issues, for we know very well that numerical superiority does not mean everything,”
the party announced.
The new government selected as prime minister Abdullah Gul, a Western-
educated economist who had been the AKP’s deputy chairman. Erdogan took over as
prime minister in March 2003 after he won a parliamentary seat; parliament had
adopted a constitutional change lifting the ban on Erdogan’s political involvement.
Gul became foreign minister.
Under Erdogan’s guidance, the new AKP government embarked on an ambitious
program to stabilize the sagging economy and put Turkey on the road to membership
in the European Union (EU). Erdogan traveled to European capitals, pleading Tur-
key’s long-delayed case for joining the EU. He won a surprising degree of support
from Western leaders who might otherwise have been leery of the leader of an Islamist
party. In November 2004, EU leaders voted to open formal negotiations for Turkey’s
admission.
The Europeans’ decision represented a major personal achievement for Erdogan,
but it also meant that Turkey would have to carry out numerous economic and polit-
ical reforms to meet the EU’s criteria for membership. Erdogan’s government moved
to implement many of these reforms, including eliminating the death penalty, easing
restrictions on Kurdish culture and language, and opening Turkey’s economy to for-
eign trade and investment. Even so, opposition to Turkish membership in the EU
grew in several European countries, angering many Turks and embarrassing Erdogan.
By 2007, it had become unclear whether the initial goal of Turkey entering the EU
by 2015 or 2020 could be met, or whether Turkey might ever take a seat at the Euro-
pean table.
Erdogan and his party won a second, even more solid, electoral victory in 2007—
this one resulting from a failed political intervention by the military. In April of that
year the generals moved to block a plan by Erdogan to have parliament elect Foreign
Minister Gul to the presidency, a step that would have put an avowed Islamist in
Ataturk’s old post for the first time. Calling the generals’ bluff, Erdogan advanced the
date of parliamentary elections to July 22. His party scored an overwhelming victory
in that voting and retained its strong majority in parliament, gaining the support even
of many secular moderates impressed with the government’s success in reviving the
economy and governing efficiently (Military Intervention in Politics, p. 639).
Following are excerpts from the government program published on November 23,
2002, by the leadership of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party, which had cap-
tured a majority of parliamentary seats in elections held on November 3, 2002.648 TURKEY