The Aug. 10 presidential election, which resulted in a first-round for the ruling AK Party, marked not only the end of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's 12-year tenure as prime minister but also a new beginning for Turkey. Over the past months, the Erdoğan campaign skillfully made the presidential vote about the Republic's founding ideology, which had been living on borrowed time since the Armed Forces failed to prevent Abdullah Gül's presidential bid in 2007, and channeled the momentum of a historic win into building the new Turkey - which, to be fair, remains an ambiguous yet ambitious concept for the average citizen.
Considering how pro-government commentators and their intellectual adversaries have reacted to the election results, it remains largely uncontested that the Erdoğan presidency will transform Turkey's political system and lead the charge against the country's old ways. Over the past two weeks, the opposition have been tangled in internal disputes and preoccupied with challenging the legality of the president- elect's final days as the nation's prime minister. Pro-government observers, in turn, celebrated the victory as a turning point in the Republic's history - perhaps even the second Republic, to reference the French.
To be fair, there has been no shortage of similar dreams for the nation's past generations. The left, for instance, remains convinced to this day that the 1960 military coup, which toppled the country's democratically-elected government and led to the execution of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, Finance Minister Hasan Polatkan and Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu, was not an illegitimate intervention in civilian politics but a popular revolution where the lower ranks of the military served as vanguards. When then-Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began to serve a prison sentence for reciting a poem in the late 1990s, establishment papers ferociously claimed that he and, by extension, the Islamic movement, would never get out of jail (politically) alive. Today, we find ourselves in yet another crossroads - except, of course, the current situation embodies Turkey's democratic experience with its achievements and shortcomings.
Looking for a second founding ideology, Turkey has found a new leader of social and political change in (Prime Minister) Ahmet Davutoğlu, who has been one of the key reformers of the nation's foreign policy and, most importantly, dared to question and challenge the most fundamental aspect thereof. Regardless of one's personal opinion of Mr. Davutoğlu's performance as foreign minister, we cannot afford to ignore how valuable his creative approach to politics - which helped break away from the country's traditionally introverted foreign policy, tackle frozen conflicts and redefine national interest - could prove to a nation whose overwhelming majority voted against its founding ideology yet remains largely unsure about what set of principles should guide its future efforts.
Surely enough, the AK Party leadership's decision to pick Mr. Davutoğlu as chairman and prime minister did reflect the foreign minister's perceived ability to work under Mr. Erdoğan, but equally showed their confidence in Mr. Davutoğlu as the next president's closest ally and partner. As such, the creative genius of Mr. Davutoğlu promises to position him not only as Mr. Erdoğan's political successor but also a driving force and mastermind behind Turkey's second founding ideology.
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