Pran Chopra July 30, 2007
Writing on this page in the middle of May this year, I had suggested that “far from being too far away to worry about” the situation that was then developing in Turkey, should “concern everyone”. The core of that situation was the elections that were impending in the country. Now, the results have burst upon the scene with such energy that they will not only impact Turkey, but also the whole of West Asia, the European Union, Russia and the United States. In fact, it will affect anyone with a stake in democracy and in the future of secular politics, whether democratic or not.
As in May, so now, the future of Turkey and its role in the region rest upon what happens to the legacy left behind by Kemal Ataturk, one of the country’s most daringly inventive leaders. He set Turkey firmly on the path to becoming a secular society, which would also aim to become democratic. Since then, the domestic polity of Turkey has rested upon a balance between secular values and democratic practices.
But in recent years, democracy has thrown up some political parties, including the present ruling party, the AKP, whose secular credentials have begun to be questioned. This has become more insistent since last week’s elections, as some of the smaller parties are trying to make up for their electoral deficit with a more strident display of secular credentials.
So, on the one hand, there is the AKP, which is still a bit short of absolute majority on its own, but whose electoral credentials are now stronger than after the preceding elections in 2002. On the other hand, there is the main opposition party, which claims to be as democratic but is seen as more secular. Between, behind and above these rivals stands another inheritor of Ataturk Turk’s legacy — the army. It used to be able to pull any party back if it thought that in the name of democracy, the party was straying too far from Ataturk’s standards of secularism. It did that even to the AKP, and that too as recently as in 2003, when that party tried to elect Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as President. The army stepped in because it suspected his secularism.
But can the army intervene now, in the face of a much stronger electoral performance by the AKP? The political party certainly has the numbers in the legislature to override the army’s intervention. Provisions in the Constitution can come in the way of an intervention by the army, or even in the way of the AKP if it turns upon the army.
But then, what will the defeat of democracy at the hands of the army do to the AKP’s claim that Turkey is now democratic enough to be admitted to the EU? And will Turkey still be accepted by the EU if its secular credentials are dented by what the AKP might do in domestic politics — for example, by electing Abdullah Gul as President?
These are contradictory issues to be weighed in the scales by Turkey as it decides in the coming weeks whether to obey the electoral mandate and change domestic polity the way the AKP may want, or to look over its shoulders at European secularists. But the consequences of what it chooses to do will go far beyond Turkey so long as the country is driven in one direction by its longing to join the EU and in the opposite by the powerful non-secular thrust that the latest elections have given to the country’s emerging politics.
The burden of choosing falls upon Turkey at a time when contrary impulses are making marriages of convenience in parts
of West Asia and the Mediterranean. For example, Palestine has already caused ripples in Arab politics by putting the crown of democracy upon the ultra-radical Hamas. What ambitions will that kindle in the breast of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt, where the Islamic streak in democratic politics has been held in check only by corruption in Cairo and the power of US patronage? Or in much of north-eastern Africa, where democracy is trying to find its feet in the wake of rebel armies? Or in Iraq, where it is sure already that democracy will not sell if it is secular? Or, above all, in Iran, and in its neighbour Afghanistan, whose own neighbour is Pakistan?
What paths will Europe, the US and Russia choose in wooing possible friends and allies in this increasingly complex market? All three are in an expanding mood, and will happily jettison some of their own values to expand their respective zones of influence. But who will buy what, and in which currency, when the bazaar itself is vacillating between democracy and secularism?
Pran Chopra is a political analyst and former Chief Editor, The Statesman.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Islam and democracy The lesson from Turkey
Jul 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Islamist parties that follow the rules should be allowed to win elections
THE decisive victory by Turkey's ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in the general election of July 22nd shows every sign so far of having been an excellent result. Big political rows, threats of military intervention, talk of invading northern Iraq, resurgent nationalism and discouraging relations with Europe and America: all that plus a mildly Islamist government in a fiercely secular republic could have been a recipe for trouble, coups, internal strife, you name it. But in fact Turkey has seen a thoroughly democratic election, not too much violence, a big turnout and a clear result (see article).
Among other things this seems a strong rebuke by voters to the army, which had hinted at interfering in the AK's choice of a presidential candidate. Though Turks still respect their army, most do not feel it should intervene in politics. They are also rewarding a government that has delivered good results and punishing opposition parties that offered incoherent and unconvincing policies. That is exactly how democracy should work. The army has absolutely no cause to intervene, though if the government is wise it will continue to be cautious about an Islamist agenda. Many Turkish voters may want to end the ban on the veil, but they show little appetite for more radical moves away from secularism.
Is there a lesson in Turkey for the future of democracy in the wider Muslim world? Yes, but approach with care. There are many paths to democracy, and the right choice varies from place to place. Turkey has an exceptional history. Simplifying mightily, its bumpy path to democratisation goes roughly as follows: set up an empire; inherit a caliphate; fight on the losing side in a world war; in desperation dissolve the caliphate and submit to the autocratic rule of a moderniser who pushes Islam ruthlessly to the margins; then wait the better half of a century for the emergence of an Islamist party that looks mild and moderate enough to be trusted with the reins of government. In short, squeeze Islam out of political life for decades before gingerly allowing a tamed version back in.
Learning from calamity
The trouble with this approach (apart from the long wait) is that things can go calamitously wrong both at the squeezing-out stage and at the letting-in stage. For an example of the first, look at Iran, Turkey's neighbour. From the 1920s on Reza Shah strove consciously to imitate the secular reforms of Kemal Ataturk by modernising his own country's economy and society at a furious rate and forcibly reducing the role of Islam. Iranians did not take kindly to this force-fed modernisation. The ironic upshot, one less effectual shah later, was the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, in which the clerics the shahs had tried to squeeze out of the picture seized ultimate power for themselves, and have kept it ever since.
For an example of how things can go wrong at the letting-in stage, remember Algeria in 1992. In this case a secular leadership lost its nerve at the point when it had to decide whether the opposition Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was in fact moderate enough to be allowed to take office after a landslide win in parliamentary elections. In the end the ruling party and army decided against. They cancelled the second round of elections, with catastrophic consequences. In the ensuing decade-long civil war some 200,000 Algerians were killed.
At the time, Algeria's decision to bar the Islamists from power was supported by leaders throughout the Arab world. Their argument was that parties such as the FIS were not true democrats. Once in power, it was alleged, they would never let it go: it would be “one man, one vote, one time”. In the case of the FIS, Algerians were prevented from putting the party's intentions to the test. But it is striking that precisely the same accusation has long been levelled at the AK in Turkey. Its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, did indeed once say that democracy was a train, from which you could alight once you reached your destination. As prime minister, however, he and his party appear to have got the gist of what democracy really means. There is now no serious doubt that the AK would surrender power if it were to be defeated at the ballot box.
Why so? Some will say that the answer resides in Turkey's secular constitution and the presence of a fiercely secular army that is ready to step into politics the moment politicians threaten to cross the line. That may be too cynical. Another real and arguably stronger discipline on the AK arises from the experience of democracy itself. Mr Erdogan's party knows that its continuing political success and underlying legitimacy depend on listening closely to the desires of voters, which in turn requires it to moderate its Islamist ambitions and obey the rules of the democratic game.
If there is a broader lesson the Islamic world can draw from Turkey's success, it therefore lies in this. Islamist parties that declare themselves willing to abide by the rules ought to be allowed to participate fully in electoral politics. Though this prescription may sound obvious, it has yet to be swallowed in the places where it is needed most. In Egypt, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood remains squeezed out of formal politics despite its growing popularity. High time now to let it in.
From The Economist print edition
Islamist parties that follow the rules should be allowed to win elections
THE decisive victory by Turkey's ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in the general election of July 22nd shows every sign so far of having been an excellent result. Big political rows, threats of military intervention, talk of invading northern Iraq, resurgent nationalism and discouraging relations with Europe and America: all that plus a mildly Islamist government in a fiercely secular republic could have been a recipe for trouble, coups, internal strife, you name it. But in fact Turkey has seen a thoroughly democratic election, not too much violence, a big turnout and a clear result (see article).
Among other things this seems a strong rebuke by voters to the army, which had hinted at interfering in the AK's choice of a presidential candidate. Though Turks still respect their army, most do not feel it should intervene in politics. They are also rewarding a government that has delivered good results and punishing opposition parties that offered incoherent and unconvincing policies. That is exactly how democracy should work. The army has absolutely no cause to intervene, though if the government is wise it will continue to be cautious about an Islamist agenda. Many Turkish voters may want to end the ban on the veil, but they show little appetite for more radical moves away from secularism.
Is there a lesson in Turkey for the future of democracy in the wider Muslim world? Yes, but approach with care. There are many paths to democracy, and the right choice varies from place to place. Turkey has an exceptional history. Simplifying mightily, its bumpy path to democratisation goes roughly as follows: set up an empire; inherit a caliphate; fight on the losing side in a world war; in desperation dissolve the caliphate and submit to the autocratic rule of a moderniser who pushes Islam ruthlessly to the margins; then wait the better half of a century for the emergence of an Islamist party that looks mild and moderate enough to be trusted with the reins of government. In short, squeeze Islam out of political life for decades before gingerly allowing a tamed version back in.
Learning from calamity
The trouble with this approach (apart from the long wait) is that things can go calamitously wrong both at the squeezing-out stage and at the letting-in stage. For an example of the first, look at Iran, Turkey's neighbour. From the 1920s on Reza Shah strove consciously to imitate the secular reforms of Kemal Ataturk by modernising his own country's economy and society at a furious rate and forcibly reducing the role of Islam. Iranians did not take kindly to this force-fed modernisation. The ironic upshot, one less effectual shah later, was the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, in which the clerics the shahs had tried to squeeze out of the picture seized ultimate power for themselves, and have kept it ever since.
For an example of how things can go wrong at the letting-in stage, remember Algeria in 1992. In this case a secular leadership lost its nerve at the point when it had to decide whether the opposition Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was in fact moderate enough to be allowed to take office after a landslide win in parliamentary elections. In the end the ruling party and army decided against. They cancelled the second round of elections, with catastrophic consequences. In the ensuing decade-long civil war some 200,000 Algerians were killed.
At the time, Algeria's decision to bar the Islamists from power was supported by leaders throughout the Arab world. Their argument was that parties such as the FIS were not true democrats. Once in power, it was alleged, they would never let it go: it would be “one man, one vote, one time”. In the case of the FIS, Algerians were prevented from putting the party's intentions to the test. But it is striking that precisely the same accusation has long been levelled at the AK in Turkey. Its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, did indeed once say that democracy was a train, from which you could alight once you reached your destination. As prime minister, however, he and his party appear to have got the gist of what democracy really means. There is now no serious doubt that the AK would surrender power if it were to be defeated at the ballot box.
Why so? Some will say that the answer resides in Turkey's secular constitution and the presence of a fiercely secular army that is ready to step into politics the moment politicians threaten to cross the line. That may be too cynical. Another real and arguably stronger discipline on the AK arises from the experience of democracy itself. Mr Erdogan's party knows that its continuing political success and underlying legitimacy depend on listening closely to the desires of voters, which in turn requires it to moderate its Islamist ambitions and obey the rules of the democratic game.
If there is a broader lesson the Islamic world can draw from Turkey's success, it therefore lies in this. Islamist parties that declare themselves willing to abide by the rules ought to be allowed to participate fully in electoral politics. Though this prescription may sound obvious, it has yet to be swallowed in the places where it is needed most. In Egypt, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood remains squeezed out of formal politics despite its growing popularity. High time now to let it in.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Elections in Turkey The burden of victory
EVEN fans of Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were surprised by the scale of his success. His mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party won 47% of the vote on July 22nd, a 12-point increase in the vote that swept him to office in 2002. During the campaign those who had predicted the success, such as Taha Erdem, a respected pollster, were accused of taking sides. “A fat lie,” declared Mine Kirikkanat, a pro-secular commentator, who has since had to eat her words. Others who have been soundly rebuked by the voters include the army, which helped to precipitate the early elections by trying to block AK's choice of candidate as Turkey's new president.
Mr Erdogan's gamble in going to the voters paid off. Turnout was a record 85%, with millions of Turks cutting short beach holidays to cast their ballots. AK secured 341 of the 550 seats in the parliament, allowing it once again to form a government on its own, but short of the two-thirds needed to force through its choice of president. Mr Erdogan may be strengthened, but he will still need all of the political deftness that has got him this far.
The breadth of Mr Erdogan's success is best illustrated by the new political map: nearly all of Turkey's 81 provinces, including seven mainly Kurdish ones, are painted in the AK party's yellow hue. Female representation in parliament doubled with some 50 women winning seats—more than ever before. The party's liberalising political reforms, which persuaded EU leaders to begin long-delayed membership talks with Turkey in 2005, played a part in the victory. But above all it was the government's economic performance—7.3% average annual growth, record foreign investment and lower inflation—that won the day.
AK draws much of its support from poorer Turks. “I don't have to stand in line for hours to see a doctor and electricity prices have not gone up,” explained Necla Evin, a cleaning lady. But the markets also responded enthusiastically, pushing the Turkish lira to its highest level against the American dollar in over two years. Share prices soared on the main index of Istanbul's stock exchange.
Accepting victory at his party's headquarters in Ankara, Mr Erdogan told the crowd that democracy had triumphed, and quickly pledged to keep up efforts to join the European Union (despite nay-saying from France and other EU countries). Mr Erdogan also tried to soothe the many urban and middle-class Turks who fear his party is bent on unravelling decades of secularism established under the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk. “No matter who you voted for, I respect your choice,” Mr Erdogan said. “Your differences are our country's richness.”
However, his promise to seek consensus on a new president was being tested within days as Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister whose presidential nomination had provoked the crisis, hinted that he would make a fresh run. “I cannot ignore the signal from the streets,” said Mr Gul, referring to his supporters' frenzied chants of “Gul for president” during the campaign.
The attempt to elevate Mr Gul to the powerful presidency had prompted millions of pro-secular Turks, wary of Mr Gul's earlier flirtation with political Islam, to take to the streets. Their fears were symbolised by the Islamic headscarf, banned in all government buildings and schools, worn by the wives of both Mr Gul and Mr Erdogan. Tensions grew sharply after the army, claiming to detect a dangerous slide to Islamism, threatened to intervene. The constitutional court upheld opposition arguments that a first round of balloting to elect Mr Gul had been invalid, on the ground that parliament lacked a quorum, forcing Mr Erdogan to call fresh elections four months ahead of schedule.
Turkey's friends agree that as a seasoned diplomat with determinedly pro-Western views, Mr Gul would make a fine head of state. Yet, having vetoed him once, will the generals back down? Their hand has been weakened by the poor showing of the Republican People's Party (CHP), founded by Ataturk, which failed to capitalise on the anxieties of pro-secular Turks, winning just 21% of the vote. Turkey's secular elite feels more vulnerable than ever before. “The dominant feeling among secularists is one of shock, impotence, fury and despair,” wrote Meral Tamer in the pro-establishment daily, Milliyet.
Mr Erdogan will have to move carefully. The CHP's leader, Deniz Baykal, is ignoring calls to step down and is certain to keep up his opposition if Mr Gul is nominated again. Lacking the two-thirds of parliamentary seats needed to form a quorum for a presidential vote, Mr Erdogan will have to turn for support to the far-right National Action Party (MHP), which took 71 seats (after winning none the last time round). The inscrutable MHP leader, Devlet Bahceli, has suggested he will co-operate, but he is likely to keep up pressure on Mr Erdogan to allow the army to enter northern Iraq in response to an upsurge in attacks by separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. Mr Erdogan may also have to lobby some 20 independents, most of them nationalist Kurds, who made it into the parliament.
Mr Erdogan has only cautiously endorsed a fresh candidacy by Mr Gul, perhaps because he does not want to pick a new fight with the generals. It was in deference to their sensitivities that Mr Erdogan dropped some 150 AK deputies, many of them Islamist ideologues, in favour of milder, more cosmopolitan candidates. This shift to the centre was also tailored to attract votes from Turks who never considered voting for AK before, notes Peter Van Praagh, senior director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Now that AK has support from mainstream Turks, he argues, the party will have to respond to their needs.
The party's conservative core supporters, however, may have other ideas. They see the party slipping out of their hands and may push Mr Erdogan to return to the issues dear to their hearts, but which Mr Erdogan has postponed during his four years in office: repealing the ban on Islamic headscarves, restricting further the influence of the army and lifting more of the restrictions on ethnic Kurds. As Mr Erdogan noted in his victory speech, “The burden of responsibility on our party is much bigger than before.” It may prove bigger than he wished for.
Mr Erdogan's gamble in going to the voters paid off. Turnout was a record 85%, with millions of Turks cutting short beach holidays to cast their ballots. AK secured 341 of the 550 seats in the parliament, allowing it once again to form a government on its own, but short of the two-thirds needed to force through its choice of president. Mr Erdogan may be strengthened, but he will still need all of the political deftness that has got him this far.
The breadth of Mr Erdogan's success is best illustrated by the new political map: nearly all of Turkey's 81 provinces, including seven mainly Kurdish ones, are painted in the AK party's yellow hue. Female representation in parliament doubled with some 50 women winning seats—more than ever before. The party's liberalising political reforms, which persuaded EU leaders to begin long-delayed membership talks with Turkey in 2005, played a part in the victory. But above all it was the government's economic performance—7.3% average annual growth, record foreign investment and lower inflation—that won the day.
