Weeks before the referendum, I knew that I would be writing this op-ed to draw inferences and lessons learned from Turkey after Mustafa Kamel Ataturk introduced a secular, constitutional government between 1922 and 1924.

Since January 25, this model has been often lauded as an example for Egypt, with its advocates noting that despite an Islamist-leaning government coming to power in Ankara, Turkey has still managed to remain a secular state with a booming economy.
 

In the days leading up to March 19, the Turkish model seemed more relevant to Egypt than it ever did before. Mind you, that is not to say we should follow Turkey’s footsteps exactly, but there are quite a few lessons to be learned from their successes and failures.
 

Before looking at Turkey, we can’t ignore Algeria in the early 1990s. Early in 1992, Algeria went through the first round of a relatively free parliamentary election.

The seemingly moderate Islamic Salvation Front won these elections with an overwhelming majority.

Once elected, they showed their ugly side. Prior to the elections, the party repeatedly announced that it did not intend to implement an Islamist agenda; on the night of its triumph, however, the exhilarated party’s leaders’ tongues slipped and they announced they would void the constitution and implement Islamic law. The military cancelled the second round of voting, essentially staging a coup, and the country descended into a vicious civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed.
 

Lesson learned: Politicians always sugarcoat their agendas when they are trying to get elected.

This is even more true when said politicians have an Islamist agenda in a country where Coptic Christians make up 10 percent of the population, to say nothing of the many Muslims who are against Islamist rule.
 

Just because the Muslim Brotherhood — one of the nation’s most politically organized groups — says it will not field a presidential candidate in the upcoming elections, it does not mean the group will not be pulling strings behind the scenes, including in Parliament, to advance their agenda of an Islamist state.

Nor does it mean the Brotherhood will not change its mind in the near future. After all, the leadership did say the group would not participate on the January 25 demonstrations, but in the days that followed, the Muslim Brotherhood had a vocal presence in Tahrir.
 

Getting back to Turkey. What Turkey did right during its formative years was creating a strong constitution that protected the people from the power of any regime, be it the president, his ministers or the parliament. When Ataturk called for political and social reforms toward a more secular and democratic state, a strong constitution was created in 1924.

Alongside this constitution, various movements worked to raise awareness and public acceptance for tolerance, democracy and secularism. It was those two factors combined that safeguarded the country from radicalism and brought it forward to a modernized state. 
 

These reforms political and social reforms have, for the most part, protected the democratic values Ataturk instilled. They even managed to protect Turkey, albeit partially, against the neo-Islamist rule of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) which came to power by winning a parliamentary majority in 2002. Turkey’s Achilles’ heel, however, is a loophole in the election law that allows a party to win an overwhelming majority in parliament without earning a majority of the votes.
 

In Turkey, the law governing parliamentary elections stipulates that a party as a whole must win 10 percent of the national vote for its candidates to win individual seats in the National Assembly.

This is seen as serving to exclude smaller political parties while allowing the AK Party to secure an absolute majority in parliament despite its democratic pretensions. It seems unlikely this law will be repealed before this year’s parliamentary elections.
 

In 2002, while candidates from the Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP) — a pro-Kurdish party — may have won the majority of the votes in a certain province, DEHAP did not garner at least 10 percent of the national vote. So the seats won by DEHAP in that province were allocated to the AK Party, even though its candidates may have lost badly in those districts. Despite court challenges from other parties, the AK Party took more than half of the parliamentary seats despite winning only 33 percent of actual votes.
 

Prime Minister and AK Party Chairman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, following the lifting of a ban on his political activities, started to slowly but surely undermine the secularism of the state in small and discreet steps. Erdogan — who cut his political teeth with the Islamist Welfare Party in the 1980s and 1990s — is known for surrounding himself with officials and countrymen with an Islamist agenda.

He has appointed his supporters in the judiciary and banking systems to seemingly promote a religious agenda, while some analysts argue that the country’s Higher Education Board has come under AK Party control.

Nine years after the AK Party came to power, the state has considerable influence over various media outlets. Indeed, Erdogan slapped a $2.5 billion tax fine on the Dogan Media Group, whose publications routinely suggest that Erdogan and the AK Party are working to undercut the secular nature of the Turkish State.
 

In 2010, the public approved AK Party-proposed amendments to 26 articles of the constitution. Critics suggest the amendments will “Islamize” the country, allow Erdogan to secure the presidency and give the ruling party more control over the military and judiciary – both of which are known for secularist or Kemalist tendencies. 
 

It was Turkey’s constitutional court that initially blocked Erdogan’s nomination of Abdullah Gül for the presidency, on the basis of Gül’s Islamist credentials. Before mid-2007, the Turkish constitution stipulated that the president was to be chosen by a two-thirds majority of the parliament.

The constitution was amended by popular referendum in October 2007 later that year to give people the right to elect the president. However, Erdogan called early general elections in which the AK Party strengthened its parliamentary majority with the MPs electing Gül president in August.
 

Some analysts believe the approval of the 2010 amendments shows the strong influence the AK Party has come to have over the public through subtle messages sent through media and the educational system. Links between the AK Party and various Tarakat (religious sects), particularly the socially conservative Gülen movement, are often questioned and used to argue that the AK Party is piece-by-piece establishing an Islamic state through stealth.
 

In January, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, commenting on Erdogan’s rejection of international sanctions on Iran, dubbed the current state in Turkey as “reminiscent of Iran before the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini.”

Liberman wrote in a January 6 Jerusalem Post opinion piece that: “Like Turkey, Iran was among Israel’s closest allies and the two nations held good relations between both governments and people.”
 

In Iran in 1979, before the shah was ousted, the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini repeatedly told interviewers that he did not intend to be the leader of an Islamic republic. “I don’t want to have the government or power in my hands,” he said on multiple occasions in 1978. Well, that didn’t prove entirely true. Yes, Khomeini never did become president, but who needs the title of president when he effectively controlled the country as its Supreme Spiritual Leader?
 

If the AK Party stays in power and gains more authority, some analysts predict a setback for Turkey’s booming economy — which, it must be said, averaged around 7 percent growth since the AK Party’s ascension — fearing that the implementation of Islamic principles in business and banks may drive away customers and scare off investors. They also fear that Islamist policies will alienate international allies as Turkey presses for membership into the European Union.
 

Lesson Learned: The educated middle classes that stir revolutions will be disappointed with the outcome of democratic elections and referendums if the constitution ultimately fails to protect the rights of the people. For years, Turkey remained secular and democratic, but just one loophole in the law has given power to an Islamist regime that is cunningly turning a secular state into an Islamic one. et