The Justice and Development Party: Turkey's experience with Islam, democracy, liberalism, and secularism

Abstract

It would probably be quite curious, if not confusing, for uninformed readers of Turkish politics who are interested in learning more about Turkey's ruling party, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/Justice and Development Party), to pick up these five books, all written by scholars of Turkish politics, all dealing with the ideology of the AKP and the social and political conditions that gave rise to it, all published by prestigious publishers, and realize that they make almost completely opposite claims. For example, while Banu Eligür in The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey claims that the AKP is an Islamist party that is “opposed to democracy” (p. 11), William Hale and Ergun Özbudun in Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP see the AKP as a secular, conservative-democratic party that clearly rejects Islamism as a political ideology and is perhaps making the most significant contribution to the expansion of democracy in Turkey. © 2011, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.