Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s popularity is beyond party affiliations and there is not a single politician in Turkey who can challenge his control over Turkish politics for a long time to come.

All Turks agree that Erdogan is one of the strongest leaders in the modern Turkey. After Turgut Ozal (Prime Minister of Turkey from 1983 to1989 and President from 1989 to1993), I can say as a leader he is the most popular man in Turkey.
The more interesting part about Erdogan is that if you vote for Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) or not he is still your favorite leader since his days of Mayor of Istanbul (1994 to 1998).
And another point is that Erdogan’s fame is beyond the AK Party, that is why he is dreaming of changing country’s parliamentary system to a presidential system of government.
And, also, there is no strong competitor against him in any other party or in the political arena of Turkey.
The old popular names, like Tansu Ciller (Prime Minister from 1993 to 1996) and Mesut Yilmaz (Prime Minister from June 1991 to October 1991, March 1996 to June 1996, June 1997 to January 1999) have simply disappeared from the scene. And politicians like Kemal Kilicdaroglu and Deniz Baykal have no chance against Erdogan.
Erdogan is really strong in his party and in all of the country, so, there is no argument about his leadership qualities.
Future of Turkey
When there is no strong competition between the AKP and other political parties the AK Party seems the only solution for Turkey. And all Turks agree that now the economy is better if you compare it with the 1990s to 2001.
Turkey still has economic problems like unemployment, and significant income deficit between the poor and the elite classes. However, there is a positive point that the middle class in Turkey is flourishing.
If the AK Party leaders would be able to attract more international investment and have better relations with the Middle East, Europe and the United States the middle class population will increase further. In a globalized world Turkey should play with the global rules and it should try to get more economic value against its competitors.
I am thinking positively because I am 35-year-old and have never seen interest rates that low in my life. We can borrow money with 10 to 12 percent interest rate per year.
However, I am not that happy of Turkish currency’s valuation against dollar and euro since it is affecting country’s export power negatively.
With low interest rates, businessmen and entrepreneurs have more chance to do business rather than putting their money in banks and getting interest over it.
The only problem is that although our exports are rising our imports are also growing more strongly. Last month, the deficit between the exports and imports reached around $9.1 billion, i.e. record in Turkey’s recent history.
And we believe that Turkish government is financing this deficit from the short term loans coming from different funds from all over the world (big amount is coming from the Arab states).
Rising Turkey looks towards East
There has been great support among people for the AKP -- now which has been translated to 50 percent votes and third election victory for the party -- first in the Turkish history, but another thing we should consider is that western side and eastern side of Turkey are really different.
The AKP is giving more support to its followers who are more Islamic people; I mean who live their lives according to Islamic principles. They are much more active in the social life, in business and everywhere else. They are becoming stronger and getting richer.
Liberal people are more affected because of some restrictions, but I can not say that their life is totally influenced.
Economic statistics are showing that Turkey’s economy is growing, but Erdogan and his economic team should do extra efforts in order to make Turkish currency stronger, decrease unemployment, and get longer term investments from all over the world.
The AKP leadership has to concentrate on the production and get people’s interest in producing something than only consuming. Only producer economies have a chance to solve problem of unemployment.
After the AKP hit the political landscape I as a businessman visited Iran and Syria first time in my life. In the pre-AKP days we were afraid of visiting our neighboring countries. I saw personally that we have much more closer affinities with our neighbors. We really forgot them for a long time. I realized that we have very close cultural values. And these closer ties also gave us some business.
However, in my personal view, during this period of getting better relations with the Islamic countries we also did some mistakes with our relations toward European countries. Because of our endless story of EU nomination the Turkish government seems a bit more tired of endless problems that the EU is creating.
Many Turks believe that it will be not that easy to be a member of the EU since we are an Islamic country. A long time ago I had a similar discussion with one Spanish businessman in an international exhibition. He knew Turkey (of course more of its western side) and Turkish people and delicious Turkish foods. He was in love with the Turks, but he was of the opinion that if Turkey’s western cities like Istanbul, Izmir, Bursa, and Antalya (is Turkey and) want to join the EU there should not be any problem for it to get EU membership.
But, Turkey is also the east, north and many other cities where people are living according to different cultural values.
The AKP leadership seems giving some reaction to EU countries because we are the only country that is still in the waiting list since a long time; we became a nominee for the EU in the 1960s.
So because of this reaction our government thinks that it should concentrate more on the Middle Eastern countries and Russia.
Another positive thing I can add is that now we would be able to go to 47 countries without a visa.
So it’s a good change for tourism, business and for cultural understanding between the peoples. One of the most interesting and important one is with Russia. Now every year millions of Russians are coming to Turkey. The Mediterranean side of Turkey has become like a Russian city. Turkish citizens can also go to Russia without visa and stay there for 30 days as a tourist.
This has provided an opportunity for us to enter one of the strongest and biggest markets, which is near to us, Russia, and former Soviet Union states.
I am currently in Uzbekistan and doing business here since 2006.
Another big change is that once military men were really strong in Turkey; they were seemed as if they were behind many important things, but this has really changed after the AKP’s success in 2002.
There is no pride of having one of the biggest armies of the world. We should be proud of having strong economies, inventions, cultural values, sport successes, and achievements in the arts, that is a pride for any nation.
Devrim Basar Turan is Turkey’s globetrotting entrepreneur. He has written this article for the Tehran Times.