Turkey kisses democracy goodbye

Erdoğan, AKP's head & the most polished Islamist on the planet

Turkey's Last Free Election Daniel Pipes

As someone who has been sounding the alarm ever since the AKP won its first election in 2002, I now warn: Elections taking place today are likely to be the last fair and free ones in Turkey.

With Turkey's leading Islamist party controlling all three branches of the government and the military sidelined, little will stop it from changing the rules to keep power into the indefinite future. And should the AKP manage to gain a 2/3s parliamentary majority, either on its own or in alliance with others, it will change the constitution, speeding up this process. 
[Daniel Pipes Blog]
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Turkey's Election: An Islamist Revolution -Barry Rubin

The elections in Turkey mark a revolution. When Iran’s revolution happened and the Islamists took over in 1979, everyone knew it. In contrast, Turkey’s revolution has been a stealth Islamist operation. It has succeeded brilliantly, while Western governments have failed shockingly to understand what has been going on.

[T]he AKP is [now] entrenched in power and can now proceed with the fundamental transformation of Turkey.

The AKP has become famous for the subtlety of its Islamism, disguised as a "center-right" reform party. Some people in the Arab world are starting to talk about this as a model. Notably the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is fascinated by the strategy. Yet as the Islamist party gains more and more power and support--Turkey has demonstrated this--it becomes more ambitious, daring, and extreme.

[M]any will not want to face these unpleasant realities. There will be no shortage of soothing analyses and encouraging talk about Turkish democracy succeeding, moderate Muslim politics, and how “great” it is that the army’s political power is destroyed.

Don’t be fooled.
[Jerusalem Post]
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UPDATE:

Erdogan: Ottoman Echoes Growing Louder -J.E. Dyer

Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a comfortable majority in Turkey's parliamentary election on 12 June...

In his victory speech, Erdogan alluded to Turkey's aspiration to be a voice in the West for Muslims: "Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul, Beirut won as much as Izmir, Damascus won as much as Ankara, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir."

It is imperialist at worst, absurdly arrogant at best, to speak of your electoral victories as conferring benefits on foreign humanity - especially on those once occupied by your nation in its days of empire.

Erdogan knows perfectly well that naming cities in the West Bank and concluding with "Jerusalem" (which he called Al-Quds) implies a direct Turkish interest in the disposition of these cities that evokes the era when they, too, were under Ottoman rule.
(Hot Air)
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