The Justice and Development Party (AKP) conquered the majority of votes for the first time in 2002, thanks to a political programme which put together on the one hand a credible response to the economic crisis by further integration in the global economy and the perspective of the EU accession, and on the other hand the promise to protect the rights of the religious-conservative sectors. This multifaceted political perspective allowed the AKP to build a cross-class coalition which included a wide spectrum of social classes, ranging from rampant entrepreneurs, to the Anatolian conservatives and believers, to wide portions of ethnic minorities. By addressing the claims of the peripheries of Turkish society, the AKP managed to gain enough consent to be able to carry on an unprecedented programme of reforms. These reform packages aimed not only – as the political roots of the AKP might have suggested – at accomodating the demands of its religious constituencies. In a political environment occupied by elites showing an aggressive interpretation of secularism, the AKP took advantage of the EU accession negotiations to carry on much needed reforms. These were ultimately intended to address the issues of its constituencies while at the same time remove the political and institutional barriers of the so-called “assertive secularism” and thus further consolidate its power.