is the effective restoration of the economy. At another level, two factors which significantly influence more than two centuries of Ottoman-Turkish modernization, namely the role of religion in Turkish social life and relations with the West will constitute the real benchmarks of AKP’s performance in government.

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