When Are Moderation and Democratization Sustainable? Theory and Lessons from Political Islam in Turkey.

This paper is aimed at contributing to better explanations for the relationship between Political Islam and democracy, and, for that matter, religious politics and democracy, by using deductive theoretical development and evidence from a crucial case: the case of the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) in Turkey. The AKP is firmly rooted in Political Islam but owes its success mostly to its successful "moderation" and adaptation to secular democracy by in Turkey. The paper argues that political participation needs to be endogenized in order to explain the possibility and sustainability of moderation: sustainable moderation depends on the sustainability of democratization, which in turn depends on the credibility of moderation. It is also argued that the credibility of "political" moderation is closely related to constituency values. This is especially true in the case of predominantly Muslim countries where the main political conflicts between Islamists and secularists revolve around questions of social regulation and pluralism. Accordingly, the paper predicts that moderation will be more sustainable in areas where political moderation was accompanied by simultanous moderation in constituency values. Preliminary findings of a systematic content analysis of Turkish Islamic-conservative newspapers between 1996-2004 support this thesis. The AKP's emergence was accompanied by discursive moderation in areas where the AKP has been most successful, such as political and economic liberlization and EU relations. Discursive change was weak in areas where the AKP has either been passive or less successful, such as questions of social pluralism and secularism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]