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• ‘Democracy has lost’

‘Democracy has lost’

Cumhuriyet columnist Aydın Engin comments on the election results. Political Islam won, and democracy lost. There is an irreconcilable contradiction between political Islam and democracy, we are talking about two concepts that cannot coexist. By winning both the presidency and the parliamentary majority tonight, political Islam in Turkey has declared victory. This shows that some of the practices that the AKP has been trying to slowly actualize are now going to gain speed and deepen because the horizon is open. In the coming period, for instance, they will break into a gallop in the education system to raise ‘religious and vindictive generations’. Likewise, they will block the road to Western European democratic norms, and to integration with the European Union. They have no objections to the Maastricht criteria, the EU's economic constitution. But the Copenhagen criteria, based on democracy and human rights, are a nightmare for them and they will turn it down. I do not know what the EU will do in this matter, and it is likely to fail the test. It won’t want to lose a market like Turkey. But what happened is extremely difficult for those living in Turkey and are in favor of democracy and freedom. I do not want to be pessimistic, but I think it's the beginning of a very dark and dangerous time. After the elections, people say ‘May it be good for the country'. No, this won’t be good for the country.