AK draws much of its support from poorer Turks. “I don't have to stand in line for hours to see a doctor and electricity prices have not gone up,” explained Necla Evin, a cleaning lady. But the markets also responded enthusiastically, pushing the Turkish lira to its highest level against the American dollar in over two years. Share prices soared on the main index of Istanbul's stock exchange.
Accepting victory at his party's headquarters in Ankara, Mr Erdogan told the crowd that democracy had triumphed, and quickly pledged to keep up efforts to join the European Union (despite nay-saying from France and other EU countries). Mr Erdogan also tried to soothe the many urban and middle-class Turks who fear his party is bent on unravelling decades of secularism established under the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk. “No matter who you voted for, I respect your choice,” Mr Erdogan said. “Your differences are our country's richness.”
However, his promise to seek consensus on a new president was being tested within days as Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister whose presidential nomination had provoked the crisis, hinted that he would make a fresh run. “I cannot ignore the signal from the streets,” said Mr Gul, referring to his supporters' frenzied chants of “Gul for president” during the campaign.
The attempt to elevate Mr Gul to the powerful presidency had prompted millions of pro-secular Turks, wary of Mr Gul's earlier flirtation with political Islam, to take to the streets. Their fears were symbolised by the Islamic headscarf, banned in all government buildings and schools, worn by the wives of both Mr Gul and Mr Erdogan. Tensions grew sharply after the army, claiming to detect a dangerous slide to Islamism, threatened to intervene. The constitutional court upheld opposition arguments that a first round of balloting to elect Mr Gul had been invalid, on the ground that parliament lacked a quorum, forcing Mr Erdogan to call fresh elections four months ahead of schedule.
Turkey's friends agree that as a seasoned diplomat with determinedly pro-Western views, Mr Gul would make a fine head of state. Yet, having vetoed him once, will the generals back down? Their hand has been weakened by the poor showing of the Republican People's Party (CHP), founded by Ataturk, which failed to capitalise on the anxieties of pro-secular Turks, winning just 21% of the vote. Turkey's secular elite feels more vulnerable than ever before. “The dominant feeling among secularists is one of shock, impotence, fury and despair,” wrote Meral Tamer in the pro-establishment daily, Milliyet.
Mr Erdogan will have to move carefully. The CHP's leader, Deniz Baykal, is ignoring calls to step down and is certain to keep up his opposition if Mr Gul is nominated again. Lacking the two-thirds of parliamentary seats needed to form a quorum for a presidential vote, Mr Erdogan will have to turn for support to the far-right National Action Party (MHP), which took 71 seats (after winning none the last time round). The inscrutable MHP leader, Devlet Bahceli, has suggested he will co-operate, but he is likely to keep up pressure on Mr Erdogan to allow the army to enter northern Iraq in response to an upsurge in attacks by separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. Mr Erdogan may also have to lobby some 20 independents, most of them nationalist Kurds, who made it into the parliament.
Mr Erdogan has only cautiously endorsed a fresh candidacy by Mr Gul, perhaps because he does not want to pick a new fight with the generals. It was in deference to their sensitivities that Mr Erdogan dropped some 150 AK deputies, many of them Islamist ideologues, in favour of milder, more cosmopolitan candidates. This shift to the centre was also tailored to attract votes from Turks who never considered voting for AK before, notes Peter Van Praagh, senior director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Now that AK has support from mainstream Turks, he argues, the party will have to respond to their needs.
The party's conservative core supporters, however, may have other ideas. They see the party slipping out of their hands and may push Mr Erdogan to return to the issues dear to their hearts, but which Mr Erdogan has postponed during his four years in office: repealing the ban on Islamic headscarves, restricting further the influence of the army and lifting more of the restrictions on ethnic Kurds. As Mr Erdogan noted in his victory speech, “The burden of responsibility on our party is much bigger than before.” It may prove bigger than he wished for.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Turkey's election A battle for the future
Jul 19th 2007 | ANKARA, DIYARBAKIR AND ISTANBUL
From The Economist print edition
The importance of this weekend's election goes well beyond Turkey itself
ON JULY 22nd Turkey, still an adolescent democracy, goes to the polls. The event is being followed carefully far from its own borders. For one thing, the country is of huge strategic importance. It borders the European Union to the west and the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq and Syria to the east and south. Iraq is especially crucial, as Turkey's army is threatening to invade its northern region to root out Kurdish terrorists there. Outsiders are also monitoring Turkey as one of the Muslim world's rare examples of a working democracy.
The election contest has been joyless if feverish, marked by huge rallies and demonstrations that suggest there will be a big voter turnout. Only this week an independent candidate was shot dead as he was being driven away from a TV studio in Istanbul. But underlying the tensions is a battle over which way Turkey's democracy will go.
The first fusillade in this battle was fired on April 27th when the army, claiming to detect a dangerous slide towards Islamic radicalism, threatened to intervene against the government. In a late-night statement posted on the general staff's website, it spoke ominously of risks to Ataturk's secular republic. In a country with a history of military coups, the so-called “e-coup” promptly sparked a political crisis that led to the early election. Since then, it has cast a pall over the entire campaign.
The proximate trigger for the army's threat was the decision by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, to nominate his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to replace President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a former judge who was due to step down on May 16th. Like Mr Erdogan, Mr Gul once dabbled in political Islam. More to the point, both men's wives wear the Muslim headscarf, which in accordance with Ataturk's secular tradition is banned in all public buildings.
The army, always suspicious of the AK Party because of its Islamist roots, deemed the prospect of such a president a threat to the secular republic. Despite the government's big parliamentary majority, Deniz Baykal, the leader of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), managed to stop Mr Gul's election by dubiously claiming in the constitutional court that parliament lacked a quorum of 367 deputies in its first round of balloting. Egged on by the generals, the court came down on Mr Baykal's side. Meanwhile, millions of secular Turks took to the streets to protest against the government. Many were urban middle-class women, plainly fearing that their carefree lifestyles were at stake.
The combined pressure proved too strong: Mr Erdogan withdrew Mr Gul's candidacy and called a general election before the scheduled date of November 4th. But in a burst of defiance, he also rammed through a constitutional change to let the people elect the next president themselves. Mr Sezer, who has continued in office as a caretaker, vetoed this. Mr Baykal, who has built a career on trashing rivals without producing ideas of his own, lodged a fresh complaint with the constitutional court. Unexpectedly, however—or perhaps because it wished to salvage its reputation—the court this time backed the government.
The new parliament must now decide whether to go for a direct election of the president or to stick with the present rules. Under these, if parliament fails to agree on a president within 45 days, it will have to dissolve itself and call yet another election. Thanks to Mr Baykal, a quorum is now needed, a complication that may allow opposition parties to paralyse the whole process. Mr Gul has hinted that he will re-present himself as a presidential candidate, but Mr Erdogan has also talked of putting together a possible list of nominees in consultation with the opposition.
Checking the record
To most Turkish voters, however, the election is about much more than the presidency and secularism. It is, in effect, a referendum on the AK Party's record in office, which is strikingly good (see chart 1). Never previously in power at national level, Mr Erdogan and his fellow Islamists have done more to transform and modernise Turkey than any of their secular predecessors except Ataturk and perhaps Turgut Ozal, a visionary prime minister in the 1980s. From the hardscrabble Kurdish provinces to the shiny new suburbs of Istanbul, the effects of AK's “silent revolution” are evident everywhere.
In the Kurds' unofficial capital, Diyarbakir, Kurdish women were recently ululating appreciatively as Mehdi Eker, the farm minister, reeled off the government's achievements and goals: average annual growth of 7.3% (nearly four times the EU figure), a record $20 billion in foreign direct investment, $40 billion in tourism earnings by 2013. “We gave your children free textbooks, brought the internet to their schools, and water to all your villages,” said Mr Eker. He was speaking the most common Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji. Until the AK Party passed a raft of constitutional and judicial changes, he might have been jailed on separatism charges for doing so.
It was largely thanks to these constitutional changes, as well as to an improving economy, that the EU agreed to open membership talks with Turkey in 2005, a goal that most previous Turkish governments aspired to but none came close to achieving. Many European and American diplomats agree that Mr Erdogan is the man most fit to lead Turkey. Their views are plainly shared by millions of Turkish voters, who recall the protracted squabbles, economic mismanagement and massive corruption of the string of secular coalitions that crippled Turkey before AK.
Indeed, opinion polls suggest that the voters may give AK quite a bit more than the 34% that catapulted it to single-party rule in the November 2002 election (when only one other party, the CHP, got above the 10% threshold for parliamentary representation). The polls suggest that at least one other party, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), will enter parliament this time, along with some 30 candidates from the Kurdish Democratic Turkey Party (DTP), who are running as independents to get round the 10% threshold.
Thus, even if AK gets a bigger share of the vote than in 2002, it will probably have a smaller majority and it might even be unable to rule alone. On the other hand, if it were to win a sufficiently big majority (two-thirds of the 550 parliamentary seats) to change the constitution and force through its own choice of president, the army might well step in. “This [election] is a stick with shit at both ends,” says one AK bigwig. “The choice is between a weak government or a military coup.”
That may be an exaggeration. Yet, looking back, some AK officials concede that they could have handled the row over the presidency better. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the president has considerable power. He can approve the expulsion of overtly pious officers, and he appoints judges and university rectors. He can also veto legislation deemed to violate the secular constitution. To the generals, as to the millions of secular demonstrators, no AK man can be trusted in this role. They argue that Mr Erdogan (who originally wanted the job for himself) should have reached out to the opposition and agreed on a candidate outside his own party.
Secular suspicions of the AK government had already been fanned, not least by the controversial education minister, Huseyin Celik. Mr Celik, who is said to have close links to the powerful Islamic Nur fraternity, has been accused of injecting Islam by stealth. He has overseen a revision of textbooks to promote creationism and the recruitment, as teachers, of hundreds of graduates of imam hatip, Islamic clerical-training schools. There has also been “an explosion in enrolment at Koran lessons, especially among girls,” says Alattin Dincer, president of Turkey's largest teachers' union. No wonder Mr Celik had to explain himself in a meeting with the chief of the general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, shortly after the army's e-coup.
Attempts by a few AK mayors to create booze-free zones, as well as Mr Erdogan's own failed effort in 2005 to outlaw adultery, have not helped the party's image with secularists. Yet none of this amounts to a tilt towards sharia law. Indeed, even the AK's fiercest critics are hard-pressed to point to a single act that violates secularism. If anything, most pundits reckon that the army's salvoes may have boosted Mr Erdogan's support. Banking on continued stability under a second term of AK government, foreign investors have been propelling the Istanbul stock exchange to record highs.
In truth, many AK reforms have upset the party's own conservative constituents—especially the scrapping of a law that put husbands in charge of their households. Plenty are disgruntled by the government's failure to loosen restrictions on the headscarf. All 62 female candidates fielded by AK are bareheaded. “We can't put our democracy at risk just for the headscarf, so we've frozen the issue for now,” explains Ayse Bohurler, an Erdogan party chief who sports a tightly wound scarf.
What is more, Mr Erdogan has dropped some 150 deputies, many of them Islamist firebrands who in March 2003 voted against letting American troops invade Iraq through Turkey. He has replaced them with an array of new faces, among them a high-flying Kurdish investment banker, a writer from the liberal Muslim Alevi faith and a famous cartoonist's wife. Ever the pragmatist, “Erdogan drew the right lesson from those [pro-secular] rallies,” asserts a senior Bush administration official.
Unimpressed in Istanbul
Behind the walled privacy of Istanbul's oldest social club, the scions of Turkey's moneyed class are unimpressed. They cling to the spectre of a battle between Islamic radicals and Ataturk's disciples. “This election is about the survival of the republic. I will vote for Ataturk's party [the CHP],” squawks a septuagenarian socialite. Like fellow members of the Cercle d'Orient, her aversion to the Islamists is profoundly snobbish. The real worry is the shift of wealth from an old industrial elite towards a new bourgeoisie made up of pious Anatolian entrepreneurs, who have thrived since AK came to power.
The generals have different concerns. Among the reforms that earned Turkey its prized date to open membership talks with the EU were provisions to trim the influence of the army. The National Security Council, where the generals used to bark orders to the politicians, has been reduced to an advisory role. Civilians can no longer be tried in military courts. The generals' powers would be shorn further if Turkey ever joined the EU.
Yet that prospect seems to be receding. The election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France's president is a blow, because he is strongly against Turkey's EU membership. The French recently blocked the opening of a chapter in Turkey's negotiations with the EU on the ground that it was relevant only to full membership, not some form of looser association. French doubts are widely shared in Europe: only Britain and Sweden are now forthright in pressing the case for admitting Turkey. The impasse in Cyprus, to which Turkey refuses to extend its customs union with the EU so long as Turkish northern Cyprus is ostracised by the rest of the world, has become an excuse for all who want to slow down or stop Turkey's membership talks.
Not surprisingly, popular support in Turkey for the EU has fallen back from the highs of two years ago. Yet although the EU is one of Turkey's two big foreign-policy problems, it has hardly been mentioned during the election campaign. “The EU doesn't sell in Anatolia,” comments Murat Mercan, an AK deputy.
The EU's focus on issues such as free speech and minority rights has also helped to feed a dangerous nationalism. This was most chillingly demonstrated in January when a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, Hrant Dink, was shot dead by a 17-year-old because he had “insulted the Turks”. Three months later a group of youths in the eastern city of Malatya slit the throats of three Protestant missionaries after torturing them. This week the Istanbul-based Armenian patriarch, Mesrob Mutafyan II, said he had received threats to blow up his headquarters.
“Testosterone-driven nationalism is the biggest problem in Turkey,” says one foreign banker in Istanbul. Ali Babacan, the economy minister, agrees. “Our biggest failure has been to create jobs for around 700,000 Turks who enter the labour market every year,” he adds. Mr Babacan is also Turkey's top EU negotiator, and he still aims to be ready for membership by 2013. “Sarkozy will change,” he says. “The EU cannot violate its obligations.”
The Iraq conundrum
Renewed nationalism is also affecting Turkey's other big foreign-policy issue: northern Iraq. Sitting in his offices in Washington, DC, Qubad Talabani, the youthful representative of the Kurds' quasi-independent state in northern Iraq, says that he and his kin are “bracing for a storm”. Mr Talabani, who happens to be the son of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, is talking about what may follow Turkey's election. For the new political landscape is likely to determine whether the army makes good on its repeated threats to attack separatist guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who are based in northern Iraq.
An invasion by NATO's second-biggest army would not only destabilise the only fairly calm bit of Iraq. It would also wreck Turkey's relations with America and the EU. Worse, it might not succeed: the Turks, too, could easily end up bogged down and unable to defeat an insurgency.
An upsurge in PKK attacks has killed over 200 Turkish soldiers since the start of the year. Each new Turkish casualty is bringing votes to the MHP, which is led by an enigmatic former economics professor, Devlet Bahceli. Even his most avid supporters were unnerved when Mr Bahceli flung a hangman's noose at his audience during a rally in the eastern city of Erzurum. The MHP leader has vowed, if he becomes prime minister, to reintroduce the death penalty and execute the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
Like the generals, Mr Bahceli is also keen to clobber some 3,500 PKK militants who are sheltering in northern Iraq. America's failure to do the job is the biggest cause of rampant anti-American feelings in Turkey. Support for America is now down to 9%, lower even than in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to a Pew Global Attitudes Survey (see chart 2).
Many Turks reckon that America is reluctant to attack the PKK because it secretly wants to establish an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, which would encompass the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and, possibly, chunks of south-eastern Turkey. Mr Gul has complained that PKK fighters are carrying American-made weapons. America has denied responsibility. Meanwhile, Turkish troops continue to mass along the Iraqi border. Iraqi Kurdish leaders say their fledgling entity, not the PKK, is Turkey's real target.
Turkish sensitivities are perhaps best explained by their imperial past. Between 1878 and 1918 the Ottoman empire lost 85% of its territory and 75% of its population. “The fear of obliteration was a constant presence throughout the empire's long demise,” notes an Ottoman historian, Taner Akcam. The belief that Western powers are bent on dismembering Turkey remains strong. Gunduz Aktan, a former ambassador who is running on the MHP ticket in Istanbul, argues that Turkey's very survival as a nation-state hinges on preventing a Kurdish one emerging. “If the Americans don't stop this, we will have to go in [to northern Iraq] ourselves,” he says.
Mr Erdogan, who has resisted the army's calls for a cross-border incursion, has a different view. Over the past two years he has been quietly testing the ground for what Henri Barkey, a Turkey follower at America's Lehigh University, calls a “grand bargain”. Turkey would recognise the Iraqi Kurds' semi-independent status; the Iraqi Kurds would coax PKK fighters to give up their guns and pledge to respect Turkey's borders. Relieved of the pressure of having to choose between its Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish allies, America would be delighted, as would Turkey's own Kurds.
But the generals refuse to play along. They still hope that, after the election, they will get the nod to stomp into northern Iraq. It is not only the future of Turkish democracy that is at stake this weekend; it may be the future of the whole region.
From The Economist print edition
The importance of this weekend's election goes well beyond Turkey itself
ON JULY 22nd Turkey, still an adolescent democracy, goes to the polls. The event is being followed carefully far from its own borders. For one thing, the country is of huge strategic importance. It borders the European Union to the west and the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq and Syria to the east and south. Iraq is especially crucial, as Turkey's army is threatening to invade its northern region to root out Kurdish terrorists there. Outsiders are also monitoring Turkey as one of the Muslim world's rare examples of a working democracy.
The election contest has been joyless if feverish, marked by huge rallies and demonstrations that suggest there will be a big voter turnout. Only this week an independent candidate was shot dead as he was being driven away from a TV studio in Istanbul. But underlying the tensions is a battle over which way Turkey's democracy will go.
