Whether a watchful observer or not, anyone unfamiliar with Turkey's history of democracy cannot make sense of what is going on in Turkish politics. This is the reality as they cannot go beyond the description of an elephant by a blind man.Since it came to power in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has been under the pressure of many institutions, including opposition parties, mainstream media, legal elites, the old bureaucracy and Istanbul's nobility. Furthermore, the Gülen Movement, which has infiltrated the deepest network of the state, has been recently added to this camarilla.Despite all this, the AK Party continues to increases its votes higher in each and every election and overcomes the hardest times successfully with the support of its social grassroots. This is such an astonishing picture that it may confuse a political scientist who does not know Turkey's "civic political culture" developed in the 20th century.Present content between the government and opposition is just the tip of the iceberg. One needs to look beneath the water's surface to see the reality. There are no political parties, global political trends and simple accounts of vote under the surface but rather a deep clash between people's yearning for democracy and the efforts of the elite founders of the Republic to maintain the status quo.What seems like a recent matter is actually an old problem. Why did I need to use Gabriel Almond's concept of "civic political culture?" It is necessary to analyze Turkish society's general attitude, belief and civic culture toward politics and state. In other words, we need to take a look at the people's "diary." Since the coup d'état of May 27, 1960 - its ill effects still continuing today - the majority of the public has expected a political party that is completely independent from the status quo, i.e. the state of the elites.It should be remembered that the military coup was an overwhelming defeat for the public and the system was once again turned into a "sovereignty of the elites for the benefit of the public." Despite the heavy frustration, nobody gave up going to the polls. But, they were aware that they elected "the lesser evil" at every return, and they could not vanquish the status quo.Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, German political scientist Frederick W. Frey carried out a series of field studies and found out that the perspectives of the electorate and Turkey's political elites toward democracy and political parties were totally in contrast with one another.Frey stated that Turkish political elites always viewed people with the discrimination of "we and others," and this prevented the development of a legitimate political competitive environment.That is why 2002 is a milestone in Turkish politics. People found what they politically desired in the AK Party and Erdoğan, and they launched a "second democratic initiative." People have experiences, memories and civic culture that are handed down from one generation to another. And they do not want this process to be crippled through illegal means once again. They want the AK Party to go as far as it can. They are patiently testing Erdoğan's capacity to fulfill his promises.They take umbrage at opposition parties' holding on to conspiracies instead of adopting a global vision and developing new projects. Due to all these reasons, the electorate in every election slaps opposition parties, which are hardly sustained by the old political elites. How long will this continue? Let us discuss it after the Aug. 10 presidential election.