The AK Party at 25 (II) The second quarter-century: from a strong state to a just society

A state cut off from its own nation, from its nation's values, realities and dreams, was Türkiye's greatest problem. It was a state alien to its own society, both in its approach to religion and in its definition of the nation, an ethnic definition that ignored Muslims and Alevis alike, as well as the Kurds, Arabs and even Circassians who make up a significant portion of its citizens. A state of this kind, regarding its own people as a potential threat, could never have carried this country anywhere beyond a semi-colonial condition. That is why we said that the first 25 years of the AK Party (Justice and Development Party) were spent raising the State back to its feet, and that it did so by bringing the state and the nation together, by bringing the state onto the nation's line.

Doing this was of course very difficult, indeed the most difficult task of all. A country, a state and a nation were, as it were, rescued from the hands of colonized or colonizing tutelary minds. The AK Party achieved this largely on the ground of legitimacy created by its developmentalist policies. But we have arrived at a point where the moral, human and spiritual healing of a developed society confronts us as a still greater task. The whole matter concerning the AK Party's second quarter-century is hidden in this sentence.

Indeed, we have sometimes seen that when development itself becomes the measure of all values, it can erode the very goods for the sake of which the journey was begun. Roads were built, cities grew, production increased, prosperity spread; yet the family shrank, people became lonely, solidarity weakened, and the shared conception of the meaning of life, rather than growing stronger, grew weaker still.

Is that really so, though? Or are we, too, following a stock formula? Truth be told, I remember that we made this kind of commentary on the AK Party's anniversaries in the run-up to 15 July as well. But 15 July set forth a magnificent example precisely of the meeting, the union, even the fusion of the state and the nation. Precisely in a society we lament as weakened, in an environment in which we speak of the weakening of the family, of human values, of solidarity. In the ten years since then, has anything happened in Türkiye to change that picture?

Undoubtedly, society is very dynamic. We do not need, for the time being, to cling to things that console us. We have a long way still to go. Despite the picture of ten years ago, and even in that picture, our education of the human being is not that good. We are at the level of the generation of Âsım, whom Mehmet Akif spoke of with praise, that excitable generation that does not hesitate to put its head on the line when the moment comes. But let us not forget that Mehmet Akif did not consider the generation of Âsım to be very adequate in knowledge, education, civilization-building awareness and competence. The Âsıms had to receive an education. We should not wait for the country's honor to be threatened; in that case the consciousness of honor already stirs this generation immediately, as a reflex. What matters is what kind of values, what kind of work discipline and performance it displays in comfortable circumstances.

The AK Party's success in the "development" goal in its name is beyond dispute. In the coming period, it must turn "justice," the first word of its name, into an equally visible, tangible and indisputable success. For justice is not a complementary element to be taken up after development. It is the principle that will give direction to development, legitimize power, and hold society together.

The first task of the second quarter-century, then, is to bring development and goodness, power and justice, state capacity and social morality together again.

The starting point for this is law. A strong state is not a state that can do whatever it wishes to its citizens; it is a state that can inspire confidence in every citizen, whatever thought, identity or political affiliation he or she may have. Justice does not consist only of verdicts handed down in courts. Appointing the competent to public office, distributing state resources equitably, ensuring that closeness to politics does not produce privilege, being able to explain the decisions taken, and everyone's being able to feel that all are equal before the law are also parts of justice.

The second great issue is the family. As Türkiye has developed, founding a family has become harder; as communication technologies have advanced, real bonds among people have weakened; as prosperity has risen, questions about the meaning of life have grown. Young people's drift away from marriage, their reluctance to have children, the loneliness of the elderly, the spread of digital addiction and the growing individualization of society cannot be solved by cultural exhortation alone. But it is also not right to see the family merely as a tool of population growth. The family is the fundamental social institution in which a person learns responsibility, is delivered from loneliness, and experiences love, sacrifice and solidarity. Strengthening the family is, in fact, rebuilding society.

The third great task is education. In the first quarter-century, access to education expanded extraordinarily; the number of schools, universities, classrooms and teachers grew. Now the matter is not merely more education, but what kind of human being we want to raise.

It is impossible for Türkiye to build its future with a generation that can pass exams but does not know its own history, that holds diplomas but cannot produce thought, that uses technology but is used by it. The new education order should aim to raise a human being who can think critically, can read the world, knows several languages, can produce science and technology, and at the same time feels moral responsibility and is aware of the civilization in which he or she lives.

This brings us to the question of intellectual independence. Türkiye has not yet achieved in thought, culture, the social sciences and education the independence it has achieved in the defense industry. We still look at our own history largely through concepts developed by the West, make sense of our own society within others' schemes of modernization, and continue to see the West's experience as humanity's necessary direction.

Even if the official historiography of Kemalism has been significantly questioned, the colonial mentality that made it possible has not been entirely overcome. The second quarter-century's struggle for independence must be waged precisely in this field. This struggle is not about rejecting the West, but about putting it in its true place in history and in the world; and about turning our own civilizational accumulation from an object of nostalgia into a source of new knowledge, thought, art, politics and technological production.

In the age of artificial intelligence, this need becomes even more vital. Türkiye's developing its own large language models, data infrastructure, software, processors and cybersecurity systems is a condition of its future political independence.

Another measure of intellectual independence is being able to see the difference between national self-confidence and ethnocentrism. The presentation, in recent years, of rising racism, xenophobia and especially anger directed at oppressed refugees as nationalism was a dangerous development that narrowed Türkiye's civilizational claim. Thank God that, with the fall of the inhuman 60-year dictatorship in Syria and the liberation of its people, a significant portion of our muhajir brothers and sisters returned to their homes, and the ground beneath this racist mindset in Türkiye slipped away. Yet I wish that, even without this development, a loud and lofty voice had been raised that would immediately put in his place anyone who opened his mouth against the people who had taken refuge in our country, and cry out to him the human values. Being a great nation does not mean regarding oneself as superior to other nations. Greatness lies not in excluding others when one has the power to do so, but in offering justice and trust to different peoples.

The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement signed among Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the steadily strengthening Organization of Turkic States, the relations developed with Africa, the Development Road Project and the struggle sustained in the Palestinian cause constitute the important possibilities of this new politics. But they must not turn into mere pursuits of a power bloc. The international order that Türkiye will lead must not be another form of domination; it must be an offer of justice, mutual respect and equal partnership and, at some later stage, certainly, an offer of respect for human rights within this order on an Islamic basis. We must not forget that human rights violations and Islamophobic policies in these countries with which we are in alliance are at their extreme, and there is no sign of any improvement in this regard.

In its first 25 years, the AK Party freed Türkiye to a significant degree from tutelage, dependency and the sense of inadequacy. In its second 25 years, it must build the justice that development has postponed, the morality that empowerment has overshadowed, and the independent human being that the independent state has yet to complete.

If it can accomplish this, the AK Party will be remembered not merely as a party that stayed in power for a long time, but as a historic movement that, after raising Türkiye's state to its feet, also raised its people, its society and its civilizational claim to their feet.