The first fusillade in this battle was fired on April 27th when the army, claiming to detect a dangerous slide towards Islamic radicalism, threatened to intervene against the government. In a late-night statement posted on the general staff's website, it spoke ominously of risks to Ataturk's secular republic. In a country with a history of military coups, the so-called “e-coup” promptly sparked a political crisis that led to the early election. Since then, it has cast a pall over the entire campaign.
The proximate trigger for the army's threat was the decision by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, to nominate his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to replace President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a former judge who was due to step down on May 16th. Like Mr Erdogan, Mr Gul once dabbled in political Islam. More to the point, both men's wives wear the Muslim headscarf, which in accordance with Ataturk's secular tradition is banned in all public buildings.
The army, always suspicious of the AK Party because of its Islamist roots, deemed the prospect of such a president a threat to the secular republic. Despite the government's big parliamentary majority, Deniz Baykal, the leader of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), managed to stop Mr Gul's election by dubiously claiming in the constitutional court that parliament lacked a quorum of 367 deputies in its first round of balloting. Egged on by the generals, the court came down on Mr Baykal's side. Meanwhile, millions of secular Turks took to the streets to protest against the government. Many were urban middle-class women, plainly fearing that their carefree lifestyles were at stake.
The combined pressure proved too strong: Mr Erdogan withdrew Mr Gul's candidacy and called a general election before the scheduled date of November 4th. But in a burst of defiance, he also rammed through a constitutional change to let the people elect the next president themselves. Mr Sezer, who has continued in office as a caretaker, vetoed this. Mr Baykal, who has built a career on trashing rivals without producing ideas of his own, lodged a fresh complaint with the constitutional court. Unexpectedly, however—or perhaps because it wished to salvage its reputation—the court this time backed the government.
The new parliament must now decide whether to go for a direct election of the president or to stick with the present rules. Under these, if parliament fails to agree on a president within 45 days, it will have to dissolve itself and call yet another election. Thanks to Mr Baykal, a quorum is now needed, a complication that may allow opposition parties to paralyse the whole process. Mr Gul has hinted that he will re-present himself as a presidential candidate, but Mr Erdogan has also talked of putting together a possible list of nominees in consultation with the opposition.
Checking the record
To most Turkish voters, however, the election is about much more than the presidency and secularism. It is, in effect, a referendum on the AK Party's record in office, which is strikingly good (see chart 1). Never previously in power at national level, Mr Erdogan and his fellow Islamists have done more to transform and modernise Turkey than any of their secular predecessors except Ataturk and perhaps Turgut Ozal, a visionary prime minister in the 1980s. From the hardscrabble Kurdish provinces to the shiny new suburbs of Istanbul, the effects of AK's “silent revolution” are evident everywhere.
In the Kurds' unofficial capital, Diyarbakir, Kurdish women were recently ululating appreciatively as Mehdi Eker, the farm minister, reeled off the government's achievements and goals: average annual growth of 7.3% (nearly four times the EU figure), a record $20 billion in foreign direct investment, $40 billion in tourism earnings by 2013. “We gave your children free textbooks, brought the internet to their schools, and water to all your villages,” said Mr Eker. He was speaking the most common Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji. Until the AK Party passed a raft of constitutional and judicial changes, he might have been jailed on separatism charges for doing so.
It was largely thanks to these constitutional changes, as well as to an improving economy, that the EU agreed to open membership talks with Turkey in 2005, a goal that most previous Turkish governments aspired to but none came close to achieving. Many European and American diplomats agree that Mr Erdogan is the man most fit to lead Turkey. Their views are plainly shared by millions of Turkish voters, who recall the protracted squabbles, economic mismanagement and massive corruption of the string of secular coalitions that crippled Turkey before AK.
Indeed, opinion polls suggest that the voters may give AK quite a bit more than the 34% that catapulted it to single-party rule in the November 2002 election (when only one other party, the CHP, got above the 10% threshold for parliamentary representation). The polls suggest that at least one other party, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), will enter parliament this time, along with some 30 candidates from the Kurdish Democratic Turkey Party (DTP), who are running as independents to get round the 10% threshold.
Thus, even if AK gets a bigger share of the vote than in 2002, it will probably have a smaller majority and it might even be unable to rule alone. On the other hand, if it were to win a sufficiently big majority (two-thirds of the 550 parliamentary seats) to change the constitution and force through its own choice of president, the army might well step in. “This [election] is a stick with shit at both ends,” says one AK bigwig. “The choice is between a weak government or a military coup.”
That may be an exaggeration. Yet, looking back, some AK officials concede that they could have handled the row over the presidency better. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the president has considerable power. He can approve the expulsion of overtly pious officers, and he appoints judges and university rectors. He can also veto legislation deemed to violate the secular constitution. To the generals, as to the millions of secular demonstrators, no AK man can be trusted in this role. They argue that Mr Erdogan (who originally wanted the job for himself) should have reached out to the opposition and agreed on a candidate outside his own party.
Secular suspicions of the AK government had already been fanned, not least by the controversial education minister, Huseyin Celik. Mr Celik, who is said to have close links to the powerful Islamic Nur fraternity, has been accused of injecting Islam by stealth. He has overseen a revision of textbooks to promote creationism and the recruitment, as teachers, of hundreds of graduates of imam hatip, Islamic clerical-training schools. There has also been “an explosion in enrolment at Koran lessons, especially among girls,” says Alattin Dincer, president of Turkey's largest teachers' union. No wonder Mr Celik had to explain himself in a meeting with the chief of the general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, shortly after the army's e-coup.
Attempts by a few AK mayors to create booze-free zones, as well as Mr Erdogan's own failed effort in 2005 to outlaw adultery, have not helped the party's image with secularists. Yet none of this amounts to a tilt towards sharia law. Indeed, even the AK's fiercest critics are hard-pressed to point to a single act that violates secularism. If anything, most pundits reckon that the army's salvoes may have boosted Mr Erdogan's support. Banking on continued stability under a second term of AK government, foreign investors have been propelling the Istanbul stock exchange to record highs.
In truth, many AK reforms have upset the party's own conservative constituents—especially the scrapping of a law that put husbands in charge of their households. Plenty are disgruntled by the government's failure to loosen restrictions on the headscarf. All 62 female candidates fielded by AK are bareheaded. “We can't put our democracy at risk just for the headscarf, so we've frozen the issue for now,” explains Ayse Bohurler, an Erdogan party chief who sports a tightly wound scarf.
What is more, Mr Erdogan has dropped some 150 deputies, many of them Islamist firebrands who in March 2003 voted against letting American troops invade Iraq through Turkey. He has replaced them with an array of new faces, among them a high-flying Kurdish investment banker, a writer from the liberal Muslim Alevi faith and a famous cartoonist's wife. Ever the pragmatist, “Erdogan drew the right lesson from those [pro-secular] rallies,” asserts a senior Bush administration official.
Unimpressed in Istanbul
Behind the walled privacy of Istanbul's oldest social club, the scions of Turkey's moneyed class are unimpressed. They cling to the spectre of a battle between Islamic radicals and Ataturk's disciples. “This election is about the survival of the republic. I will vote for Ataturk's party [the CHP],” squawks a septuagenarian socialite. Like fellow members of the Cercle d'Orient, her aversion to the Islamists is profoundly snobbish. The real worry is the shift of wealth from an old industrial elite towards a new bourgeoisie made up of pious Anatolian entrepreneurs, who have thrived since AK came to power.
The generals have different concerns. Among the reforms that earned Turkey its prized date to open membership talks with the EU were provisions to trim the influence of the army. The National Security Council, where the generals used to bark orders to the politicians, has been reduced to an advisory role. Civilians can no longer be tried in military courts. The generals' powers would be shorn further if Turkey ever joined the EU.
Yet that prospect seems to be receding. The election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France's president is a blow, because he is strongly against Turkey's EU membership. The French recently blocked the opening of a chapter in Turkey's negotiations with the EU on the ground that it was relevant only to full membership, not some form of looser association. French doubts are widely shared in Europe: only Britain and Sweden are now forthright in pressing the case for admitting Turkey. The impasse in Cyprus, to which Turkey refuses to extend its customs union with the EU so long as Turkish northern Cyprus is ostracised by the rest of the world, has become an excuse for all who want to slow down or stop Turkey's membership talks.
Not surprisingly, popular support in Turkey for the EU has fallen back from the highs of two years ago. Yet although the EU is one of Turkey's two big foreign-policy problems, it has hardly been mentioned during the election campaign. “The EU doesn't sell in Anatolia,” comments Murat Mercan, an AK deputy.
The EU's focus on issues such as free speech and minority rights has also helped to feed a dangerous nationalism. This was most chillingly demonstrated in January when a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, Hrant Dink, was shot dead by a 17-year-old because he had “insulted the Turks”. Three months later a group of youths in the eastern city of Malatya slit the throats of three Protestant missionaries after torturing them. This week the Istanbul-based Armenian patriarch, Mesrob Mutafyan II, said he had received threats to blow up his headquarters.
“Testosterone-driven nationalism is the biggest problem in Turkey,” says one foreign banker in Istanbul. Ali Babacan, the economy minister, agrees. “Our biggest failure has been to create jobs for around 700,000 Turks who enter the labour market every year,” he adds. Mr Babacan is also Turkey's top EU negotiator, and he still aims to be ready for membership by 2013. “Sarkozy will change,” he says. “The EU cannot violate its obligations.”
The Iraq conundrum
Renewed nationalism is also affecting Turkey's other big foreign-policy issue: northern Iraq. Sitting in his offices in Washington, DC, Qubad Talabani, the youthful representative of the Kurds' quasi-independent state in northern Iraq, says that he and his kin are “bracing for a storm”. Mr Talabani, who happens to be the son of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, is talking about what may follow Turkey's election. For the new political landscape is likely to determine whether the army makes good on its repeated threats to attack separatist guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who are based in northern Iraq.
An invasion by NATO's second-biggest army would not only destabilise the only fairly calm bit of Iraq. It would also wreck Turkey's relations with America and the EU. Worse, it might not succeed: the Turks, too, could easily end up bogged down and unable to defeat an insurgency.
An upsurge in PKK attacks has killed over 200 Turkish soldiers since the start of the year. Each new Turkish casualty is bringing votes to the MHP, which is led by an enigmatic former economics professor, Devlet Bahceli. Even his most avid supporters were unnerved when Mr Bahceli flung a hangman's noose at his audience during a rally in the eastern city of Erzurum. The MHP leader has vowed, if he becomes prime minister, to reintroduce the death penalty and execute the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
Like the generals, Mr Bahceli is also keen to clobber some 3,500 PKK militants who are sheltering in northern Iraq. America's failure to do the job is the biggest cause of rampant anti-American feelings in Turkey. Support for America is now down to 9%, lower even than in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to a Pew Global Attitudes Survey (see chart 2).
Many Turks reckon that America is reluctant to attack the PKK because it secretly wants to establish an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, which would encompass the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and, possibly, chunks of south-eastern Turkey. Mr Gul has complained that PKK fighters are carrying American-made weapons. America has denied responsibility. Meanwhile, Turkish troops continue to mass along the Iraqi border. Iraqi Kurdish leaders say their fledgling entity, not the PKK, is Turkey's real target.
Turkish sensitivities are perhaps best explained by their imperial past. Between 1878 and 1918 the Ottoman empire lost 85% of its territory and 75% of its population. “The fear of obliteration was a constant presence throughout the empire's long demise,” notes an Ottoman historian, Taner Akcam. The belief that Western powers are bent on dismembering Turkey remains strong. Gunduz Aktan, a former ambassador who is running on the MHP ticket in Istanbul, argues that Turkey's very survival as a nation-state hinges on preventing a Kurdish one emerging. “If the Americans don't stop this, we will have to go in [to northern Iraq] ourselves,” he says.
Mr Erdogan, who has resisted the army's calls for a cross-border incursion, has a different view. Over the past two years he has been quietly testing the ground for what Henri Barkey, a Turkey follower at America's Lehigh University, calls a “grand bargain”. Turkey would recognise the Iraqi Kurds' semi-independent status; the Iraqi Kurds would coax PKK fighters to give up their guns and pledge to respect Turkey's borders. Relieved of the pressure of having to choose between its Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish allies, America would be delighted, as would Turkey's own Kurds.
But the generals refuse to play along. They still hope that, after the election, they will get the nod to stomp into northern Iraq. It is not only the future of Turkish democracy that is at stake this weekend; it may be the future of the whole region.
A turning point for Turkey? Why this weekend's general election matters for the whole region
Jul 21st 2007 | ANKARA, DIYARBAKIR AND ISTANBUL
From Economist.com
ON JULY 22nd Turkey goes to the polls. The event is being followed carefully far from its own borders. For one thing, the country is of great strategic importance. Outsiders are also monitoring one of the Muslim world’s rare examples of a working democracy. But the election has been joyless if feverish, marked by huge rallies and demonstrations. Underlying the tensions is a battle over which way Turkey will go.
The army, claiming to detect a dangerous slide towards Islamic radicalism, had threatened to intervene against the government, casting a pall over the entire campaign. The trigger was the decision by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, to nominate his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to replace President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who was due to step down on May 16th. Like Mr Erdogan, Mr Gul once dabbled in political Islam. And both men’s wives wear the Muslim headscarf, which in accordance with Ataturk’s secular tradition is banned in all public buildings.
The army, always suspicious of the AK Party because of its Islamist roots, deemed the prospect a threat to the secular republic. Meanwhile, millions of secular Turks protested against the government. The pressure proved too strong: Mr Erdogan withdrew Mr Gul’s candidacy and called an early general election.
To most Turkish voters the election is a referendum on the AK Party’s record, which is strikingly good. The effects of AK’s “silent revolution” are evident everywhere. Largely thanks to constitutional changes and an improving economy, the European Union agreed to open membership talks with Turkey in 2005. Many European and American diplomats agree that Mr Erdogan is the man most fit to lead Turkey. Their views are shared by millions of Turks, who recall the economic mismanagement and corruption of the string of secular coalitions that crippled Turkey before AK.
Indeed, opinion polls suggest that the voters may give AK quite a bit more than the 34% that catapulted it to single-party rule in 2002. If it were to win a sufficiently big majority (two-thirds of the 550 parliamentary seats) to change the constitution and force through its own choice of president, the army might well step in. The president has considerable power. He can approve the expulsion of overtly pious officers, and appoints judges and university rectors. He can also veto legislation deemed to violate the secular constitution. To the generals, and millions of secular Turks, no AK man can be trusted in this role.
The generals have other concerns. Among the reforms that earned Turkey membership talks with the EU were provisions to trim the influence of the army. But the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France’s president is a blow because he is strongly against Turkey’s membership. And the impasse in Cyprus has become an excuse for all who want to derail talks. Not surprisingly, popular support in Turkey for the EU has diminished.
The EU’s focus on issues such as free speech and minority rights has also helped to feed a dangerous nationalism. This was most chillingly demonstrated in January when a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor was shot dead because he had “insulted the Turks”. Renewed nationalism is also affecting Turkey’s other big foreign-policy issue: northern Iraq.
Kurds in the quasi-independent state in northern Iraq are fearful about what may happen after the election. The new political landscape is likely to determine whether the army makes good on its repeated threats to attack separatist guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who are based in northern Iraq.
An invasion would destabilise the only fairly calm bit of Iraq and wreck Turkey’s relations with America and the EU. Worse, it might not succeed. Mr Erdogan has resisted the army’s calls for a cross-border incursion, while quietly testing the ground for a “grand bargain”. Turkey would recognise the Iraqi Kurds’ semi-independent status; the Iraqi Kurds would coax PKK fighters to give up their guns and pledge to respect Turkey’s borders. Relieved of the pressure of having to choose between its Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish allies, America would be delighted, as would Turkey’s own Kurds.
But the generals refuse to play along. They still hope that, after the election, they will get the nod to stomp into northern Iraq. It is not only the future of Turkish democracy that is at stake this weekend; it may be the future of the whole region.
From Economist.com
ON JULY 22nd Turkey goes to the polls. The event is being followed carefully far from its own borders. For one thing, the country is of great strategic importance. Outsiders are also monitoring one of the Muslim world’s rare examples of a working democracy. But the election has been joyless if feverish, marked by huge rallies and demonstrations. Underlying the tensions is a battle over which way Turkey will go.
The army, claiming to detect a dangerous slide towards Islamic radicalism, had threatened to intervene against the government, casting a pall over the entire campaign. The trigger was the decision by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, to nominate his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to replace President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who was due to step down on May 16th. Like Mr Erdogan, Mr Gul once dabbled in political Islam. And both men’s wives wear the Muslim headscarf, which in accordance with Ataturk’s secular tradition is banned in all public buildings.
The army, always suspicious of the AK Party because of its Islamist roots, deemed the prospect a threat to the secular republic. Meanwhile, millions of secular Turks protested against the government. The pressure proved too strong: Mr Erdogan withdrew Mr Gul’s candidacy and called an early general election.
To most Turkish voters the election is a referendum on the AK Party’s record, which is strikingly good. The effects of AK’s “silent revolution” are evident everywhere. Largely thanks to constitutional changes and an improving economy, the European Union agreed to open membership talks with Turkey in 2005. Many European and American diplomats agree that Mr Erdogan is the man most fit to lead Turkey. Their views are shared by millions of Turks, who recall the economic mismanagement and corruption of the string of secular coalitions that crippled Turkey before AK.
