What you resisted for 19 years was also reform, sir

As the new reform package, whose preparations were announced by the AK Parti some time ago, moves rapidly toward taking shape and coming to light, curiosity, and debates even before it has been announced, are accelerating. The reaction of the main opposition, which from the moment it heard the word reform from the AK Parti responded with "a party that has been in power for 18-19 years has thought of making reform only now?", is precisely the picture of its having slept standing up until now.

What all has happened in Turkey over 19 years; these happenings have quite literally restructured and built Turkey anew. The meaning and nature of the state changed, the state became the nation's state, oligarchic structures largely lost their old privileges, class mobility rose rapidly, and Turkey's sociological infrastructure underwent a great change. Moreover, while all this was happening, the CHP, with all its cadres, displayed a very ambitious resistance. The resistance it displayed to protect the status quo engraved unforgettable scenes on the nation's memory. Against each of these changes, which amount in sum to a kind of silent revolution, it cooperated with all the elements that immediately reached for the coup card. In the April 27 episode, in the Gezi incident, and in the 17-25 December coup attempts, the CHP expended an effort of unforgettable intensity and ferocity.

Probably no one in Turkey has forgotten all these things it did, but when it itself gives the reaction "why has no reform been made until now?" we feel like asking whether we are facing a kind of "political Alzheimer's." So, as we wake you up, we would like to remind you without shaking you too much: all those ferocious attitudes, your resistance, your opposition that you have displayed for 19 years were in any case against the reforms made by the AK Parti. The AK Parti has been making reforms for 19 years and the CHP has been resisting these reforms. This is like a division of labor between two political parties that has become almost a routine of 19 years.

Truly, as we said before, reform is not something that has occurred to the AK Parti today; it is a style of politics. The AK Parti's reformist identity is the most important feature that built it. Reform is something constantly demanded by a society that has an extremely dynamic structure in Turkey. A consequence of dynamism is constant growth; as it grows, it is inevitable that needs develop, change and renew. For these, innovations you made in one period can begin to fall short after a period. The constant monitoring of social demands and needs and answering them requires adopting a reformist style of politics.

That is why, for the AK Parti, the politics of reform was not a single step undertaken once and for all times. It was a style of politics. Sometimes reform can also be a need generated by problems that arise within a government's own practice. A period of 19 years is a period in which a government practice can see that it must make some changes, updates. What matters is being able to see this need, being able to reflect on oneself, being able to see the deficiencies of the system or of oneself.

The AK Parti is doing this now. It does it again and again. Perhaps because of the coup attempts with which it has been kept busy for some time, it may have given a different impression, but this reformist aptitude is written in the AK Parti's genetics. It cannot turn back from there, because it knows that it will lose if it does.

The most important aim of reform is justice. The ultimate aim of all the reforms made before this, and of the AK Parti's entire political program, is securing justice. Not only because an important leg of the reform is judicial reform; in fact the judicial part is only a part of justice, and of course an important part.

The choice of justice in the AK Parti's name is not a word chosen merely to be a slogan. Justice is both the AK Parti's aim and its identity at the same time. So much so that even the "development" part of the party identity is designed to serve the stronger realization of justice. For development is the most important way of securing social justice.

The level of development Turkey has covered in 19 years has produced a strong, urban, middle-class citizen profile. The number of universities reaching 210, an education level that has risen rapidly and multiplied in a short time, and an urban population that has risen above 80 percent are the most important numerical expressions of this development.

This strong citizen profile that has emerged sociologically is the result of the silent revolution that made the nation a participatory partner in its state, in contrast to the state's oligarchic structure. There are indicators of an equalization in which the health, education, transport and infrastructure services received by people in the remotest corner of Turkey and by people at the center of big cities have come as close to each other as possible. The services and policies provided, quietly and without fuss, to disadvantaged groups through social service policies at a level unimaginable in the past are also a result of this claim to justice and its sensitivity.

Development perhaps can produce, and has produced, results that damage justice even further in other models of social development. But the harmony of development policies in Turkey, in particular in such a way as not to damage justice and to secure social justice, is one of the basic components of the Turkish model.