In a snap election, the islamist Turkish AKP, has gained strength over secular parties. from PJ Media:

For one thing, the AKP, which earlier gained about 30 percent of voters support, is now at just under 50 percent. Ironically, the party got a lot more voters but will get fewer seats since both the socialist and nationalist parties qualified, whereas only the former got into parliament last time. A lot of voters backed AKP because they see it as either a conservative party or a relatively honest one. Turks don’t want an Islamist state. Still, they have given AKP a mandate.

Already the narrative is being set in place that the AKP gains were a response to traditional politics, and concerns like corruption, and not an endorsement of Islamism. From American Chronicle:

Vote for Erdogan as reaction against scandals, inconsistencies and inadequacies

You may belong to a Center Right or a Center Left party, but you disagree with traditional and ineffective policies pursued without criticism and without exit for too long. In a case like that of today’s Turkey, you have the possibility to send an alarming warning. Turks seem to be very confident about the durability of the Secular Republic and Ataturk’s legacy, and Erdogan – despite his agenda – seems to be too weak to threaten the State, despite the ominous French and European backing. This could contribute to a risky vote, but Turks are risky.

Vote for Erdogan because of economic achievements

This concerns mainly secular and conservative Turks, who could not be sure that by voting the small secular conservative party (Demokrat Parti) they would secure a continuity for the recent significant achievements in terms of foreign investment, liberalization, and increased income from Tourism. Of course, without the solid foundations set in the 80s and early 90s by Turgut Ozal, nothing would have been achieved, but the overall picture of the Turkish economy led many secular, non practicing Muslims to Erdogan’s AKP.

Of course this is the same narrative we saw in place for the election of Hamas. That the vote had little to do with the ideology and everything to do with the ability to provide standard government services. Notably, the AKP got a congratulatory thumbs up from Hamas.

“The victory by the Justice and Development Party holds signs of people’s trend toward the Islamic project,” said Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri.

“This is proof that the Muslim people are certain they have no future without the Islamic choice,” added the spokesman whose faction did the same as the Turkish counterpart in Palestinian elections in early 2006.

Also endorsing the AKP is PM Gordon Brown, who is excited about what the election results mean for Turkey’s efforts to join the EU:

“I hope that this will bring Europe and Turkey closer and I hope that the government will be able to continue pursuing its program of reform,” he told reporters.He added of Erdogan: “I’ve already spoken to him, I look forward to meeting him soon, I think the Foreign Secretary (David Miliband) has already sent his good wishes to the new government.”

Fitzgerald at Jihadwatch adds some historical context, coming to the conclusion that the secular Turks relied on the army for too long to serve as a bulwark against Islamist ideology.

The Turkish secularists let the army be their final protection. They accepted Kemalism and the benefits it brought. It made their own existence possible. But they were not grateful enough. They did not continue to work to weaken the power of Islam over the minds of men. They were not sufficiently relentless and ruthless. They did not stress or even make the connection between all the failures of Turkish society and Islam. That includes its political and economic failures: Turkey’s current boom deflects attention from the high permanent unemployment rate, and may also be partly the consequence of the giant sums being expended in Iraq by the Americans, and dislocations in Iraq that redound to Turkish benefit. It also includes its social and intellectual failures: the bookstores of Istiqlal Caddesi are one thing, the Islamic bookstores quite another. Then there are its moral failures: the refusal to discuss the mass-murder of Armenians, or the treatment of the Jewish refugees on the Struma, or the massacres in Smyrna, not to mention the Varlik Vergesi (a special, confiscatory tax imposed during World War II on Jews, Armenians, and Greeks), and the attacks on the Greek community of Istanbul in 1955 (see “The Mechanism of Catastrophe” by Speros Vryonis). All that was part of the continued discrimination and persecution that has helped to reduce the non-Muslim proportion of Istanbul’s population from 50% in 1914 to 1% today.

He adds that Turkish secularists should understand if the EU blocks their admission. Unfortunately I’m not certain that an Islamist Turkey would dissuade the EU bureaucrats’ Eurabian plans.