Indeed, opinion polls suggest that the voters may give AK quite a bit more than the 34% that catapulted it to single-party rule in 2002. If it were to win a sufficiently big majority (two-thirds of the 550 parliamentary seats) to change the constitution and force through its own choice of president, the army might well step in. The president has considerable power. He can approve the expulsion of overtly pious officers, and appoints judges and university rectors. He can also veto legislation deemed to violate the secular constitution. To the generals, and millions of secular Turks, no AK man can be trusted in this role.
The generals have other concerns. Among the reforms that earned Turkey membership talks with the EU were provisions to trim the influence of the army. But the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France’s president is a blow because he is strongly against Turkey’s membership. And the impasse in Cyprus has become an excuse for all who want to derail talks. Not surprisingly, popular support in Turkey for the EU has diminished.
The EU’s focus on issues such as free speech and minority rights has also helped to feed a dangerous nationalism. This was most chillingly demonstrated in January when a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor was shot dead because he had “insulted the Turks”. Renewed nationalism is also affecting Turkey’s other big foreign-policy issue: northern Iraq.
Kurds in the quasi-independent state in northern Iraq are fearful about what may happen after the election. The new political landscape is likely to determine whether the army makes good on its repeated threats to attack separatist guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who are based in northern Iraq.
An invasion would destabilise the only fairly calm bit of Iraq and wreck Turkey’s relations with America and the EU. Worse, it might not succeed. Mr Erdogan has resisted the army’s calls for a cross-border incursion, while quietly testing the ground for a “grand bargain”. Turkey would recognise the Iraqi Kurds’ semi-independent status; the Iraqi Kurds would coax PKK fighters to give up their guns and pledge to respect Turkey’s borders. Relieved of the pressure of having to choose between its Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish allies, America would be delighted, as would Turkey’s own Kurds.
But the generals refuse to play along. They still hope that, after the election, they will get the nod to stomp into northern Iraq. It is not only the future of Turkish democracy that is at stake this weekend; it may be the future of the whole region.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Truly democratic - and anti-American By JOSHUA W. WALKER
What country in the world is most anti-American? According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project's 47-nation survey released Wednesday it would not be one of the usual suspects - the Palestinian Authority, Pakistan, or Venezuela - but rather America's 50-year-NATO ally, Turkey.
This finding should trouble the Bush administration deeply; Turkey is exactly the type of Muslim-majority democracy that officials have been touting as a model for the Middle East and the Islamic world.
Consider the facts: Turkey ranked dead last in all the most important categories on the survey, something which indicates the depth of anti-American sentiment. Most tellingly, Turks have the lowest favorability for both America and its citizens (9% and 13%). Moreover, Turkey tied with the Palestinian Authority for the lowest percentage of citizens who think the US is fair in its Middle East policies, a paltry 2%.
Another disturbing sign for US policymakers is the fact that Turkey, an active partner in Afghanistan and a crucial transportation hub for Iraq, has the second-lowest level of support for the US-led war on terror (9%) of all nations surveyed.
It does not stop at US foreign policy. Turkey had the highest percentage of respondents who disliked American ideas about democracy (81%) and even the way that Americans do business (83%).
Turks have never been the most pro-American Middle Eastern country, yet the drop in favorability from when Bush first took office (52% in 2000) and even at the one-year anniversary of the war in Iraq (30% in 2004) to today is truly unprecedented. It is shocking.
THE TRENDS are clear. We are not just dealing with the usual anti-Bush or anti-US policy sentiment in Turkey. We have now slid into an anti-Americanism that cannot simply be erased with a new president in January, 2009, or a special envoy to the Muslim world.
The causes of this pervasive anti-Americanism are fairly straightforward and obvious to even the casual observer. US missteps in Iraq have heightened Turkey's own security on its southeastern border. In particular, the reemergence of PKK terrorism in Turkey, where a soldier dies daily, has produced a non-stop drumbeat of nationalist and anti-American rhetoric throughout the country in the runup to the July 22 parliamentary elections.
The perception that America controls Northern Iraq and restricts the Turkish army from crossing the border, all while doing nothing to stop the PKK terrorists who operate with impunity in Iraq, is widespread. Bush's words, "You're either with us, or against us" now rings hollow to Turks. US policy is increasingly seen as being hypocritical and Americans themselves are now viewed as untrustworthy.
Turkey has officially slid from being anti-US policy to anti-American. This is particularly worrying given the Bush administration's emphasis on democracy promotion and reform throughout the greater Middle East. The underlying assumption is that a more democratic and open society is in the US national interest because such a nation would surely be more pro-American. Within this context, Turkey has been a particularly important country upon which to focus. It is the only Muslim-majority nation of NATO and the only fully functioning Middle-Eastern, Muslim democracy.
The results from the Pew survey disprove the preconceived notions of administration experts and should force policymakers to reconsider their underlying assumptions.
TURKEY MATTERS to America. Its geo-strategic position is vital for US interests throughout the region, but, more importantly, it represents what a truly democratic Middle East might look like. Hating US policy or a particular president is undesirable, but repairable. Hating America and Americans is a disturbing trend that requires serious attention and prolonged engagement.
This finding should trouble the Bush administration deeply; Turkey is exactly the type of Muslim-majority democracy that officials have been touting as a model for the Middle East and the Islamic world.
Consider the facts: Turkey ranked dead last in all the most important categories on the survey, something which indicates the depth of anti-American sentiment. Most tellingly, Turks have the lowest favorability for both America and its citizens (9% and 13%). Moreover, Turkey tied with the Palestinian Authority for the lowest percentage of citizens who think the US is fair in its Middle East policies, a paltry 2%.
Another disturbing sign for US policymakers is the fact that Turkey, an active partner in Afghanistan and a crucial transportation hub for Iraq, has the second-lowest level of support for the US-led war on terror (9%) of all nations surveyed.
It does not stop at US foreign policy. Turkey had the highest percentage of respondents who disliked American ideas about democracy (81%) and even the way that Americans do business (83%).
Turks have never been the most pro-American Middle Eastern country, yet the drop in favorability from when Bush first took office (52% in 2000) and even at the one-year anniversary of the war in Iraq (30% in 2004) to today is truly unprecedented. It is shocking.
THE TRENDS are clear. We are not just dealing with the usual anti-Bush or anti-US policy sentiment in Turkey. We have now slid into an anti-Americanism that cannot simply be erased with a new president in January, 2009, or a special envoy to the Muslim world.
The causes of this pervasive anti-Americanism are fairly straightforward and obvious to even the casual observer. US missteps in Iraq have heightened Turkey's own security on its southeastern border. In particular, the reemergence of PKK terrorism in Turkey, where a soldier dies daily, has produced a non-stop drumbeat of nationalist and anti-American rhetoric throughout the country in the runup to the July 22 parliamentary elections.
The perception that America controls Northern Iraq and restricts the Turkish army from crossing the border, all while doing nothing to stop the PKK terrorists who operate with impunity in Iraq, is widespread. Bush's words, "You're either with us, or against us" now rings hollow to Turks. US policy is increasingly seen as being hypocritical and Americans themselves are now viewed as untrustworthy.
Turkey has officially slid from being anti-US policy to anti-American. This is particularly worrying given the Bush administration's emphasis on democracy promotion and reform throughout the greater Middle East. The underlying assumption is that a more democratic and open society is in the US national interest because such a nation would surely be more pro-American. Within this context, Turkey has been a particularly important country upon which to focus. It is the only Muslim-majority nation of NATO and the only fully functioning Middle-Eastern, Muslim democracy.
The results from the Pew survey disprove the preconceived notions of administration experts and should force policymakers to reconsider their underlying assumptions.
TURKEY MATTERS to America. Its geo-strategic position is vital for US interests throughout the region, but, more importantly, it represents what a truly democratic Middle East might look like. Hating US policy or a particular president is undesirable, but repairable. Hating America and Americans is a disturbing trend that requires serious attention and prolonged engagement.
Turkey: Quo Vadis A pre-election profile of a nation where politics defies predictions
With one week to go before elections, Turkey seems somewhat lethargic about politics. Nevertheless, here in Istanbul, minivans with electoral slogans and logos plastered on them circulate throughout the city. From loudspeakers music blares onto the crowded sidewalks and the promises of candidates and their party platforms are spewed out in ear piercing decibels. The colorful vans stop in narrow alleyways and distribute festoons and flags to eager young children and to Turkish voters who seem to be delighted with these party "presents" or free electoral handouts.
Politicians are on the campaign trial pandering their electoral programs to the masses in towns and villages across the country. The most remote communities still are without running water and sewage but their residents have the right to vote. In the heat wave that has gripped the country for weeks, there is an air of apathy or an almost palpable indifference. Projections are that the weather might reduce the turnout at the polls, a scenario the ruling AK (Justice and Development) Party dreads. A low turn out would likely mean more seats for the opposition CHP (Republican People's Party) and the ultranationalist National Movement Party.
An Electoral Casino
The Turkish vote is a complicated numbers game for a novice like me. And placing bets on who will win at the polls in the tearooms and coffee houses of the city can be tricky. As a kind Turkish reader pointed out to me (for I am perplexed by the complexity of Turkish politics), it takes 310 seats to form a government in the Turkish parliament out of 510 seats in all. However, it takes the votes of 367 deputies to elect a new president. Assuming as the polls predict that the AK Party is reelected with a reduced majority it will then govern in partnership with the other two parties mentioned above.
The new government's top priority in the post-electoral period will then be to elect a new head of state. The potential hitch is this: the ruling party can't endorse a candidate of its own without the support of its coalition partners. The AK Party's man is Abdullah Gul. He has been selected to run by his party's rank and file and the benediction of Prime Minister Recep Tayip Edrogan. Yet so far, there is apparently no real consensus on the other potential presidential candidates and no clear frontrunners to challenge Gul's candidacy, which looks like a done deal. (Gul has not hidden his pro-Islamist leanings.) So as the local press predicts "a presidential impasse is on the horizon." Furthermore, what if a hung parliament results in no party being able to form either a minority or a majority? Then the electoral casino could result in a parliamentary circus without a head of state.
It is not clear whether the next president will be elected by a majority vote in parliament, chosen in a last minute, midnight session in a smoky backroom parlor or chosen directly by a popular nationwide vote. No agreement has been made yet on a consensus candidate acceptable to all coalition parties forming the next government.
Boom Times?
The Turkish economy seems on the surface at least to be in good health. As AK Party posters proudly proclaim, inflation is at the lowest it's ever been -- in the single digits. It is growing at an average of 7 percent yearly. The stock markets last week hit an all time high. However, Istanbul is an island of prosperity. The banks and multinationals based in this city make it a magnet for high-salaried corporate jobs. Yet this tends to mask the stubbornly high unemployment rate among the idle youths who fill the tearooms during the day. According to residents born here, Istanbul is also inundated with newcomers looking for work.
Onur Ozcan, a 28-year-old smartly dressed businessman, tells me over a chilled mug of Efes beer that there's "too much speculation but not enough production" in Turkey, especially in the manufacturing sector. There doesn't seem to be enough local output to underpin and consolidate the current bonanza driven mainly by the very fickle short-term foreign investment capital flowing in and out of the country. He also points out that if Turkey fails in its bid to join the EU other options are on the table. Turkey is seeking to gain access for its exports such as textiles in other markets located in Russia or Asia in case Europe closes its doors. Europe's loss in this regard would likely be Asia's gain.
Europe: El Dorado or Nemesis?
The EU's current ambivalence toward Turkey is reflected in the tensions arising in Cologne, Germany, where Turkish Muslims are seeking to build a new mosque. Despite these frictions, the fact that 2.5 million Germans of Turkish decent live and work in the EU is an unbreakable bond between Brussels, Berlin and Ankara. Cheap Turkish labor has helped the EU economy and the remittances the workers send to their "second homeland" have been a boon to the local economy in Turkey. Yet, in the long run, the accession of Turkey into the EU depends on how well the Islamic community integrates itself in Europe. For now, the EU issue looks to be on the backburner in this pre-electoral period. There are more pressing issues to address after the elections related to foreign affairs: growing tensions with the U.S., the ongoing Kurdish revolt and its "spillover effect" into northern Iraq, and last but not least Turkey's bid to become a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council. These matters will likely remain unresolved until Turkey elects a new majority government and finds a new president.
Politicians are on the campaign trial pandering their electoral programs to the masses in towns and villages across the country. The most remote communities still are without running water and sewage but their residents have the right to vote. In the heat wave that has gripped the country for weeks, there is an air of apathy or an almost palpable indifference. Projections are that the weather might reduce the turnout at the polls, a scenario the ruling AK (Justice and Development) Party dreads. A low turn out would likely mean more seats for the opposition CHP (Republican People's Party) and the ultranationalist National Movement Party.
An Electoral Casino
The Turkish vote is a complicated numbers game for a novice like me. And placing bets on who will win at the polls in the tearooms and coffee houses of the city can be tricky. As a kind Turkish reader pointed out to me (for I am perplexed by the complexity of Turkish politics), it takes 310 seats to form a government in the Turkish parliament out of 510 seats in all. However, it takes the votes of 367 deputies to elect a new president. Assuming as the polls predict that the AK Party is reelected with a reduced majority it will then govern in partnership with the other two parties mentioned above.
The new government's top priority in the post-electoral period will then be to elect a new head of state. The potential hitch is this: the ruling party can't endorse a candidate of its own without the support of its coalition partners. The AK Party's man is Abdullah Gul. He has been selected to run by his party's rank and file and the benediction of Prime Minister Recep Tayip Edrogan. Yet so far, there is apparently no real consensus on the other potential presidential candidates and no clear frontrunners to challenge Gul's candidacy, which looks like a done deal. (Gul has not hidden his pro-Islamist leanings.) So as the local press predicts "a presidential impasse is on the horizon." Furthermore, what if a hung parliament results in no party being able to form either a minority or a majority? Then the electoral casino could result in a parliamentary circus without a head of state.
It is not clear whether the next president will be elected by a majority vote in parliament, chosen in a last minute, midnight session in a smoky backroom parlor or chosen directly by a popular nationwide vote. No agreement has been made yet on a consensus candidate acceptable to all coalition parties forming the next government.
Boom Times?
The Turkish economy seems on the surface at least to be in good health. As AK Party posters proudly proclaim, inflation is at the lowest it's ever been -- in the single digits. It is growing at an average of 7 percent yearly. The stock markets last week hit an all time high. However, Istanbul is an island of prosperity. The banks and multinationals based in this city make it a magnet for high-salaried corporate jobs. Yet this tends to mask the stubbornly high unemployment rate among the idle youths who fill the tearooms during the day. According to residents born here, Istanbul is also inundated with newcomers looking for work.
Onur Ozcan, a 28-year-old smartly dressed businessman, tells me over a chilled mug of Efes beer that there's "too much speculation but not enough production" in Turkey, especially in the manufacturing sector. There doesn't seem to be enough local output to underpin and consolidate the current bonanza driven mainly by the very fickle short-term foreign investment capital flowing in and out of the country. He also points out that if Turkey fails in its bid to join the EU other options are on the table. Turkey is seeking to gain access for its exports such as textiles in other markets located in Russia or Asia in case Europe closes its doors. Europe's loss in this regard would likely be Asia's gain.
Europe: El Dorado or Nemesis?
The EU's current ambivalence toward Turkey is reflected in the tensions arising in Cologne, Germany, where Turkish Muslims are seeking to build a new mosque. Despite these frictions, the fact that 2.5 million Germans of Turkish decent live and work in the EU is an unbreakable bond between Brussels, Berlin and Ankara. Cheap Turkish labor has helped the EU economy and the remittances the workers send to their "second homeland" have been a boon to the local economy in Turkey. Yet, in the long run, the accession of Turkey into the EU depends on how well the Islamic community integrates itself in Europe. For now, the EU issue looks to be on the backburner in this pre-electoral period. There are more pressing issues to address after the elections related to foreign affairs: growing tensions with the U.S., the ongoing Kurdish revolt and its "spillover effect" into northern Iraq, and last but not least Turkey's bid to become a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council. These matters will likely remain unresolved until Turkey elects a new majority government and finds a new president.
Reformers battle for Turkey's soul
Suna Erdem in Istanbul
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, swaggered across the stage, eyed the crowd and paused to take in their cheers. “Are you going to vote for freedoms or for those who block them?” he declaimed, in a voice almost hoarse from days on the campaign trail. “Are you going to vote for those who want to integrate with the world, or those who want to turn inwards?”
The hundreds of thousands of his supporters massed into Kazlicesme Square, Istanbul, chanted to his words, screaming approval in every pause.
In a confident, unprompted, almost jovial performance, the Prime Minister and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) wooed the crowd with a rundown of his Government’s economic performance and mocking quips about opposition promises.
The crowd was a cross-section of the city’s complicated social makeup – little blonde girls dancing on adults’ shoulders next to elderly women with headscarves, and young students jollied along by their bearded fathers. It was hard to believe that the Prime Minister is under siege from the most powerful sections of Turkish society.
When Turks go to the polls this weekend, they are likely to return Mr Erdogan as Prime Minister of one of the most reformist Governments modern Turkey has lived under. The former Islamist’s seemingly smooth reelection has become a high-stakes referendum over the basic values of the Turkish state.
The polls were called, earlier than scheduled, after a crisis over Mr Erdogan’s choice for President. The military, judiciary, opposition parties and millions of secularist protesters attacked his perceived Islamist agenda for nominating Abdullah Gul, the Foreign Minister, whose wife wears a Muslim-style headscarf. Secularists abhor the scarf as a sign of backwardness.
