President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a statement Tuesday on the anniversary of the Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) first election victory in 2002.
“We opened the doors to a big, strong Türkiye in the Nov. 3, 2002, elections, when we received the blessings of our nation for the first time. We accomplished an Anatolian revolution 24 years ago,” Erdoğan said in a social media post Tuesday, during his visit to South Korea to seal new bilateral deals.
“We have been the servant of our revered nation for a quarter of a century with our projects and investments. We worked tirelessly under the motto ‘everything is for Türkiye.’ We know that we are walking a long, narrow path where, Allah willing, we will serve the country more and take Türkiye to a more advanced level in every field,” he said, using a line from a song by Turkish folk singer Aşık Veysel.
“Allah willing, we will continue serving this nation we fell in love with, this country we love,” he added.
The AK Party hosted a panel at its headquarters on Tuesday for the anniversary, and the party’s deputy chair Efkan Ala explained how the party ensured that the people’s will governed the country. He said in his speech at the panel that the AK Party had established itself as a brand in governance, describing management as the most important resource for any country.
Referring to Türkiye's goal of becoming one of the world's 10 most developed countries, Ala emphasized that a common characteristic of the 10 most developed nations was "well-functioning governance." Recalling President Erdoğan's remark that "the people founded the AK Party, we simply put up its sign," Ala explained the circumstances behind the statement.
He said the Feb. 28, 1997, coup had taken place during a time when trust between society and the state had collapsed, the country was experiencing an economic crisis, and politics had failed to recover. It was against this backdrop, he said, that the AK Party was founded. Noting that the average government tenure was one year and seven months before AK Party governments took office, Ala said: "The AK Party has changed such a system. Look, we are now in our 24th year and have entered our 25th.”
