Turkey Needs Effective Opposition to AKP: Financial Times

Turkey’s ruling party has once again entered into conflict with the Turkish army. This is more than the latest episode in a power struggle commenced as soon as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) first came to power in 2002, writes David Gardner in the Financial Times.

“It is more, too, than a battle of wills between neo-Islamists and secularists; more even than a new and dangerous chapter in a recurring constitutional crisis. It is, above all, a clash between two rival establishments jostling for supremacy: the traditional metropolitan elites who see themselves as the guardians of the secular, republican heritage of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey; and the new AKP establishment that combines the conservative and religiously observant traditions of Anatolia with a huge constituency in Turkey’s modern but Muslim middle class,” writes Gardner.

Gardner goes on to say that a common view in Europe is that Turkey is involved in a battle to determine its true identity. However, “the real drama of Turkey today is more banal: it lacks an effective opposition to the AKP. It will keep bobbing from crisis to crisis until it has one,” writes Gardner.