Beneath the veneer of a religious-secularist rift lies a tussle between the entrenched nationalist, militarist ethos of the 85-year-old secular Turkish Republic and the looser, proWest and pro-market but socially more flexible vision of a new guard trying to reshape the country.
“This is an extraordinary election. We could consider it a sort of referendum on the changes brought about by the EU membership process,” said Ali Bayramoglu, a liberal political commentator, referring to the sweeping social and political changes demanded by the European Union and begun by AKP, including reducing the strong influence of the powerful Turkish military in civilian life. The Turkish Republic, founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a heroic soldier, has always embodied a respect for the military.
Ranged against AKP is a catalogue of secularist parties, almost all representing the status quo and embracing the rising tide of anti-EU, anti-markets nationalism. Mr Erdogan, who is accused of harbouring a secret agenda to turn Turkey into a restrictive religious society, is playing on his Government’s pro-EU, pro-market record in the face of an opposition that has criticised him for pushing reforms to the detriment of national interest.
Tellingly, as opposition parties become desperate to dent the 40 per cent support that AKP is said to enjoy, there is greater focus on its alleged soft approach to Kurdish terror, a pet nationalist charge. With nationalism the new trump card, all parties seem to have forgotten that only two months ago the secular state was about to collapse under the weight of Mrs Gul’s headscarf.
Some parties are even vaguely offering to “solve the headscarf situation”– that is, to remove barriers to headscarved women studying at university, working in public offices or entering parliament.
However, the headscarf remains so controversial a symbol that not even Mr Erdogan has dared to field a woman candidate who covers up.
In his 4½ years in office, he has unpicked decades of Turkish naysaying to seek a compromise on Cyprus, the stilldivided EU member, pushed through sweeping rights reforms, including lifting restrictions on Kurdish culture despite accusations of encouraging terror, and forged ahead successfully with an IMF programme of privatisation and painful economic reform – despite charges of selling off the nation’s soul.
Faith and secularism
–– Turkish secularism was instituted in 1923 by the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He separated faith from political institutions when establishing the current Turkish republic
–– Its forerunner, the Virtue Party, was closed by the courts in 2001 for its “antisecular” activities
–– Turkey’s current ruling party, the AKP (Justice and Development Party), came to power in 2002 as a popular movement with a strong religious basis
–– Since 1960 the Turkish military has intervened four times to unseat Islamist governments in the country
–– 99.8% of Turkey’s population currently identify themselves as Muslim, most of those as Sunnis. The other 0.2% consists largely of Christians and Jews
–– As part of negotiations to join the European Union, the Turkish Government has announced a plan to adopt a wide range of EU laws by 2013
*Sources: William and Mary College, Virginia; Gallup; CIA World Factbook; Centre for European Reform; The Washington Institute
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, swaggered across the stage, eyed the crowd and paused to take in their cheers. “Are you going to vote for freedoms or for those who block them?” he declaimed, in a voice almost hoarse from days on the campaign trail. “Are you going to vote for those who want to integrate with the world, or those who want to turn inwards?”
The hundreds of thousands of his supporters massed into Kazlicesme Square, Istanbul, chanted to his words, screaming approval in every pause.
In a confident, unprompted, almost jovial performance, the Prime Minister and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) wooed the crowd with a rundown of his Government’s economic performance and mocking quips about opposition promises.
The crowd was a cross-section of the city’s complicated social makeup – little blonde girls dancing on adults’ shoulders next to elderly women with headscarves, and young students jollied along by their bearded fathers. It was hard to believe that the Prime Minister is under siege from the most powerful sections of Turkish society.
When Turks go to the polls this weekend, they are likely to return Mr Erdogan as Prime Minister of one of the most reformist Governments modern Turkey has lived under. The former Islamist’s seemingly smooth reelection has become a high-stakes referendum over the basic values of the Turkish state.
The polls were called, earlier than scheduled, after a crisis over Mr Erdogan’s choice for President. The military, judiciary, opposition parties and millions of secularist protesters attacked his perceived Islamist agenda for nominating Abdullah Gul, the Foreign Minister, whose wife wears a Muslim-style headscarf. Secularists abhor the scarf as a sign of backwardness.
Beneath the veneer of a religious-secularist rift lies a tussle between the entrenched nationalist, militarist ethos of the 85-year-old secular Turkish Republic and the looser, proWest and pro-market but socially more flexible vision of a new guard trying to reshape the country.
“This is an extraordinary election. We could consider it a sort of referendum on the changes brought about by the EU membership process,” said Ali Bayramoglu, a liberal political commentator, referring to the sweeping social and political changes demanded by the European Union and begun by AKP, including reducing the strong influence of the powerful Turkish military in civilian life. The Turkish Republic, founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a heroic soldier, has always embodied a respect for the military.
Ranged against AKP is a catalogue of secularist parties, almost all representing the status quo and embracing the rising tide of anti-EU, anti-markets nationalism. Mr Erdogan, who is accused of harbouring a secret agenda to turn Turkey into a restrictive religious society, is playing on his Government’s pro-EU, pro-market record in the face of an opposition that has criticised him for pushing reforms to the detriment of national interest.
Tellingly, as opposition parties become desperate to dent the 40 per cent support that AKP is said to enjoy, there is greater focus on its alleged soft approach to Kurdish terror, a pet nationalist charge. With nationalism the new trump card, all parties seem to have forgotten that only two months ago the secular state was about to collapse under the weight of Mrs Gul’s headscarf.
Some parties are even vaguely offering to “solve the headscarf situation”– that is, to remove barriers to headscarved women studying at university, working in public offices or entering parliament.
However, the headscarf remains so controversial a symbol that not even Mr Erdogan has dared to field a woman candidate who covers up.
In his 4½ years in office, he has unpicked decades of Turkish naysaying to seek a compromise on Cyprus, the stilldivided EU member, pushed through sweeping rights reforms, including lifting restrictions on Kurdish culture despite accusations of encouraging terror, and forged ahead successfully with an IMF programme of privatisation and painful economic reform – despite charges of selling off the nation’s soul.
Faith and secularism
–– Turkish secularism was instituted in 1923 by the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He separated faith from political institutions when establishing the current Turkish republic
–– Its forerunner, the Virtue Party, was closed by the courts in 2001 for its “antisecular” activities
–– Turkey’s current ruling party, the AKP (Justice and Development Party), came to power in 2002 as a popular movement with a strong religious basis
–– Since 1960 the Turkish military has intervened four times to unseat Islamist governments in the country
–– 99.8% of Turkey’s population currently identify themselves as Muslim, most of those as Sunnis. The other 0.2% consists largely of Christians and Jews
–– As part of negotiations to join the European Union, the Turkish Government has announced a plan to adopt a wide range of EU laws by 2013
*Sources: William and Mary College, Virginia; Gallup; CIA World Factbook; Centre for European Reform; The Washington Institute
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Military, mosques battle for Turkey
Jul 14, 2007 04:30 AM
Mitch Potter
Europe Bureau
ISTANBUL–These are topsy-turvy days for the unfinished business that is Turkish democracy, where the struggle for crucial parliamentary elections in eight days boils down to a contest of mosque versus military.
On one side is Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is widely expected to earn a fresh mandate after a dichotomous four years in power.
Lining up in opposition are parties loyal to Turkey's omnipresent military establishment, which hovers in the background as the self-appointed guarantor of the secular system of governance founded from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire 84 years ago. Make no mistake that, in this election, size very much matters.
A dramatic AKP landslide will be difficult for traditionally pro-Western army brass and senior judiciary, which has a long and undemocratic history of dismissing governments it deems a threat to the strictly secular principles set down by the beloved founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Going into these elections, however, Erdogan's AKP has turned that political equation upside down, coming off a four-year run of impressive reforms and fiscal belt-tightening that have earned the blessings of the business community, triggering an unprecedented surge of foreign investment. No one doubts the party's Islamist roots, or its social conservatism, but in opening Turkey to the global economy the AKP has won friends in unlikely places.
Between the two poles of Turkish power are the people themselves, who teeter with uncertainty between East and West, modern and traditional, secular and religious, uncertain who best deserves their trust.
"It is worrying because the situation today is not a political crisis, it is an historical crisis," said Mehmet Altan, a professor of economics at the University of Istanbul.
"We live in a military republic and it needs to become a democratic republic. This is an obligation. The struggle between military and mosque is the defining characteristic of power in Turkey. And we need to get over it, get past it somehow.
"But in making this transition, Turkey is vulnerable to threat and that's why I am concerned. For me, the soldiers are dangerous and an Islamic state is dangerous. Both extremes make me uncomfortable."
External factors, most analysts agree, loom large in the Turkish political equation, not least the actions of the United States and Europe, both of which appear to have succeeded in alienating large swaths of the Turkish public in recent years.
A new poll of global attitudes by the Washington-based Pew Research Center found that favourable views of the United States have fallen to single digits in Turkey, where just 9 per cent express trust in Washington.
Likewise, the Pew poll found a collapse in Turkish support for the European Union, with 27 per cent expressing a favourable opinion, compared to 58 per cent in 2004.
Turkish antipathy toward the U.S. stems not only from its ringside seat in witnessing the Bush administrations extraordinary policy struggles in the Middle East, where de facto Kurdish autonomy in Northern Iraq is of paramount concern to a country that fears further unrest among its own sizable Kurdish minority. What Turks dislike most, according to the Pew poll, are American ideas about democracy, with 81 per cent soured on the notion.
Erdogan Aktas, news director of Turkey's Star TV network, said with numbers like these, the best thing America could do to help Turkey now would be "simply to leave us alone.
"America has big expectations of us. But one of our biggest problems is that our democracy was built upon the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
"We had the shell of an empire, the mentality of empire, even, and the democratic framework that was set inside it never grew naturally. It was never really embraced by society," Aktas said in an interview.
"The result is a very fragile system. It's like having a car without a steering wheel."
Turkish antipathy toward Europe is in some ways more palpable than attitudes toward Washington, driven by widespread disillusionment over Turkey's decades-long, and now largely stalled, efforts to join the EU.
"The EU issue has fed the extremes in Turkish politics. Each time Europe sends a negative message to Turkey, it reinforces the perception that the EU is a Christian club, which leads the average person to think, `Okay, than maybe we should be joining a Muslim club instead,'" said Fikrit Ilkez, a prominent Istanbul lawyer and free-speech advocate.
European rejection has also driven a resurgent Turkish nationalism.
The evidence hangs in the form of national flags flying from apartment windows throughout the country. Many political watchers see the manipulative hand of the military here, working to revive its nationalist base as a bulwark against the Islamists.
"The sad reality in Turkish politics is most people have been persuaded there are only two sides – the Islamic camp and the pro-military camp," said Fehmi Hasanoglu, a social activist based in Istanbul.
"Both of these camps are highly conservative, and it serves their purposes to present themselves as the lone alternative to the other.
"One side points to the Islamic movement and says, 'That is the monster.' And they conclude the only other choice is an administration based on anti-democratic, military principles," said Hasanoglu.
"And beyond that you have a very small minority fighting for truly democratic space. These are people who are trying to say, 'No, there is a third way.' "
The path of the "third way" – Turkey's smattering of fledgling and fragmented left-wing parties – stands little hope because of the 10-per-cent threshold required to win even a single seat in the 550-seat parliament.
Beneath the struggle for political power, the continuing inflow of foreign capital suggests that Turkey remains a destination of confidence for investors. Or at the very least, the potential rewards of the modernizing Turkish economy outweigh the risks of political uncertainty.
"I don't see this election as a confrontation of two sides so much as politicians playing politics to get the most votes," said Fatih Akol, an Istanbul entrepreneur and the Turkish manager of a network of four radio stations purchased recently by the Canadian media giant CanWest.
"If you break it down, the fundamentalist Islamic movement has maybe 6 to 7 per cent support in Turkey, the same as ever. And yes, so an Islamic-rooted government has been in power for four years. But the fact is they did a fantastic job because they had to represent everyone and not just that tiny percentage," said Akol.
"I think that eventually the political world will see what the entrepreneurial community is seeing. With or without the EU, with or without an Islamic government, Turkey is moving ahead, modernizing, opening its doors and joining the world economy.
"That points to a stable and prosperous future in the long term, no matter what."
Mitch Potter
Europe Bureau
ISTANBUL–These are topsy-turvy days for the unfinished business that is Turkish democracy, where the struggle for crucial parliamentary elections in eight days boils down to a contest of mosque versus military.
On one side is Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is widely expected to earn a fresh mandate after a dichotomous four years in power.
Lining up in opposition are parties loyal to Turkey's omnipresent military establishment, which hovers in the background as the self-appointed guarantor of the secular system of governance founded from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire 84 years ago. Make no mistake that, in this election, size very much matters.
A dramatic AKP landslide will be difficult for traditionally pro-Western army brass and senior judiciary, which has a long and undemocratic history of dismissing governments it deems a threat to the strictly secular principles set down by the beloved founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Going into these elections, however, Erdogan's AKP has turned that political equation upside down, coming off a four-year run of impressive reforms and fiscal belt-tightening that have earned the blessings of the business community, triggering an unprecedented surge of foreign investment. No one doubts the party's Islamist roots, or its social conservatism, but in opening Turkey to the global economy the AKP has won friends in unlikely places.
Between the two poles of Turkish power are the people themselves, who teeter with uncertainty between East and West, modern and traditional, secular and religious, uncertain who best deserves their trust.
"It is worrying because the situation today is not a political crisis, it is an historical crisis," said Mehmet Altan, a professor of economics at the University of Istanbul.
"We live in a military republic and it needs to become a democratic republic. This is an obligation. The struggle between military and mosque is the defining characteristic of power in Turkey. And we need to get over it, get past it somehow.
"But in making this transition, Turkey is vulnerable to threat and that's why I am concerned. For me, the soldiers are dangerous and an Islamic state is dangerous. Both extremes make me uncomfortable."
External factors, most analysts agree, loom large in the Turkish political equation, not least the actions of the United States and Europe, both of which appear to have succeeded in alienating large swaths of the Turkish public in recent years.
A new poll of global attitudes by the Washington-based Pew Research Center found that favourable views of the United States have fallen to single digits in Turkey, where just 9 per cent express trust in Washington.
Likewise, the Pew poll found a collapse in Turkish support for the European Union, with 27 per cent expressing a favourable opinion, compared to 58 per cent in 2004.
Turkish antipathy toward the U.S. stems not only from its ringside seat in witnessing the Bush administrations extraordinary policy struggles in the Middle East, where de facto Kurdish autonomy in Northern Iraq is of paramount concern to a country that fears further unrest among its own sizable Kurdish minority. What Turks dislike most, according to the Pew poll, are American ideas about democracy, with 81 per cent soured on the notion.
Erdogan Aktas, news director of Turkey's Star TV network, said with numbers like these, the best thing America could do to help Turkey now would be "simply to leave us alone.
"America has big expectations of us. But one of our biggest problems is that our democracy was built upon the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
"We had the shell of an empire, the mentality of empire, even, and the democratic framework that was set inside it never grew naturally. It was never really embraced by society," Aktas said in an interview.
"The result is a very fragile system. It's like having a car without a steering wheel."
Turkish antipathy toward Europe is in some ways more palpable than attitudes toward Washington, driven by widespread disillusionment over Turkey's decades-long, and now largely stalled, efforts to join the EU.
"The EU issue has fed the extremes in Turkish politics. Each time Europe sends a negative message to Turkey, it reinforces the perception that the EU is a Christian club, which leads the average person to think, `Okay, than maybe we should be joining a Muslim club instead,'" said Fikrit Ilkez, a prominent Istanbul lawyer and free-speech advocate.
European rejection has also driven a resurgent Turkish nationalism.
The evidence hangs in the form of national flags flying from apartment windows throughout the country. Many political watchers see the manipulative hand of the military here, working to revive its nationalist base as a bulwark against the Islamists.
"The sad reality in Turkish politics is most people have been persuaded there are only two sides – the Islamic camp and the pro-military camp," said Fehmi Hasanoglu, a social activist based in Istanbul.
"Both of these camps are highly conservative, and it serves their purposes to present themselves as the lone alternative to the other.
"One side points to the Islamic movement and says, 'That is the monster.' And they conclude the only other choice is an administration based on anti-democratic, military principles," said Hasanoglu.
"And beyond that you have a very small minority fighting for truly democratic space. These are people who are trying to say, 'No, there is a third way.' "
The path of the "third way" – Turkey's smattering of fledgling and fragmented left-wing parties – stands little hope because of the 10-per-cent threshold required to win even a single seat in the 550-seat parliament.
Beneath the struggle for political power, the continuing inflow of foreign capital suggests that Turkey remains a destination of confidence for investors. Or at the very least, the potential rewards of the modernizing Turkish economy outweigh the risks of political uncertainty.
"I don't see this election as a confrontation of two sides so much as politicians playing politics to get the most votes," said Fatih Akol, an Istanbul entrepreneur and the Turkish manager of a network of four radio stations purchased recently by the Canadian media giant CanWest.
"If you break it down, the fundamentalist Islamic movement has maybe 6 to 7 per cent support in Turkey, the same as ever. And yes, so an Islamic-rooted government has been in power for four years. But the fact is they did a fantastic job because they had to represent everyone and not just that tiny percentage," said Akol.
"I think that eventually the political world will see what the entrepreneurial community is seeing. With or without the EU, with or without an Islamic government, Turkey is moving ahead, modernizing, opening its doors and joining the world economy.
"That points to a stable and prosperous future in the long term, no matter what."
