At exactly this point of the song, a Davidic voice was needed

The AK Parti is a party that has governed Turkey alone for 12 years. As such, it is possible to say that the AK Parti has made contributions of a revolutionary nature to Turkey's political history in many respects.

First of all, it is certainly a first in having stayed in power alone by winning successive elections, and moreover increasing its vote each time. With this feature the AK Parti showed that a relationship or value called loyalty, beyond mere politics, can exist between party and voter, and that it can well have validity.

Within this balance, while representing its voters, its sociological base, with complete loyalty, the AK Parti has also led that same sociological base's transformation without any claim of Jacobin superiority. In this way it also put forward an extremely original model of a political party's relationship with its own sociological base. It has also had a very important effect on the political horizons, stances and goals of these segments, which are completing their urbanization and their rise into the middle class.

The cultural and political dimensions of this change should be examined separately. Indeed, academic theses on this dimension alone would be well worthwhile.

We can also say that the AK Parti has opened a lane of its own by having the most extensive network of relations with the world and sphere of influence among Turkey's parties. It may be said that today, through the diplomacy it conducts in its own name, the AK Parti also creates a quite distinct and powerful opportunity for Turkey.

One of the AK Parti's original aspects is that, although in power, it competes with itself by doing what the opposition should be doing. It has, as it were, managed to oppose its own government and thereby constantly force itself toward the better and the further. Perhaps this was partly something forced by the vacuum arising from the opposition's not doing its own job, but perhaps by not leaving the opposition any space it also caused a functional opposition never to form. This is, of course, a subject for a separate study, but in this field too the AK Parti has certainly displayed a quite distinct originality.

Another of the AK Parti's original aspects is that it is the party whose movements and politics are watched with interest throughout the world today, and the party with the most widespread influence internationally in Turkey's political history. Ahmet Davutoğlu expressed this situation by saying "the rise of Turkey and the rise of the AK Parti have become inseparably identified with each other," and these words best sum up the AK Parti's originality in this regard.

One of the originalities the AK Parti has brought to our political life is that it has tied the balance it has struck between tradition and renewal to an institutional convention. With the three-term rule turning into a convention, the balance of renewal within the party is largely secured, but there is also a dynamism in which experience and tradition are in no way excluded and, on the contrary, tradition is revitalized further at every stage by the infusion of fresh blood.

A typical manifestation of another original aspect of the AK Parti was also seen yesterday, in the scene in which Ahmet Davutoğlu was announced as candidate for prime minister and party chairman by the party's own leader, our 12th President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This same scene had taken place 7 years ago, again by Erdoğan himself, when Mr. Abdullah Gül was announced as a presidential candidate.

In essence, the originality that produces these scenes is that the AK Parti is a party of a cause rather than a movement of career and personal advancement. That a party that has achieved 52 percent can pass through the most critical stage, choosing a chairman for itself and a prime minister for the cabinet, in the most comfortable manner possible shows both the party's strength and its originality.

Without doubt the most important source of this strength is its leadership, but the greatest strength of that leadership in turn stems from the fact that, through the importance it gives to the principle of consultation, it listens very well to the common mind within the party and evaluates it.

The person that mind points to in the present situation also points to the magnificent harmony between his personal qualities and the party's sociological base. Change is inevitable over time, but it is not always possible in every institution for this change to be in harmony.

That Erdoğan became President after Abdullah Gül, and that Davutoğlu is becoming AK Parti Chairman and prime minister after Erdoğan, reflects, as it were, the perfect harmony of the successive, concordant notes of a very good piece of music.

In 2007, when the possibility arose that Abdullah Gül would not become president, we had said "this song cannot end this way," because within that context Gül's presidency was destined at that point in the song.

At this point in the perfect song we are listening to now, a Davidic voice would show a perfect harmony.