Tayyip Erdogan Launches AKP Electoral Campaign
Islamist leader is banned from active politics
The Turkish Times - Despite the ban on his political future as a candidate, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the chairman of the pro-Islamist AKP (Justice and Development Party) launched a campaign in Hakkari to win the November 3rd Turkish general elections. Erdogan was banned from active political duty by a Turkish court after he was found guilty on charge of "Islamist sedition." Erdogan has made a number of public speeches during the 1990s exhorting his followers to follow a radical Islamist line. Since then he claims he has changed and portrays AKP as just another centrist conservative party. Turkish secular establishment begs to differ and sees in Erdogan an unreformed radical since his days as Istanbul mayor when he was jailed for "inciting hatred" for reciting a poem with the lines: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes are helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers."

AKP leads all the other parties in the polls and appeals to about 20% of the voters, which commands respect, attention or reprehension (depending on where you stand) in Turkey's very fragmented electoral landscape. New York-based Federation of Turkish American Associations (FTAA) President Egemen Bagis will run in November election as an AKP candidate from Istanbul's 2nd District.

Erdogan kicked off AKP's electoral rally on Sept 28 in Hakkari, in Turkey's impoverished southeast, promising to boost employment amid a severe recession that brought about a $16 billion IMF bailout. The populist rhetoric is likely to resonate with the people of Hakkari province, one of Turkey's poorest regions and the scene of a 17-year-long battle between PKK terrorists and Turkish security forces that killed more than 30,000 people.

"When you cast your vote, you must say, 'We want justice,'" said Erdogan, promising tax cuts to help firms hire Turkish workers instead of unregistered foreigners. Financial markets also eye AKP with suspicion, doubting its commitment to an IMF-backed economic recovery.

"AK Party is seeking peace in Turkey," Erdogan said. "There is no religious or ethnic nationalism in the AK Party. No ethnic group is superior to any other ethnic group. We are all people. We all speak the same language, and I'm going to say the same things all over the country," Erdogan said, standing next to a statue of Turkey's secular founder Ataturk.

Despite tight security during Erdogan's speech, a scuffle broke out between AKP loyalists and backers of the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DEHAP), seen as AKP's main rival in the mainly Kurdish southeast.

AKP in Western press
AKP's appeal to Turkish voters as the "new and untried hope" on the conservative right is followed with interest by the Western press. Erdogan's campaign launch was covered by the following U.S. outlets with the following headlines:

"Party With Islamic Roots Seeks Vote" (ABC News), "Turkey: Moderate Islamic Party's Victory In Polls Looks Inevitable, Despite Ban" (Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty), "Turkish Party Campaigns Despite Ban on Leader" (CNN), "Despite Ban, Turkey's Erdogan Launches Campaign" (Associated Press).

In an incisive analysis penned for Eurasia Insight, Jean-Christophe Peuch called the ban on Erdogan both "controversial" and a decision which many in Turkey "believe is fraught with political consequences."

[Please see our OPINION pages for the full text of the analysis. ]