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Turkey's Great Divide Thursday
Jul. 12, 2007 By ANDREW PURVIS/ISTANBUL
A DIFFERENT OUTLOOK
KATHRYN COOK FOR TIME
Only a few months ago, Utku Koseoglu would spend his evenings playing football or maybe downing an Efes beer or two with friends at a waterside nightclub in one of the trendier parts of Istanbul. His reading ran to thrillers like The Da Vinci Code. But these days, the 27-year-old lawyer is more likely to be found hunched over a conference table in a cramped and sweaty office in Istanbul's hectic Kadikoy district, toiling late into the summer night writing blogs, collecting Web clippings and organizing marches. When he finds time for a book, it's the writings of Turkey's revered founder Kemal Ataturk, not Dan Brown. "I could have been starting my career," he says with a wry smile. "Instead, I am doing this."
The reason for his conversion to political activism, he says, is that his country is facing the gravest threat to its secularist identity in more than 50 years. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has links, he believes, to Islamic sects that are intent on undermining democracy and Turkey's treasured secularist principles. For the the sake of the nation, says Koseoglu, they must be defeated at the polls. "We want to expose the true face of the AKP and make sure no vote is wasted." The little outfit to which he belongs, formed a year ago under the title the Kemalist Politics Group, is one of scores that have emerged in in the run-up to parliamentary elections on July 22. In a rare expression of political will from a middle class that has traditionally seen scant need to get involved, these groups have organized dozens of marches that have brought millions onto the streets in cities across the nation. "Our strategies are long-term," says a friend of Koseoglu's, Demir Buyukozkan, 28, at a recent late-night session in Istanbul. "In the next generation, our goal is to be leaders of this country."
Unfortunately for these emboldened secularists, a great many young conservatives have precisely the same goal. Indeed, supporters of the AKP, which has dominated the Turkish parliament for the past five years, have been invigorated by the secularists' opposition. After the Turkish army, a stalwart (if frequently undemocratic) defender of the country's secular heritage, intervened in April to block the party's choice for President, the AKP vowed to leave the decision to the people by calling for early elections. (If the party wins a majority in the parliament, it aims to change the constitution to allow a direct presidential vote.) Hundreds of thousands of volunteers for the AKP are, like their secularist counterparts, pounding the pavement in 81 provinces to rally support.
In an interview with TIME, Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, whose efforts to become President were opposed by the military because his wife wears a head scarf, said he plans to stand for the job again if the party is returned to power. "What we have done in the last five years speaks for itself," he says, noting, for example, his party's move for Turkey to adopt the European Union's body of law. "Is this an Eastern country's legal system? Is this Shari'a? No, it is the European laws! We are upgrading this country. We are the real reformers."
These elections promise to be the most hotly contested in memory, and turnout may reach historic highs. Seaside cottages are renting for half price on the balloting weekend as Turks plan to flock back to the cities to vote. Conspiracy theories are rife as parties accuse each other of undermining Turkish democracy. At stake are policies vitally important in Turkey and beyond, including the question of whether or not to send Turkish forces into Iraq, Turkey's stalled membership talks with the E.U., and economic and democratic policies at home. On most of these issues, Turks are deeply divided.
And nowhere do the fault lines run deeper than among young Turks. A generation not previously known for its activism is rallying around secularist, pro-Islamic or nationalist flags in unprecedented numbers — a political awakening attributed by some to the ideological currents of the present campaign. Their convictions and involvement are key in a nation where nearly 70% of the population is now under 35, the highest proportion among industrialized economies. And political parties are making tremendous efforts to woo the young. An attempt by the AKP to lower the age of eligibility for a seat in parliament from 30 to 25 just narrowly missed being implemented. "We are forcing them to get involved," Gul told TIME. "They are the future of this country." Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says 2007 is pivotal: "This could define the kind of country that Turkey is for a generation."
For years, young secularists like Utku Koseoglu took their power for granted. They saw themselves as the rightful heirs to Ataturk, the West-leaning founder of modern Turkey in 1923 who decreed a secular state and exhorted subsequent generations to defend it. Ataturk's "secular establishment," rooted in the military and judiciary, became a kind of ruling class. When political parties strayed too far from secularist principles, the army stepped in — for example, to force an Islamist-led government from power in 1997. Few young Turks felt compelled to vote, the more so after the military banned political parties from campuses following a 1980 coup.
Against that backdrop, the rise of Erdogan's AKP did not at first seem a serious threat. Its landslide victory in 2002 caught many by surprise, but even that victory was chalked up to a protest vote against the incompetence of established political parties, notably the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP). But unlike previous parties with Islamist roots, the AKP has so far steered clear of the kind of overt Islamist doctrine that got its predecessors in trouble. Instead, it has built a record based on reforming Turkish democratic and economic institutions to fit E.U. standards. The ostensible aim has been to boost Turkish prosperity and to bring the nation into Europe. A side effect has been to weaken the role of the military in Turkey's political life and to strengthen religious and minority rights. The result: a de facto challenge to the secular establishment that has dominated Turkish society since the country's foundation.
Secularists are now rising to meet that challenge. The almost visceral response they have to the AKP focuses less on what the party has done than on who its leaders are. Even staunch opponents of the government concede that Erdogan has done some things right. A buoyant economy growing at a 7% clip, lower inflation and joblessness, and the opening of E.U. membership talks after 40 years of waiting would be a credit to any government. Instead, critics stress the alleged long-term Islamist agenda of the party's leaders. The current e-mail and blogging campaign by the young Istanbul Kemalists, for example, is focusing on claims that leaders like Erdogan and Gul are conservative Muslims who have in the past flirted with political Islam.
Both leaders were members of the Welfare Party that was banned in 1997 for undermining Turkey's secular regime. Erdogan was imprisoned a few months later for reading, while mayor of Istanbul, a poem that likened minarets to bayonets. "Democracy is like a street car," Erdogan is alleged to have said in one mailing. "You only ride it to get to your destination." The Kemalists' blogs remind skeptics of the Islamic notion of takiye, according to which it is permissible for devout Muslims to dissimulate in order to achieve their goal. The fact that the party has not yet pursued an Islamist agenda on a national scale is, secularists argue, not proof that it never will. To bolster their argument, the secularists' newspapers zealously publish stories about municipal officials who have imposed Islam on public life by, for example, segregating the sexes at public pools.
Young secularist women say they are particularly worried. Pinar Ozkan, 23, an events organizer who is a member of the Kemalist Politics Group, says her company recently organized a gathering for several junior AKP officials in Istanbul. When she offered them a tray of tea, she claims, they refused to be served by a woman whose hair was uncovered. "I felt like a second-class citizen," says Ozkan, dressed in gold lamé heels, a miniskirt and white tank top. "As a woman in Turkey, my freedom is very important. We owe that freedom to Ataturk. I will never give that up to anyone." Later that night, she gets ready for an antigovernment rally in Istanbul, donning a Halloween-style mask of the mustachioed Turkish founder. "I want to see the world through his eyes," she says. Ozkan, like most secularists, is backing the CHP, which was founded by Ataturk; others support the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, though neither has a chance of winning on its own.
AKP officials acknowledge their roots in Islamist parties. But they insist that they have changed, and that they respect Ataturk's separation of mosque and state. Secularist charges of creeping fundamentalism are just a way to scare voters, they say. "It's a witch hunt," says Ali Kemal Eksioglu, 30, an AKP youth leader who has been working to get out the vote in Kadikoy, Istanbul's largest, wealthiest and most traditionally secularist voting district. "I mean, it's 2007, and they are still asking, 'Why is that woman wearing a head scarf?' It's too much." As he sees it, what his party is really about is "tolerance of different lifestyles and economic stability."
Swiftly moving from underdog to favorite in just six years, the AKP has become the party to beat. But its rise, supporters say, has bred misunderstanding. The party appeared on the scene in 2001 as a grassroots movement, going door to door to introduce itself to people individually. But Eksioglu's small army of volunteers in Kadikoy has stopped canvassing like this, he says, because the atmosphere has become too tense. That doesn't mean they're no longer active in the neighborhood, however. Indeed, the party recently opened a branch office in Kadikoy — its bright orange-and-blue party flags fluttering conspicuously over the local Starbucks and its well-heeled clientele. The office is not far from where the Kemalist group meets to plot the AKP's downfall. Eksioglu says he likes to go there to listen to the catcalls from the street: "I don't care about them. I believe in what I am doing."
Eksioglu himself is an example of how the AKP is drawing from an ever wider pool of supporters. Traditionally, AKP supporters hailed from central Anatolia or the sprawling, working-class suburbs of big cities like Istanbul. But Eksioglu is conspicuously uptown. His family's property-development firm has flourished under AKP rule (it has put up four buildings since 2002, vs. none in the previous political term), thanks to a stable economy and lower interest rates that have made buying homes easier for ordinary residents of Istanbul. He now owns an apartment on Baghdad Avenue, the smartest address in the city, lined with designer shops and sushi bars. And while secularists once made fun of AKP officials for their brown, poorly tailored suits, Eksioglu adopts a cooler style with a fashionably unshaven jaw, shorts and a Led Zeppelin T shirt or, while campaigning, a sharp suit. To the consternation of local secularists, plenty of young, prosperous Turks, who also happen to be religious, are rallying to the AKP. One of the best known cafés in the area, in a former Pasha's palace overlooking the Bosporus, a place once reserved for wine-sipping secularists, now serves no alcohol; its female patrons, wealthy as ever, are as likely to cover their hair as not.
To understand why Turks are voting for the AKP in such numbers, visit Pursaklar, a hillside town just outside Ankara in the brown hills of central Anatolia. Ten years ago, the place was an afterthought, its small population made up mostly of poor migrants from rural parts of central and eastern Turkey. Today it is a booming residential center of 120,000, with 10,000 more arriving each year, according to its AKP mayor. The town boasts two new parks, a town square redesigned around an imposing new mosque, and a factory-sized cultural center (with separate facilities for men and women). There are no fewer than 14 supermarkets in the town, up from two in 2000.
Locals credit their town's rebirth to AKP policies and, in particular, the party's economic management. After a financial crisis in 2001 caused Turkey's currency to lose half its value, the country introduced IMF-inspired reforms that the AKP has doggedly maintained. As a result, Turkey has not only experienced impressive gdp growth, but has rid itself of the hyperinflation that plagued it for most of the 1990s. For real estate agent Abdullah Cam, 23, who says his family firm has tripled revenues in the past five years, the AKP has been "great for business." Down the road, Mehmet Goktas, 41, agrees. Sales at the supermarket he owns have more than doubled in the same period. "We've moved from an inflation-based economy to a normal one," he says. Both Cam and Goktas consider themselves "very religious" and both come from conservative families who were drawn to the AKP for its "Islamic values," but it's the party's economic record that has sustained their support.
Secularists may fear for their Western lifestyles, but very devout youngsters, for their part, see in the AKP potential relief from Turkey's remorselessly secularist laws. Mine Karakas, 27, has worn a head scarf since the age of 10 and as a result was prevented from attending university. (Head scarves are banned in public buildings.) She protested the law, picketing the university gates for two years, but eventually gave up. She headed to the U.S. to study instead, but returned after 9/11. She now works for a private foundation that operates Muslim orphanages around the world. For her, the religious values of Erdogan and Gul are reassuring: "We feel more comfortable with them." How such sentiments will play out at the polls remains unclear. Public opinion surveys put support for the AKP at 35-42% vs. 18-25% for the CHP and 15-25% for the MHP, an overtly nationalist party that has benefited from Turkish anger over the Iraq war, fears of Kurdish separatism, and frustration over resistance to Turkish membership of the E.U. The two opposition parties have not ruled out forming a coalition in order to replace the AKP — if they get the votes.
One irony is that the policies of the Islamic AKP are significantly more pro-Western than those promised by its secularist and nationalist rivals. A coalition of the MHP and the CHP may keep head scarves out of the presidential mansion, but it might also put the brakes on European-inspired democratic and economic policies, jeopardize talks to join the E.U., and lead to a clampdown on Turkey's Kurdish minorities. The AKP, if elected, vows to press ahead with additional requirements of E.U. accession, whether or not the Europeans are willing to let Turkey join. The party also promises to nearly double personal annual incomes to $10,000, and raise national gdp from $400 billion to $800 billion by the end of its next five-year term. "Then," says Gul, "I don't think France or Austria or anyone else will be able to ignore Turkey."
In the meantime, the nation can take heart from the fact that young Turks are so deeply engaged in determining their country's future. In Kadikoy, Utku Koseoglu says he has no regrets about his decision to stop partying and focus on the less frivolous pleasures of getting out the vote. "Rallies are fun," he says. "It's as if we've all known each other forever. We can thank the AKP for one thing: they got us out in the streets."
A DIFFERENT OUTLOOK
KATHRYN COOK FOR TIME
Only a few months ago, Utku Koseoglu would spend his evenings playing football or maybe downing an Efes beer or two with friends at a waterside nightclub in one of the trendier parts of Istanbul. His reading ran to thrillers like The Da Vinci Code. But these days, the 27-year-old lawyer is more likely to be found hunched over a conference table in a cramped and sweaty office in Istanbul's hectic Kadikoy district, toiling late into the summer night writing blogs, collecting Web clippings and organizing marches. When he finds time for a book, it's the writings of Turkey's revered founder Kemal Ataturk, not Dan Brown. "I could have been starting my career," he says with a wry smile. "Instead, I am doing this."
The reason for his conversion to political activism, he says, is that his country is facing the gravest threat to its secularist identity in more than 50 years. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has links, he believes, to Islamic sects that are intent on undermining democracy and Turkey's treasured secularist principles. For the the sake of the nation, says Koseoglu, they must be defeated at the polls. "We want to expose the true face of the AKP and make sure no vote is wasted." The little outfit to which he belongs, formed a year ago under the title the Kemalist Politics Group, is one of scores that have emerged in in the run-up to parliamentary elections on July 22. In a rare expression of political will from a middle class that has traditionally seen scant need to get involved, these groups have organized dozens of marches that have brought millions onto the streets in cities across the nation. "Our strategies are long-term," says a friend of Koseoglu's, Demir Buyukozkan, 28, at a recent late-night session in Istanbul. "In the next generation, our goal is to be leaders of this country."
Unfortunately for these emboldened secularists, a great many young conservatives have precisely the same goal. Indeed, supporters of the AKP, which has dominated the Turkish parliament for the past five years, have been invigorated by the secularists' opposition. After the Turkish army, a stalwart (if frequently undemocratic) defender of the country's secular heritage, intervened in April to block the party's choice for President, the AKP vowed to leave the decision to the people by calling for early elections. (If the party wins a majority in the parliament, it aims to change the constitution to allow a direct presidential vote.) Hundreds of thousands of volunteers for the AKP are, like their secularist counterparts, pounding the pavement in 81 provinces to rally support.
In an interview with TIME, Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, whose efforts to become President were opposed by the military because his wife wears a head scarf, said he plans to stand for the job again if the party is returned to power. "What we have done in the last five years speaks for itself," he says, noting, for example, his party's move for Turkey to adopt the European Union's body of law. "Is this an Eastern country's legal system? Is this Shari'a? No, it is the European laws! We are upgrading this country. We are the real reformers."
These elections promise to be the most hotly contested in memory, and turnout may reach historic highs. Seaside cottages are renting for half price on the balloting weekend as Turks plan to flock back to the cities to vote. Conspiracy theories are rife as parties accuse each other of undermining Turkish democracy. At stake are policies vitally important in Turkey and beyond, including the question of whether or not to send Turkish forces into Iraq, Turkey's stalled membership talks with the E.U., and economic and democratic policies at home. On most of these issues, Turks are deeply divided.
And nowhere do the fault lines run deeper than among young Turks. A generation not previously known for its activism is rallying around secularist, pro-Islamic or nationalist flags in unprecedented numbers — a political awakening attributed by some to the ideological currents of the present campaign. Their convictions and involvement are key in a nation where nearly 70% of the population is now under 35, the highest proportion among industrialized economies. And political parties are making tremendous efforts to woo the young. An attempt by the AKP to lower the age of eligibility for a seat in parliament from 30 to 25 just narrowly missed being implemented. "We are forcing them to get involved," Gul told TIME. "They are the future of this country." Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says 2007 is pivotal: "This could define the kind of country that Turkey is for a generation."
For years, young secularists like Utku Koseoglu took their power for granted. They saw themselves as the rightful heirs to Ataturk, the West-leaning founder of modern Turkey in 1923 who decreed a secular state and exhorted subsequent generations to defend it. Ataturk's "secular establishment," rooted in the military and judiciary, became a kind of ruling class. When political parties strayed too far from secularist principles, the army stepped in — for example, to force an Islamist-led government from power in 1997. Few young Turks felt compelled to vote, the more so after the military banned political parties from campuses following a 1980 coup.
Against that backdrop, the rise of Erdogan's AKP did not at first seem a serious threat. Its landslide victory in 2002 caught many by surprise, but even that victory was chalked up to a protest vote against the incompetence of established political parties, notably the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP). But unlike previous parties with Islamist roots, the AKP has so far steered clear of the kind of overt Islamist doctrine that got its predecessors in trouble. Instead, it has built a record based on reforming Turkish democratic and economic institutions to fit E.U. standards. The ostensible aim has been to boost Turkish prosperity and to bring the nation into Europe. A side effect has been to weaken the role of the military in Turkey's political life and to strengthen religious and minority rights. The result: a de facto challenge to the secular establishment that has dominated Turkish society since the country's foundation.
