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On August 10, 2014, for the first time, Turkish citizens went to ballot box to elect the President of Turkey. In this historic election, there were three candidates-Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, and Selahattin Demirtaş. Although all three candidates exhibited distinct political views, each presented an unprecedented centrist and consensus-seeking stance. This presidential election of 2014 contrasted with the 2007 election of President Abdullah Gül, who was elected by a majority vote in Parliament, as is the practice under the Turkish constitution. In that election, positions toward the Turkish presidency were highly polarized. The main opposition party, the Republican People's Party, and the Turkish military opposed Gül's election owing to his conservative ideology and his wife's public display of religion by wearing a Muslim headscarf. Consequently, the idea of electing Turkey's President by popular vote emerged in the spring of 2007, in response to the military general's threats of intervention and secularist parliamentarians' protest of the first lady's conservative clothing. The supporters of Turkey's old Jacobin political order argued for continued militant secularism and elitism, but they lost five consecutive elections from 2007 to 2014. As a result of their repeated electoral defeats, this style of elitism and militarist Kemalism has lost its legitimacy and credibility in Turkish politics, forcing them now to adjust to Turkey's new pluralist democracy. Thus, the presidential election of August 2014 has legitimized a new Turkish political system characterized by a stable, pluralist democracy.
Turkish politics has undergone a gradual and peaceful evolution in the twelve years of the AK Party government, since November 2002. During this period, national, constitutional, and local elections have produced significant progress in eliminating the Jacobin legacy of Kemalism.1 In 2007, this elitist ideology was still strong, mobilizing supporters against a woman's right to wear a headscarf, and camouflaging its agenda with slogans of freedom and democracy. The resounding victory by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in that election empowered Turkey's true democrats to undertake a movement for civil rights. Under this democratic movement, the Turkish government passed constitutional amendments granting individual rights and equality to Kurdish citizens, religious minorities, and women.2 This wave of democratization initiated a robust, assertive form of democratic modernity, consistent with Muslim religious values, and it played a large role in the economic development of Anatolian towns and cities. The Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) revised their political agendas and mobilized reactionary resistance to this movement, but they again faced defeat in the following elections. Although the CHP still longed for the Jacobin democracy of Turkey's past, it recognized the need to adjust its program to remain relevant in Turkish politics. Thus, the CHP raised no serious objections to the launch of the Kurdish peace initiative and the constitution's recognition of women's freedom to wear religious attire in public.
In comparison to the outdated, polarized political atmosphere of the presidential election in 2007, the direct election method seems to have initiated a degree of harmony. In the 2014 presidential election, all three candidates appealed to the center of Turkish political values, with the hope of attracting the majority's votes. No candidate spoke against the freedom of religious clothing or the political rights of Kurdish citizens.3 The direct election method exposed extremist politicians to the will of the majority, and thus forced reactionary views out of mainstream politics.4 Under this new political environment, neither of the main opposition parties, the CHP nor the MHP, nominated a candidate from their own party leadership, and instead selected a conservative intellectual as their common candidate. The CHP and MHP leaders seemed to recognize that their political visions would not win the approval of the Turkish majority, and they agreed on the nomination of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, former OIC Secretary General and a History of Science professor. İhsanoğlu's father emigrated from Turkey to Egypt in the early Republican period, in protest against Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's radical secularist policies. Thus, İhsanoğlu grew up in Egypt, studied at Al-Ayn Shams University and al-Azhar University, and arrived in Turkey in the mid-1970s. In the presidential election of 2007, the CHP would have labeled İhsanoğlu a reactionary Islamist candidate if he were nominated. Yet, seven years later, in a marked change of political strategy, Turkey's two main opposition parties agreed on this very candidate, who represents a certain religious critique of Kemalism and holds Turkey's Islamic affiliations. As such, İhsanoğlu ran on a platform emulating the AK Party's centrist stance. In support of the Kurdish political movement, the third candidate, Selahattin Demirtaş, similarly promoted centrist political ideas, embracing the Turkish identity and mainstream liberal ideals. Under this strategy, Demirtaş attracted votes from outside the Kurdish ethnic base, and he doubled the number of votes his party received in the local elections. Thus, all three presidential candidates symbolize consensus over dissension, as they demonstrated similar political values in support of basic rights and liberties.