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15 years with the AK Party
It has been exactly 15 years since the AK Parti's founding. The AK Parti was founded in the dark days of February 28, when it could be shouted out by the soldiers, in complete arrogance, that it would last a thousand years. Even out of that darkness, it chose a light bulb as its symbol to give hope of light, and carried the claim of opening a clean (ak) page. Those who came from two parties closed one after the other set out unyielding, with an upright stance and without cringing, promising that they would in no way give up and that they would rid the country of bans, poverty and corruption. Although parties had been closed one after another on flimsy pretexts, and although Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the founder of the new party, at whom the nation looked with hope, was banned, the nation never took lightly that party's words that it could change things, saw in it a strong ray of hope for the future, and answered the party's call. When the AK Parti was founded, the government, which was barely standing on its feet by the favor of February 28, continued to drag the country from crisis to crisis. In the meantime, from the moment it was founded, the AK Parti at once took its seat as the country's only hope and only political alternative. In the first election, held 15 months later, it showed an extraordinary success and came to power alone, in such a way as to obtain a two-thirds majority in parliament.
We say that the years lived, seen from today, have flowed by like water. Exactly 15 years have passed since the AK Parti was founded.
Only the first 15 months of this period were in opposition, and all the time after that was in power alone. It has been the actor of everything Turkey has lived through in these 15 years, and it has been in the first line of target of every attack that Turkey has been exposed to. AK Parti became the name of the revolutionary developmental drives Turkey experienced economically during this period and of the New Turkey that emerged as a result. It worked as a complete developmental revolutionary, as it promised when it set its name, and it made the revolution it promised. Dede Korkut used to give people names when they recorded an achievement and did some distinguishing deed, but the AK Parti set out having already set its name, and it deserved its name more than fully. Setting a name is like making an intention, like a prayer. The AK Parti made its intention in keeping with this name, as Justice and Development, and in keeping with this intention it took its provisions with it and set out. It practically changed the sociological structure of the people of the country. It brought about a complete circulation in the class structure, in the regime of stratification. It almost quadrupled national income. It brought Turkey from being indebted to the IMF to a position where it could lend to it. It raised the living standard of our people in such a way that everyone would partake of prosperity. Development deserved its name more than fully.
Of course, Turkey did not experience revolutions only at the level of economic development in the meantime. From the step-by-step rolling back of military tutelage, to Turkey's path of democratization, to the improvement of freedom of expression and human rights, and of course to securing both economic and political justice, it put its signature on important works at every level. The AK Parti thus covered this 15-year road in a way that fully deserves the name justice as well.
Whether it deserved all this or not was of course for the nation itself to judge. The AK Parti has come to the present day by always increasing its votes in all the elections it entered one after another, in a way that has not been granted to a political party in Turkey or even in the whole world, and will not easily be. While it is a great and exceptional success for a political party even to receive the same vote consecutively, the AK Parti has experienced 12 elections in total since the day it was founded, and has managed to be a party that has always won in all these elections and whose closeness to the people has strengthened further by increasing its votes. Thus, with its development and its justice, it has always managed to receive the best grade from the people, the arbiter of all the duties it has undertaken.
The AK Parti always remained in the field where a political party should operate, that is, the political field; it showed itself in that field and never violated the rules of that field. When it was subjected to a closure case, and even earlier when their parties were closed, it never resorted to violence, never sought help from non-political centers, never gave credit to their yearnings for tutelage; on the contrary, it put forth a performance that left those yearnings stuck in their throats. As it did this, it further consolidated its power in the political field. As it consolidated it, it unintentionally provoked in its rivals tendencies to deviate from the field in their strategies to resist and defeat it. The realization that the AK Parti could not be defeated in the political field also provoked various coup attempts against it. These attempts from time to time dragged the country into various crises.
One strong feature of the AK Parti is that under none of these crises was it crushed, nor did it let the country be crushed. On the contrary, it treated each of these crises as an opportunity for stronger reforms and for broader and deeper openings for the country.
While every crisis environment is distinguished by its own villains, a crisis also brings forth heroes out of it. Looking at the history of 15 years of crises, there are many villains who have had to be buried in history and whose names we now have trouble remembering. And a charisma, a hero that emerged from each of these crises without exception was Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In the person of Erdoğan, the one who in fact became a hero, who identified with his person, and who most recently displayed this heroism with its epic struggle on the night of July 15, was the people of Turkey themselves.
Of course the magnitude of evil also enlarges the quality of heroism and charisma. As it emerges what kind of danger the FETÖ, which has become evil itself with its 50 years of insidious plans and work, is, it is better understood what kind of courage and leadership it has required to take on this struggle against it, and to succeed in this struggle. With this victory it has won for this country, the AK Parti together with its leader has crowned all of its struggle up to now.