Ahmet Saltık

23 years of AKP: A legacy of coup and destruction

15 Ağustos 2024 Perşembe

AKP has turned 23 years old, a quarter of a century! Founded on August 14, 2001, came to power on November 3, 2002.

A political party with the same name exists in Morocco, founded in 1998 (Parti de la Justice et du Développement, PJD).

In Algeria, there was the Justice and Development Movement (Mouvement de la Justice et du Développement-MJD) in the 1990s. In Jordan, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), often linked to Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, is also associated with the Justice and Development Party name (1992).

These must be interesting political coincidences(!).

Formed under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by the Virtue Party, the AKP became Turkiye’s 39th political party and has spent 23 years on the political stage. It has consistently emerged as the leading party in every general election. Since the transition to a multi-party system in 1946, it has held power longer than any other party. The AKP has produced four prime ministers and two presidents. Just 15 months after its founding, it became the first party with 34.3 percent of the vote in the November 3, 2002 elections with its politically banned leader Erdoğan, and formed the 58th Turkish government headed by A. Gül.  Erdoğan, whose political ban was lifted by a constitutional amendment, was elected as a deputy in a by-election in his wife’s hometown of Siirt.  Article 76 of the Constitution was amended and the condition “even if they have been pardoned” was removed from the provision stating that “Those who have been convicted of disgraceful crimes such as simple and qualified embezzlement, corruption, bribery, theft, fraud, forgery, abuse of faith, fraudulent bankruptcy, smuggling, conspiracy to rig official tenders and purchases and sales cannot be deputies.” CHP President Baykal was a pioneer in this process. RTE, who had a criminal record, became the 59th prime minister on March 14, 2003, and remained in office for 11+ years without interruption until 2014 when he was elected as president. He received 58 percent of the vote in the 2010 referendum on constitutional amendments. On August 10, 2014, RTE was narrowly elected as president for the first time in a direct referendum (51.8 percent). Does he have a university degree? Still unclear, the fog cannot be cleared.

On July 15, 2016, a controlled coup attempt by the Western-supported FETO was suppressed by patriotic forces in the Turkish Armed Forces. The AKP and Erdoğan were once allies with FETO, with Erdoğan later remarking, “What did they want that we didn’t give?” The coup, marked by bloodshed and hastened by Western interests, led to a state of emergency declared by Erdoğan five days later. This resulted in sweeping changes to the regime, including the dismissal of over 100,000 public employees.

The Constitution was amended for the 5th time in 2017: 2003, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2017. Just like a typical backward 3rd world country! The April 16, 2017, referendum approved the changes with 51.4% of the vote, despite about 2.5 million unstamped votes being counted, a clear indication of procedural irregularities. With complete lawlessness, with an open AKP-YSK coup. This situation was not born in the world of law. It is null and void with all its consequences; it is “null and void”. According to former Supreme Court President Prof. S. Selçuk, the result is legally invalid. A fabricated and absurd presidential government system, which has no precedent in the world, was introduced, and the prime minister's office and the Council of Ministers - the government - were abolished. The president is the head of both the state and the executive, and has sole executive power (Art. 8). He is a partner in the legislature and has the authority to issue the executive decree. He is a party member and RTE has the majority in the Parliament and the Legislature. His authority is decisive in appointing members of the Constitutional Court, the Council of Judges and Prosecutors, the Court of Cassation, and the Council of Consultants.

Turkiye is rapidly moving away from its democratic, secular, and social state structure.

On July 9, 2018, the age of conquest began. RTE is now, in one word, an iron fist without velvet gloves.

In the May 2023 elections, Erdoğan ran for president a third time, violating the constitution once more through YSK manipulation.

The 2023 centennial of the Republic seems to have gone unnoticed by the AKP, which is at odds with the Republic’s ideals.

The DIB is brought to the fore, establishes an academy, issues fatwas, and Erbaş preaches with a sword. The number of public employees more than doubled from 2.5 million when the AKP came to power. In the same period, the total population grew from 70.5 million to 85.3 million, an increase of 20 percent. The public sector was rapidly filled with cronies through nepotism and unrestrained favoritism.

Turkiye is a country of coups. By the hand of AKP/RTE. With the support of the West, of course! RTE was received with that protocol by then-US President G.W. Bush on November 14, 2002, when he was not even a deputy prime minister.

The AKP/RTE, which brags about closing the era of military tutelage and coups in our country and is marketed as such, is a coup plotter. The goal is the BOP and the Anatolian federated Islamic Republic! RTE has repeatedly declared on TV that he is the co-prime minister of the BOP (with the US president). BOP is the 21st-century adaptation of Sevres. The picture is very scary!

However: So far with subcontracted politics, now the mask has fallen off. The artificial agenda of religion, survival, and nationalism discourses cannot cover its incompetence and bad intentions. Destruction and injustices are backfiring, it cannot go on like this. Tomorrow, maybe sooner than tomorrow, patriotic Kemalist, honest people will come to power and rebuild Turkiye, and what happened will be a bad lesson in history. The CHP must urgently ensure national unity, this is its absolute duty!


Yazarın Son Yazıları All Columns


Günün Köşe Yazıları


Most Read News