Besides the accusations of being a red herring, the term 'conservative democracy' has come under fire from a founding AKP politician, Ertuğrul Yalçınbayır, who claimed that the AKP's party programme was nor initially written on a conservative democratic basis but instead focussed simply on protecting democracy. He argued that by identifying itself as conservative democrat, the AKP has pressured the electorate into endorsing conservative values, which has been detrimental to social unity and freedom of thought. He argued that the term 'conservative democrat' was, in fact, coined by Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan, in a book entitled 'AK Party and Conservative Democracy' in 2004.