The AK Party's mission that cannot be transferred or fragmented

Eighteen years have passed since the founding of the AK Parti. Every year on 14 August, various events are held for the anniversary of its founding. Some of these events are celebrations, and some take the form of a general assessment of the year for the AK Parti. Thus the AK Parti gets the opportunity to look both at its last year and at the distance it has covered overall since its founding. This tradition undoubtedly provides an important opportunity for being able to evaluate oneself, to turn and look at oneself, to hold oneself to account, to reflect on oneself.

This year, since it coincided with the Feast of Sacrifice, it is understood that the expected events will be held this week instead of on 14 August. However, there were also those who did not call 14 August a holiday and let it pass, and made their assessments.

As we said before, 18 years is perhaps not a very long history for a political party, but the AK Parti, which has spent nearly 17 of these years in power alone, has put forward a very original experience and model from whichever angle you look. Having carried the responsibility of governing alone, the AK Parti has lived this period very intensely, so to speak, to the full.

It has reached the threshold of each anniversary having lived through very important events and generally having overcome those events successfully. But each anniversary has produced more accumulation than the one before. There is now a colossal AK Parti history before us. Because before us is an AK Parti that has governed Turkey for the last 17 years, and has signed its name to everything, all its deeds, positive or negative, its projects, its programs.

Perhaps in the early days it might have been possible to explain many of the negative things that happened by attributing their cause to previous governments, to the status quo, to the tutelage order, but now there is no such way. Although the 17-year period in power does not prevent one from taking pride in all the positive work done, it is a period that prevents making excuses for what could not be done; whatever kinds of crises were gone through, whatever kinds of problems were wrestled with within these 17 years. For precisely this reason the AK Parti's job is much harder than in the past, because it must now respond to the expectation of surpassing itself.

Indeed, as we said before, the general rule in historiography applies to the AK Parti as well. History is rewritten every day, every moment. The past is rewritten in the light of today's events. Therefore, however the 18-year history has been written each year in the light of that day's events, and in whatever way the AK Parti has stood out as an actor within that history, a completely different conjuncture has now formed for writing the AK Parti's history today.

This conjuncture is, for instance, one in which the AK Parti has for the first time lost an election on the basis of Istanbul and Ankara. Most of those making assessments on behalf of the AK Parti, affected by the atmosphere this loss has caused, set about writing an AK Parti history anew; this is not very surprising, it accords with the nature of the matter, but in doing so one must not let go of fairness. When these assessments are made, one must not forget that the AK Parti has not been in power by force for 17 years, but has remained in power by receiving the people's appreciation, approval and vote.

Unfortunately, this dimension of the matter is forgotten in these historiographies, and eager efforts to cram the AK Parti's whole story, after 18 years, into the context of the results in Istanbul and Ankara stand out.

The AK Parti is still by a very clear margin the country's first party, and its leader is still the head of the country. Because what it has done for 17 years has been greatly approved by the people, the AK Parti comes to power each time by increasing its votes. Even if not every one of its deeds is positive, this is an indicator that the dialogue between it and the people is very strong. Of course there is no guarantee that this will go on forever.

No one can say that a people-party alliance that has continued thus far thanks to the strength of this dialogue will continue, in spite of everything, if this dialogue weakens. It is essential to continue to stay close to the people, to represent the people, to be the people itself, not to let go of humility, and, if it has been let go, to return to humility.

However, it is also a fact here that the AK Parti still has stronger possibilities, a more favorable culture and channels than all political parties and formations for keeping this dialogue going. How and to what extent these channels will be operated in the most active and efficient way will be, and of course should be, dwelt upon. What I want to express here is that, while evaluating the AK Parti in the light of some of today's developments, the retrospectively written history is suddenly beginning to be ignored too.

Yet in each of its 17 years in power the AK Parti has put forth very important struggles and deeds. First of all, with its struggle against military tutelage and deep institutional tutelage, it set Turkey on an irreversible path of democratization.

It waged the most important, the toughest of struggles most recently against FETÖ. No one other than the AK Parti and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could have dared the struggle it put up against the parallel state structure that had enveloped the country like a cancer for fifty years, and indeed no one did. Had this struggle not been waged, our country would already have been under occupation, and moreover we would not even have been aware of it.

All the events we have lived and are living through show sufficiently that FETÖ is not merely the person in Pennsylvania, that it is a tool of those who want to keep Turkey permanently under occupation tutelage, and that those who use this tool are by no means giving up.

Looking merely from the standpoint of the history and present state of these struggles alone, it can be seen that in its 18th year the AK Parti still has a mission that cannot be transferred to anyone else and cannot be divided.