Secularists are now rising to meet that challenge. The almost visceral response they have to the AKP focuses less on what the party has done than on who its leaders are. Even staunch opponents of the government concede that Erdogan has done some things right. A buoyant economy growing at a 7% clip, lower inflation and joblessness, and the opening of E.U. membership talks after 40 years of waiting would be a credit to any government. Instead, critics stress the alleged long-term Islamist agenda of the party's leaders. The current e-mail and blogging campaign by the young Istanbul Kemalists, for example, is focusing on claims that leaders like Erdogan and Gul are conservative Muslims who have in the past flirted with political Islam.
Both leaders were members of the Welfare Party that was banned in 1997 for undermining Turkey's secular regime. Erdogan was imprisoned a few months later for reading, while mayor of Istanbul, a poem that likened minarets to bayonets. "Democracy is like a street car," Erdogan is alleged to have said in one mailing. "You only ride it to get to your destination." The Kemalists' blogs remind skeptics of the Islamic notion of takiye, according to which it is permissible for devout Muslims to dissimulate in order to achieve their goal. The fact that the party has not yet pursued an Islamist agenda on a national scale is, secularists argue, not proof that it never will. To bolster their argument, the secularists' newspapers zealously publish stories about municipal officials who have imposed Islam on public life by, for example, segregating the sexes at public pools.
Young secularist women say they are particularly worried. Pinar Ozkan, 23, an events organizer who is a member of the Kemalist Politics Group, says her company recently organized a gathering for several junior AKP officials in Istanbul. When she offered them a tray of tea, she claims, they refused to be served by a woman whose hair was uncovered. "I felt like a second-class citizen," says Ozkan, dressed in gold lamé heels, a miniskirt and white tank top. "As a woman in Turkey, my freedom is very important. We owe that freedom to Ataturk. I will never give that up to anyone." Later that night, she gets ready for an antigovernment rally in Istanbul, donning a Halloween-style mask of the mustachioed Turkish founder. "I want to see the world through his eyes," she says. Ozkan, like most secularists, is backing the CHP, which was founded by Ataturk; others support the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, though neither has a chance of winning on its own.
AKP officials acknowledge their roots in Islamist parties. But they insist that they have changed, and that they respect Ataturk's separation of mosque and state. Secularist charges of creeping fundamentalism are just a way to scare voters, they say. "It's a witch hunt," says Ali Kemal Eksioglu, 30, an AKP youth leader who has been working to get out the vote in Kadikoy, Istanbul's largest, wealthiest and most traditionally secularist voting district. "I mean, it's 2007, and they are still asking, 'Why is that woman wearing a head scarf?' It's too much." As he sees it, what his party is really about is "tolerance of different lifestyles and economic stability."
Swiftly moving from underdog to favorite in just six years, the AKP has become the party to beat. But its rise, supporters say, has bred misunderstanding. The party appeared on the scene in 2001 as a grassroots movement, going door to door to introduce itself to people individually. But Eksioglu's small army of volunteers in Kadikoy has stopped canvassing like this, he says, because the atmosphere has become too tense. That doesn't mean they're no longer active in the neighborhood, however. Indeed, the party recently opened a branch office in Kadikoy — its bright orange-and-blue party flags fluttering conspicuously over the local Starbucks and its well-heeled clientele. The office is not far from where the Kemalist group meets to plot the AKP's downfall. Eksioglu says he likes to go there to listen to the catcalls from the street: "I don't care about them. I believe in what I am doing."
Eksioglu himself is an example of how the AKP is drawing from an ever wider pool of supporters. Traditionally, AKP supporters hailed from central Anatolia or the sprawling, working-class suburbs of big cities like Istanbul. But Eksioglu is conspicuously uptown. His family's property-development firm has flourished under AKP rule (it has put up four buildings since 2002, vs. none in the previous political term), thanks to a stable economy and lower interest rates that have made buying homes easier for ordinary residents of Istanbul. He now owns an apartment on Baghdad Avenue, the smartest address in the city, lined with designer shops and sushi bars. And while secularists once made fun of AKP officials for their brown, poorly tailored suits, Eksioglu adopts a cooler style with a fashionably unshaven jaw, shorts and a Led Zeppelin T shirt or, while campaigning, a sharp suit. To the consternation of local secularists, plenty of young, prosperous Turks, who also happen to be religious, are rallying to the AKP. One of the best known cafés in the area, in a former Pasha's palace overlooking the Bosporus, a place once reserved for wine-sipping secularists, now serves no alcohol; its female patrons, wealthy as ever, are as likely to cover their hair as not.
To understand why Turks are voting for the AKP in such numbers, visit Pursaklar, a hillside town just outside Ankara in the brown hills of central Anatolia. Ten years ago, the place was an afterthought, its small population made up mostly of poor migrants from rural parts of central and eastern Turkey. Today it is a booming residential center of 120,000, with 10,000 more arriving each year, according to its AKP mayor. The town boasts two new parks, a town square redesigned around an imposing new mosque, and a factory-sized cultural center (with separate facilities for men and women). There are no fewer than 14 supermarkets in the town, up from two in 2000.
Locals credit their town's rebirth to AKP policies and, in particular, the party's economic management. After a financial crisis in 2001 caused Turkey's currency to lose half its value, the country introduced IMF-inspired reforms that the AKP has doggedly maintained. As a result, Turkey has not only experienced impressive gdp growth, but has rid itself of the hyperinflation that plagued it for most of the 1990s. For real estate agent Abdullah Cam, 23, who says his family firm has tripled revenues in the past five years, the AKP has been "great for business." Down the road, Mehmet Goktas, 41, agrees. Sales at the supermarket he owns have more than doubled in the same period. "We've moved from an inflation-based economy to a normal one," he says. Both Cam and Goktas consider themselves "very religious" and both come from conservative families who were drawn to the AKP for its "Islamic values," but it's the party's economic record that has sustained their support.
Secularists may fear for their Western lifestyles, but very devout youngsters, for their part, see in the AKP potential relief from Turkey's remorselessly secularist laws. Mine Karakas, 27, has worn a head scarf since the age of 10 and as a result was prevented from attending university. (Head scarves are banned in public buildings.) She protested the law, picketing the university gates for two years, but eventually gave up. She headed to the U.S. to study instead, but returned after 9/11. She now works for a private foundation that operates Muslim orphanages around the world. For her, the religious values of Erdogan and Gul are reassuring: "We feel more comfortable with them." How such sentiments will play out at the polls remains unclear. Public opinion surveys put support for the AKP at 35-42% vs. 18-25% for the CHP and 15-25% for the MHP, an overtly nationalist party that has benefited from Turkish anger over the Iraq war, fears of Kurdish separatism, and frustration over resistance to Turkish membership of the E.U. The two opposition parties have not ruled out forming a coalition in order to replace the AKP — if they get the votes.
One irony is that the policies of the Islamic AKP are significantly more pro-Western than those promised by its secularist and nationalist rivals. A coalition of the MHP and the CHP may keep head scarves out of the presidential mansion, but it might also put the brakes on European-inspired democratic and economic policies, jeopardize talks to join the E.U., and lead to a clampdown on Turkey's Kurdish minorities. The AKP, if elected, vows to press ahead with additional requirements of E.U. accession, whether or not the Europeans are willing to let Turkey join. The party also promises to nearly double personal annual incomes to $10,000, and raise national gdp from $400 billion to $800 billion by the end of its next five-year term. "Then," says Gul, "I don't think France or Austria or anyone else will be able to ignore Turkey."
In the meantime, the nation can take heart from the fact that young Turks are so deeply engaged in determining their country's future. In Kadikoy, Utku Koseoglu says he has no regrets about his decision to stop partying and focus on the less frivolous pleasures of getting out the vote. "Rallies are fun," he says. "It's as if we've all known each other forever. We can thank the AKP for one thing: they got us out in the streets."
Turkey boosts troops at Iraqi border: sources
Paul de Bendern, Reuters Published: Friday, July 13, 2007
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- Turkey's army has boosted troop levels in the restive southeast to more than 200,000, most of them stationed along the border with Iraq, security sources told Reuters Friday.
Those sources, who declined to be named, said the unusually large buildup, which includes tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft, was part of a security crackdown on Kurdish rebels hiding in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates dismissed the estimate of 200,000 troops, saying it was too high.
"I have not seen anything that would indicate there are numbers of Turkey's soldiers along the border of that size," Gates told reporters in Washington.
The Pentagon has disputed reports of increased Turkish troop levels for days. The top U.S. general, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace, said Turkey has the capability to fight the rebels inside Iraq without boosting troop levels.
"The truth of the matter is that the Turkish armed forces on their side of the border have always had sufficient forces to be able to take actions without having to be reinforced," Pace said.
NATO-member Turkey has refused to rule out a possible cross-border operation to crush up to 4,000 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels believed to be based in mountains in northern Iraq, despite opposition from Washington and Baghdad.
The military General Staff in Ankara was not immediately available for comment on troop numbers. It usually does not release such figures.
Tensions along the border have soared in recent months following an upsurge in attacks across Turkey that Ankara blames on PKK militants. More than 200 Turkish soldiers and PKK rebels have been killed since the start of the year, a Turkish human rights association said Friday.
Armed forces chief General Yasar Buyukanit has repeatedly urged the government to allow an incursion into Iraq to target PKK militants. Those statements have drawn warnings from the head of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq that Kurds would fight back if attacked.
Washington, while naming the PKK a terrorist group, fears any major operation by Turkey in northern Iraq could anger Iraqi Kurdish allies and stoke wider conflict in a relatively peaceful region of the war-torn country.
But U.S. and Iraqi forces have been unable to clamp down on the PKK because they are stretched fighting insurgents elsewhere in Iraq. Both Washington and Baghdad have called for diplomatic means to calm tensions with Turkey.
Sources close to Turkey's ruling AK Party say the Turkish government has been reluctant to push for a cross-border operation because it fears the move could rattle the economy ahead of parliamentary elections July 22.
Ahmet Birsin, editor of Turkish Kurdish local television channel Gun, said people in the region were very worried. "We want peace not more violence," he said.
But amid national public anger over the deaths, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has hinted parliament could be recalled to approve an operation.
Analysts say the tough talk by the armed forces and the government is partly driven by domestic politics amid rising nationalism in the country.
The armed forces usually boost troop levels in the mainly Kurdish southeast region in the spring when rebels cross the mountains into Turkey from Iraq to carry out attacks.
But security forces said the current buildup was larger than normal. One source said troop levels in Sirnak province were as high as 50,000 compared with 10,000 to 20,000 normally.
An unusually high number of military convoys have been seen making their way to the border. One Reuters reporter said he saw heavy artillery and tanks being transported on trains.
Security sources said a wide-ranging clampdown in the region -- including security zones limiting movement of civilians -- had put the PKK on the defensive, limiting their movements and forcing them to use remote-controlled bombs to attack soldiers rather than risking close combat.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in fighting between Turkish security forces and the PKK since the separatist rebels launched their armed campaign for an independent homeland in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey in 1984.
(Additional reporting Kristin Roberts in Washington)
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- Turkey's army has boosted troop levels in the restive southeast to more than 200,000, most of them stationed along the border with Iraq, security sources told Reuters Friday.
Those sources, who declined to be named, said the unusually large buildup, which includes tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft, was part of a security crackdown on Kurdish rebels hiding in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates dismissed the estimate of 200,000 troops, saying it was too high.
"I have not seen anything that would indicate there are numbers of Turkey's soldiers along the border of that size," Gates told reporters in Washington.
The Pentagon has disputed reports of increased Turkish troop levels for days. The top U.S. general, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace, said Turkey has the capability to fight the rebels inside Iraq without boosting troop levels.
"The truth of the matter is that the Turkish armed forces on their side of the border have always had sufficient forces to be able to take actions without having to be reinforced," Pace said.
NATO-member Turkey has refused to rule out a possible cross-border operation to crush up to 4,000 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels believed to be based in mountains in northern Iraq, despite opposition from Washington and Baghdad.
The military General Staff in Ankara was not immediately available for comment on troop numbers. It usually does not release such figures.
Tensions along the border have soared in recent months following an upsurge in attacks across Turkey that Ankara blames on PKK militants. More than 200 Turkish soldiers and PKK rebels have been killed since the start of the year, a Turkish human rights association said Friday.
Armed forces chief General Yasar Buyukanit has repeatedly urged the government to allow an incursion into Iraq to target PKK militants. Those statements have drawn warnings from the head of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq that Kurds would fight back if attacked.
Washington, while naming the PKK a terrorist group, fears any major operation by Turkey in northern Iraq could anger Iraqi Kurdish allies and stoke wider conflict in a relatively peaceful region of the war-torn country.
But U.S. and Iraqi forces have been unable to clamp down on the PKK because they are stretched fighting insurgents elsewhere in Iraq. Both Washington and Baghdad have called for diplomatic means to calm tensions with Turkey.
Sources close to Turkey's ruling AK Party say the Turkish government has been reluctant to push for a cross-border operation because it fears the move could rattle the economy ahead of parliamentary elections July 22.
Ahmet Birsin, editor of Turkish Kurdish local television channel Gun, said people in the region were very worried. "We want peace not more violence," he said.
But amid national public anger over the deaths, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has hinted parliament could be recalled to approve an operation.
Analysts say the tough talk by the armed forces and the government is partly driven by domestic politics amid rising nationalism in the country.
The armed forces usually boost troop levels in the mainly Kurdish southeast region in the spring when rebels cross the mountains into Turkey from Iraq to carry out attacks.
But security forces said the current buildup was larger than normal. One source said troop levels in Sirnak province were as high as 50,000 compared with 10,000 to 20,000 normally.
An unusually high number of military convoys have been seen making their way to the border. One Reuters reporter said he saw heavy artillery and tanks being transported on trains.
Security sources said a wide-ranging clampdown in the region -- including security zones limiting movement of civilians -- had put the PKK on the defensive, limiting their movements and forcing them to use remote-controlled bombs to attack soldiers rather than risking close combat.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in fighting between Turkish security forces and the PKK since the separatist rebels launched their armed campaign for an independent homeland in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey in 1984.
(Additional reporting Kristin Roberts in Washington)
The Upcoming Elections in Turkey (1): General Background
Introduction
The AKP's refusal to seek a consensus presidential candidate, its uncompromising effort to appoint "a religious [i.e. Islamist] president" from the AKP ranks, the secrecy surrounding who their candidate would be, and the last-minute announcement of Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul from the Islamist Milli Gorus movement as the candidate, have all pushed Turkey into a political crisis.
Millions of Turks participated in demonstrations against the AKP government, its Islamist agenda, the appointment of Islamists to key positions in public institutions, and especially against the attempt to nominate an Islamist presidential candidate - a nomination that would jeopardize Turkey's system of checks and balances, creating a situation where both the prime minister and the president belong to the Islamist camp.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's political moves provoked a controversial memorandum from the Turkish military establishment, which is - traditionally and by the power accorded to it in the constitution - the guardian of the secular regime in Turkey.
On presidential election day, members of the opposition parties boycotted the election by not participating in the first round of the vote, and the necessary quorum of 367 MPs (two thirds of the 550-member parliament) was not reached. The matter ended up in the High Constitutional Court, which decided to annul the first round of the vote.
The mass demonstrations, the memorandum by the military and the High Court's decision forced the AKP to declare early parliamentary elections, to take place on July 22, 2007.
The Political Scene
Turkey's election system - which, during its five years in power, the AKP has refused to change - allows only parties receiving 10% of the vote nationwide to be represented in parliament. This threshold, unusually high for a democracy, keeps many smaller parties out of the legislature. It was this factor that brought the AKP to power in November 2002, when it received a two-thirds majority in parliament while receiving only one-third of the national vote. The only other political party that passed the 10% threshold and gained representation in 2002 was the Republican People's Party (CHP).
This system is now placing all the parties of the fragmented opposition at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the AKP.
To overcome the 10% threshold problem, the center-left CHP and the smaller Democratic Left Party (DSP) merged their lists to run together under the CHP. However, unification efforts by the once-powerful conservative center-right Motherland Party (ANAP) and the True Path Party (DYP) under the new name of Democrat Party (DP) were unsuccessful, and ANAP withdrew from the elections process. This failure to produce a strong center-right alternative will probably prove to be the AKP's biggest advantage in the upcoming elections.
The AKP, for its part, included in its candidate list some well-known names from the center right, and even from the social democrats, with the aim of attracting votes from the nonreligious sector.
Among the CHP candidates are also some leading political figures from the center right, who joined the CHP believing it to be the only secular alternative that could challenge the AKP.
Besides the AKP and the CHP, there is the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has been gaining ground due to the increasingly nationalist sentiment in the country. The MHP - and to some extent the CHP - are being strengthened by the AKP's failure to deal with increased terrorist activity by the PKK, which claims over 60 lives every month. It is also gaining ground due to the government's hesitation to allow the Turkish military to launch a cross-border incursion into northern Iraq where the PKK is based; and by the daily funerals of terror victims that turn into anti-government protests.
Another force emerging on the political scene is the representation of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. Members of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) - which followed the earlier, outlawed Kurdish parties DEP and DEHAP, and which is strong in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast - have decided to run in the upcoming elections as independent candidates, in order to avoid the 10% barrier. These independent candidates are expected to hold 25 to 30 seats in the next parliament.
Other political parties, such as the Young Party (GP) and the Democrat Party (DP), which may come close to the threshold with 7% to 9% of the votes, are not expected to gain legislative representation.
