In November 2002 and July 2007 the Turkish electorate voted decisively for the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AK Parti) – hereafter referred to by its Turkish acronym of AKP, demonstrating that it was willing to take a risk for broad political change. The voters swept away a generation of established politicians to give Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP enough seats in Parliament to form a government on its own. The election posed a dramatic challenge, that of whether a modern democratic party with deep roots in political Islam was capable of expanding civil liberties and maintaining the democratic system. Before the November 2002 election, many in the Western media had described the AKP as a “fundamentalist party.” After the election, the same journalists used the phrase “Islamist or Islamic party”; and when the party started to adopt the EU's Copenhagen criteria, they referred to it as a “party with Islamic roots.” Two years later, when parliament had passed several major reform packages, the AKP was characterized as a “reformed Islamist party.” Later, during parliamentary consideration of new legislation on adultery, the European media once again used the adjective “Islamist” or “Islamic” to describe the AKP. After the 2007 elections, The Economist called the AKP a “mildly Islamist” party.