Today’s Zaman seems to endorse Erdogan and Gül (in other words, the AK Party):

Almost all the failures of the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) four-and-a-half-year incumbency are attributable to factors uncontrollable by the government itself, a record prepared by Today’s Zaman Ankara office reveals.

A comparison of the electoral promises of the AK Party recorded in the Emergency Action Plan published before the elections of 2002 and the current situation on related issues shows that the AK Party managed to “keep its promises” on issues related to the economy, European Union reforms, foreign policy and certain areas of the legal apparatus. The AK Party’s performance on issues related to legal reform packages by means of compliance with the Copenhagen Criteria even thrilled the Europeans, but on certain issues the Europeans still await implementation rather than legal reformation alone. It would be unjust to claim that the government was entirely successful on that front.

The real success story of the government, and something that the AK Party will doubtless base its next electoral campaign on, is the economy. The AK Party was delivered an economy in the early stages of recovery after one of the worst crises in the republic’s history. Inflation was no longer in three-digit numbers, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank strategies were already running. The AK Party did quite well in almost all areas of the economy apart from the current account deficit. The record level of increase in exports is praiseworthy indeed (on the cusp of $100 billion a year) and the increase in imports is understandable, as the country’s share of energy and raw materials for industry are on the rise. Unemployment figures have not dropped dramatically, but the quality of life increased at almost every level of economic stratification: The rich got richer and the poor started to look at the future with hope at least.

So? Nothing negative?

The human rights reforms of the government were revolutionary, but were far from enough. Turkey has forgotten the days of media censorship, police torture, homicides by unknown assailants and misconducts in southeast Anatolia. But the government was never given the chance — and it didn’t insist on having it — to have human rights standards also penetrate the military sphere. The Şemdinli scandal remains unsolved. Verbal or virtual intervention of the military into the political sphere continues to be a day-to-day experience of the Turkish public and the best the government could do was to remind the army that what they are doing was not nice! On sensitive issues like the education rights of covered girls or the graduates of vocational schools, and the reformation of the Higher Education Board (YÖK) the government tried to do its best, but was not ready to put its relations with the army at risk.The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) promised to amend the Constitution and various laws to comply with the Copenhagen criteria, drafting and passing nine EU harmonization packages containing the changes that would ensure compliance with EU accession conditions.

Read the entire article: even though I do not agree with much of the views of Today’s Zaman (which are, for Turkish standards, quite conservative: pro-AK Party), it still is an interesting read, and, no matter what one might think of Erdogan’s Islamist views, he did push through some important reforms and he did drastically improve Turkey’s economy.

What does not make me, and (Turkish) Kemalists of course, happy is that Today’s Zaman wants girls to be able to go to school while wearing a headscarf and seems to favor a bigger role for religion in (Turkish) society. Since the Revolution, led by Atatürk, there has always been a division in Turkey between Kemalists and religious conservatives.