Will there be the same excitement?

The start of Turkish politics in 2001 with the "headscarf" controversy was not surprising to me, like most foreign journalists because this "instrument", which has been on the agenda of Islamist politics since the early 1990s, was also widely used on the eve of both the March 27, 1994, municipal elections and the December 24, 1995, parliamentary elections, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's statement that "our kerchiefed sisters are being persecuted" played a significant role, albeit not decisive, in the fact that Erdoğan was elected mayor of Istanbul with a difference of 0.3% of the vote and in the fact that the Welfare Party was the first party in parliament with 22.6% of the vote.

Moreover, when we add the resignation of the Erbakan government following the army's ultimatum on February 28, 1997, the closure of the Welfare Party a few months later, Erdoğan's dismissal from the Istanbul mayor's office and arrest for the poem he read, and finally the fact that Merve Kavakçı (currently Turkey's ambassador to Kuala Lumpur), who was elected from the list of the Islamist Virtue Party, of which name was changed only and electorate was the same, with a headscarf, was hissed off the hall without being given the opportunity to take the oath, we see that the fighting attribute of the Islamist-conservative wing became definite.

As Bülent Arınç ridiculed the action of Nesrin Ünal, an Antalya MP from the Nationalist Movement Party, who came second in the April 18, 1999, elections and took off her headscarf and took the oath without it, by saying "They solved the headscarf problem by taking off their headscarves", the Islamists were able to consolidate a wider circle around them.

The definition of a political symbol was one of the factors that accelerated the formation of the AKP, and the economic crisis of February 19, 2001, was one of the factors that led to AKP’s coming to power alone. But let's not forget that the main factor was the economy.

During the first term of the AKP government, it was not possible to liberalize the headscarf in public places, government offices, lyceums, and universities. One of those who opposed it was President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

On the eve of the presidential election scheduled for April 2007, the AKP nominated Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Gül. Gül's wife was kerchiefed, and when her next attempt to enroll in a university in 1998 failed again, Gül, then an opposition MP, complained to the ECtHR about the Turkish state. On April 27, 2007, when the army issued an ultimatum in the form of "We want a president who is committed to the principles of secularism and whose wife is not kerchiefed", this situation has re-ignited the sensitivity of Islamist voters, and the AKP, which has skillfully used it, emerged from the election with a stronger government.

The AKP, which has repeatedly skillfully used the "two steps forward, one step back" principle over the past 10 years, has completely removed the "headscarf issue" from Turkey's agenda.

Today, from the minister to the judge, from the mayor to the university teacher, from the MP to the student, the class that does not face a problem regarding the headscarf owes it to the AKP government and directly to Mr. Erdoğan. Therefore, after Friday prayers at the Hagia Sophia on the first day of the year, it was surprising that AKP leader and President, Erdoğan, attributed those wearing a headscarf to his own electorate by trying to hit the main opposition party again with a "headscarf".

Because 1) The "headscarf", one of the elements of pressure on the AKP’s coming to power alone in 2002, has not been used as a "tool of discontent" of the political Islam in political rhetoric for at least five years; 2) How realistic is turning the effect and excitement created by the "headscarf", which was the main means of the campaign after the economy at the time of the establishment of the AKP and on the eve of the first election in which it participated, on the then conservative class into a rating in the ballot box by creating the same effect and excitement on the same class that has changed at least one generation today that a return to that point is considered appropriate by the most experienced statesman and politician in Turkish politics, such as Mr. Erdoğan? 3) Let us recall that the determining factor in the victory of the AKP in 2002 was the economic crisis.

Taking advantage of this, the AKP won the support of the people by announcing the program of 34-year-old economist Ali Babacan in the polls. While economic parameters show that the current situation is not better than in the 2002 election period, will the "headscarf" help raise the ruling party's rating when it is brought back to the public agenda as an unresolved issue? The election will show.

Another interesting aspect is that Ali Babacan, the architect of the economic program presented to voters in 2002, was the target of sharp criticism when he highlighted the "headscarf" rather than the economy in his speech at the first congress of his party on December 29...

Mayis Alizade