The Election Campaign
The AKP seems to be campaigning harder than its opponents, and is covering more of the country. Recently, it has begun to distribute, through its local branches and municipalities, "gift packages" in poorer neighborhoods nationwide, containing rice, wheat, beans, sugar, flour, oil, jam, pasta, soap, and so on, as well as one ton of coal per family for winter heating. Campaign buses are carrying loads of toys that are being distributed to children across the country by AKP candidates. These practices are being strongly criticized in the mainstream media as undemocratic means of "buying" votes.
Despite the fact that AKP is entering the upcoming elections as the largest as well as the ruling party, it is effectively depicting itself as a "victim," whose presidential candidate was "unjustly" rejected by the secular establishment because he is "religious" and "Muslim."
In its campaign, the AKP is also touting the economic growth that has taken place under its rule. [1]
A Consensus Presidential Candidate - Still a Contentious Issue
While Foreign Minister Gul continues to declare, in campaign forums, that he is still the presidential candidate, and is claiming that, judging by the reactions of the people, he would win if the presidency was to be decided by popular vote, Prime Minister Erdogan recently announced that he was ready to seek consensus with the opposition on a name. This decision was welcomed by all opposition leaders as the prime minister "finally accepting what was requested of him prior to the May stalemate." Had he agreed then to compromise, and worked with the opposition to find an impartial candidate, with respect for the constitutional principles of the republic - the crisis would have been avoided. Yet, another dispute has now ensued on the meaning of "consensus" and how to reach it.
Erdogan, who is by now probably aware of the fact that the AKP will not have the 367 seats necessary to elect a president by itself, said that he was ready to offer the opposition a few names as AKP candidates. However, Deniz Baykal, leader of the main opposition party CHP, responded that more names of the same kind would not be acceptable, and expressed his desire for the nomination of a nonpolitical, independent figure from outside the parliament.
If an agreement cannot be reached within the parliament that will be formed after the July 22 elections, and if the new parliament also fails to elect a president - or if the elections produce a CHP-MHP coalition and the AKP retaliates by boycotting the presidential vote - the parliament must again dissolve itself, and within 45 days again go to parliamentary elections. [2]
Findings of Public Opinion Polls
Many polls and surveys are predicting an AKP win on July 22. With millions of votes bound to be thrown out because of the very high threshold that blocks representation by smaller parties, the AKP may indeed emerge as the first party. However, it is difficult to estimate the seat distribution in the next parliament.
According to a survey published in June by the reputable research and polling organization SONAR, the AKP may receive 40% of the votes, followed by the CHP with 20%. However, the findings also showed that a total of five parties - including the CHP, the MHP, the DP and the YP - would pass the 10% threshold and send representatives to the legislature. If the Kurdish DTP - now represented by independent candidates - fills 27-29 seats, as is indicated, the AKP might not be able to form a single-party government. The poll results point at 275-280 AKP seats (out of 550 parliamentary seats) in the event that five parties pass the threshold. This number would be 290-295, if four parties pass the threshold, and 320 if only three parties make it to parliament.
Analysis by the DHA (Dogan News Agency) without the DP and GP - since they are unlikely to pass the threshold - shows the following: AKP, 252-260 seats; CHP, 160-165 seats; MHP, 89-95 seats; and independents, 30-32 seats. With this distribution of seats, an expected CHP-MHP coalition cannot emerge, as both parties are sworn not to enter any coalition with AKP or Kurdish DTP representatives. This would give the AKP the opportunity to form the next government with active or passive support from DTP "independents."
While almost all the surveys indicate that three parties (AKP, CHP and MHP) will gain representation, some polls point to a head-to-head race between the AKP and the CHP - with each gaining about 30% of the votes. This would make the MHP the key party in forming the next coalition government.
*R. Krespin is the director of the Turkish Media Project.
The AKP's refusal to seek a consensus presidential candidate, its uncompromising effort to appoint "a religious [i.e. Islamist] president" from the AKP ranks, the secrecy surrounding who their candidate would be, and the last-minute announcement of Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul from the Islamist Milli Gorus movement as the candidate, have all pushed Turkey into a political crisis.
Millions of Turks participated in demonstrations against the AKP government, its Islamist agenda, the appointment of Islamists to key positions in public institutions, and especially against the attempt to nominate an Islamist presidential candidate - a nomination that would jeopardize Turkey's system of checks and balances, creating a situation where both the prime minister and the president belong to the Islamist camp.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's political moves provoked a controversial memorandum from the Turkish military establishment, which is - traditionally and by the power accorded to it in the constitution - the guardian of the secular regime in Turkey.
On presidential election day, members of the opposition parties boycotted the election by not participating in the first round of the vote, and the necessary quorum of 367 MPs (two thirds of the 550-member parliament) was not reached. The matter ended up in the High Constitutional Court, which decided to annul the first round of the vote.
The mass demonstrations, the memorandum by the military and the High Court's decision forced the AKP to declare early parliamentary elections, to take place on July 22, 2007.
The Political Scene
Turkey's election system - which, during its five years in power, the AKP has refused to change - allows only parties receiving 10% of the vote nationwide to be represented in parliament. This threshold, unusually high for a democracy, keeps many smaller parties out of the legislature. It was this factor that brought the AKP to power in November 2002, when it received a two-thirds majority in parliament while receiving only one-third of the national vote. The only other political party that passed the 10% threshold and gained representation in 2002 was the Republican People's Party (CHP).
This system is now placing all the parties of the fragmented opposition at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the AKP.
To overcome the 10% threshold problem, the center-left CHP and the smaller Democratic Left Party (DSP) merged their lists to run together under the CHP. However, unification efforts by the once-powerful conservative center-right Motherland Party (ANAP) and the True Path Party (DYP) under the new name of Democrat Party (DP) were unsuccessful, and ANAP withdrew from the elections process. This failure to produce a strong center-right alternative will probably prove to be the AKP's biggest advantage in the upcoming elections.
The AKP, for its part, included in its candidate list some well-known names from the center right, and even from the social democrats, with the aim of attracting votes from the nonreligious sector.
Among the CHP candidates are also some leading political figures from the center right, who joined the CHP believing it to be the only secular alternative that could challenge the AKP.
Besides the AKP and the CHP, there is the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has been gaining ground due to the increasingly nationalist sentiment in the country. The MHP - and to some extent the CHP - are being strengthened by the AKP's failure to deal with increased terrorist activity by the PKK, which claims over 60 lives every month. It is also gaining ground due to the government's hesitation to allow the Turkish military to launch a cross-border incursion into northern Iraq where the PKK is based; and by the daily funerals of terror victims that turn into anti-government protests.
Another force emerging on the political scene is the representation of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. Members of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) - which followed the earlier, outlawed Kurdish parties DEP and DEHAP, and which is strong in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast - have decided to run in the upcoming elections as independent candidates, in order to avoid the 10% barrier. These independent candidates are expected to hold 25 to 30 seats in the next parliament.
Other political parties, such as the Young Party (GP) and the Democrat Party (DP), which may come close to the threshold with 7% to 9% of the votes, are not expected to gain legislative representation.
The Election Campaign
The AKP seems to be campaigning harder than its opponents, and is covering more of the country. Recently, it has begun to distribute, through its local branches and municipalities, "gift packages" in poorer neighborhoods nationwide, containing rice, wheat, beans, sugar, flour, oil, jam, pasta, soap, and so on, as well as one ton of coal per family for winter heating. Campaign buses are carrying loads of toys that are being distributed to children across the country by AKP candidates. These practices are being strongly criticized in the mainstream media as undemocratic means of "buying" votes.
Despite the fact that AKP is entering the upcoming elections as the largest as well as the ruling party, it is effectively depicting itself as a "victim," whose presidential candidate was "unjustly" rejected by the secular establishment because he is "religious" and "Muslim."
In its campaign, the AKP is also touting the economic growth that has taken place under its rule. [1]
A Consensus Presidential Candidate - Still a Contentious Issue
While Foreign Minister Gul continues to declare, in campaign forums, that he is still the presidential candidate, and is claiming that, judging by the reactions of the people, he would win if the presidency was to be decided by popular vote, Prime Minister Erdogan recently announced that he was ready to seek consensus with the opposition on a name. This decision was welcomed by all opposition leaders as the prime minister "finally accepting what was requested of him prior to the May stalemate." Had he agreed then to compromise, and worked with the opposition to find an impartial candidate, with respect for the constitutional principles of the republic - the crisis would have been avoided. Yet, another dispute has now ensued on the meaning of "consensus" and how to reach it.
Erdogan, who is by now probably aware of the fact that the AKP will not have the 367 seats necessary to elect a president by itself, said that he was ready to offer the opposition a few names as AKP candidates. However, Deniz Baykal, leader of the main opposition party CHP, responded that more names of the same kind would not be acceptable, and expressed his desire for the nomination of a nonpolitical, independent figure from outside the parliament.
If an agreement cannot be reached within the parliament that will be formed after the July 22 elections, and if the new parliament also fails to elect a president - or if the elections produce a CHP-MHP coalition and the AKP retaliates by boycotting the presidential vote - the parliament must again dissolve itself, and within 45 days again go to parliamentary elections. [2]
Findings of Public Opinion Polls
Many polls and surveys are predicting an AKP win on July 22. With millions of votes bound to be thrown out because of the very high threshold that blocks representation by smaller parties, the AKP may indeed emerge as the first party. However, it is difficult to estimate the seat distribution in the next parliament.
According to a survey published in June by the reputable research and polling organization SONAR, the AKP may receive 40% of the votes, followed by the CHP with 20%. However, the findings also showed that a total of five parties - including the CHP, the MHP, the DP and the YP - would pass the 10% threshold and send representatives to the legislature. If the Kurdish DTP - now represented by independent candidates - fills 27-29 seats, as is indicated, the AKP might not be able to form a single-party government. The poll results point at 275-280 AKP seats (out of 550 parliamentary seats) in the event that five parties pass the threshold. This number would be 290-295, if four parties pass the threshold, and 320 if only three parties make it to parliament.
Analysis by the DHA (Dogan News Agency) without the DP and GP - since they are unlikely to pass the threshold - shows the following: AKP, 252-260 seats; CHP, 160-165 seats; MHP, 89-95 seats; and independents, 30-32 seats. With this distribution of seats, an expected CHP-MHP coalition cannot emerge, as both parties are sworn not to enter any coalition with AKP or Kurdish DTP representatives. This would give the AKP the opportunity to form the next government with active or passive support from DTP "independents."
While almost all the surveys indicate that three parties (AKP, CHP and MHP) will gain representation, some polls point to a head-to-head race between the AKP and the CHP - with each gaining about 30% of the votes. This would make the MHP the key party in forming the next coalition government.
*R. Krespin is the director of the Turkish Media Project.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Turkey's election In search of the female voter
Jul 12th 2007 | ANKARA AND ISTANBUL
From The Economist print edition
Women will have an important role in Turkey's election on July 22nd
IN ISTANBUL'S Carsamba district, women in head-to-toe chadors trail obediently behind bearded men sporting Islamic caps and baggy trousers. Shop windows are crammed with Islamic memorabilia from Mecca. Many secular women fret that, if Recep Tayyip Erdogan's mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) Party, which has run Turkey since 2002, wins the election on July 22nd, all of Ataturk's republic may resemble Carsamba.
Turkey's bossy generals and the secular opposition are doing their utmost to encourage such fears. Their tactics sometimes work. Many of those who joined the wave of pro-secular rallies before Mr Erdogan called an early election were urban, middle-class women, who also supported the army's April 27th threat to intervene over the choice of a president whose wife wears the Muslim headscarf.
But if the same ladies thumbed through a study of Turkish women by the Berlin-based European Stability Initiative, their notions about Islam and modernity might change. Entitled “Sex and Power in Turkey”, the paper deconstructs the myth that Ataturk was the sole champion of Turkish women. Certainly, they owe him a huge debt: he made women equal before the law and gave them the right to vote earlier of their counterparts in France and Switzerland, thereby making Turkish women unquestionably freer than any of their sisters in the Muslim world.
Yet the paper notes that such changes “barely penetrated Turkish society beyond a small urban elite”, and patriarchy remained entrenched in both civil and criminal law. Despite growing numbers of women in banking, medicine and academia, Turkey lags behind other European countries on most measures of gender equality. It has the smallest share of women in parliament and the workforce, and the highest rate of female illiteracy. Violence against women is on the rise: the police report a big rise last year, when 842 women were murdered and 1,113 raped.
Awkwardly for secularists, it took the AK government to pass the most radical set of women's reforms since Ataturk. Husbands are no longer officially heads of household, and wives no longer need their consent to work. Laws letting rapists off the hook if they married their victims have gone; new ones make intra-marital rape a criminal offence and scrap reduced sentences for honour killings.
The AK Party's enthusiasm for women's lib may even cost it votes among its more pious constituents. In Carsamba many promise to back the overtly Islamist Saadet party (which is expected to take no more than 2% of the vote). Yet critics still claim that AK's reformist zeal is driven less by conviction than by a wish to please the European Union. As evidence, they cite Mr Erdogan's failed bid to criminalise adultery three years ago.
Hulya Gulbahar, a lawyer who helped to co-ordinate women who were lobbying parliament for reform, says they faced more resistance from the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) than from AK. Tellingly, only 10% of CHP's parliamentary candidates are women. Admittedly, AK does little better. Edibe Sozen, an academic who is among 62 women (out of 550 candidates) fielded by AK, acknowledges that “changing the [patriarchal] mentality is not as easy as changing the laws.”
The judiciary is another problem. Recently, in the case of a woman who was raped by her neighbour, the presiding judge in an appeal court opined that she must have “consented” because she had “not screamed or shouted” during the act. “She kept silent so as not to upset her children,” fumes a lawyer, Fatma Benli. Miss Benli is fighting the ban on the Muslim headscarf in government offices and schools. Shedding her headscarf and overcoat to reveal a lace-trimmed top and a shock of auburn curls, she is indistinguishable in looks and rhetoric from female human-rights campaigners in the West.
Miss Benli, who cannot defend her clients in court because of her garb, argues that, before the headscarf ban in 1998, universities were among the few places where secular and devout Turkish women could mix. “The [headscarf ban] not only polarises society, it runs counter to the very purpose it claims to serve: to modernise Turkish women,” she insists.
From The Economist print edition
Women will have an important role in Turkey's election on July 22nd
IN ISTANBUL'S Carsamba district, women in head-to-toe chadors trail obediently behind bearded men sporting Islamic caps and baggy trousers. Shop windows are crammed with Islamic memorabilia from Mecca. Many secular women fret that, if Recep Tayyip Erdogan's mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) Party, which has run Turkey since 2002, wins the election on July 22nd, all of Ataturk's republic may resemble Carsamba.
Turkey's bossy generals and the secular opposition are doing their utmost to encourage such fears. Their tactics sometimes work. Many of those who joined the wave of pro-secular rallies before Mr Erdogan called an early election were urban, middle-class women, who also supported the army's April 27th threat to intervene over the choice of a president whose wife wears the Muslim headscarf.
But if the same ladies thumbed through a study of Turkish women by the Berlin-based European Stability Initiative, their notions about Islam and modernity might change. Entitled “Sex and Power in Turkey”, the paper deconstructs the myth that Ataturk was the sole champion of Turkish women. Certainly, they owe him a huge debt: he made women equal before the law and gave them the right to vote earlier of their counterparts in France and Switzerland, thereby making Turkish women unquestionably freer than any of their sisters in the Muslim world.
Yet the paper notes that such changes “barely penetrated Turkish society beyond a small urban elite”, and patriarchy remained entrenched in both civil and criminal law. Despite growing numbers of women in banking, medicine and academia, Turkey lags behind other European countries on most measures of gender equality. It has the smallest share of women in parliament and the workforce, and the highest rate of female illiteracy. Violence against women is on the rise: the police report a big rise last year, when 842 women were murdered and 1,113 raped.
Awkwardly for secularists, it took the AK government to pass the most radical set of women's reforms since Ataturk. Husbands are no longer officially heads of household, and wives no longer need their consent to work. Laws letting rapists off the hook if they married their victims have gone; new ones make intra-marital rape a criminal offence and scrap reduced sentences for honour killings.
The AK Party's enthusiasm for women's lib may even cost it votes among its more pious constituents. In Carsamba many promise to back the overtly Islamist Saadet party (which is expected to take no more than 2% of the vote). Yet critics still claim that AK's reformist zeal is driven less by conviction than by a wish to please the European Union. As evidence, they cite Mr Erdogan's failed bid to criminalise adultery three years ago.
Hulya Gulbahar, a lawyer who helped to co-ordinate women who were lobbying parliament for reform, says they faced more resistance from the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) than from AK. Tellingly, only 10% of CHP's parliamentary candidates are women. Admittedly, AK does little better. Edibe Sozen, an academic who is among 62 women (out of 550 candidates) fielded by AK, acknowledges that “changing the [patriarchal] mentality is not as easy as changing the laws.”
The judiciary is another problem. Recently, in the case of a woman who was raped by her neighbour, the presiding judge in an appeal court opined that she must have “consented” because she had “not screamed or shouted” during the act. “She kept silent so as not to upset her children,” fumes a lawyer, Fatma Benli. Miss Benli is fighting the ban on the Muslim headscarf in government offices and schools. Shedding her headscarf and overcoat to reveal a lace-trimmed top and a shock of auburn curls, she is indistinguishable in looks and rhetoric from female human-rights campaigners in the West.
Miss Benli, who cannot defend her clients in court because of her garb, argues that, before the headscarf ban in 1998, universities were among the few places where secular and devout Turkish women could mix. “The [headscarf ban] not only polarises society, it runs counter to the very purpose it claims to serve: to modernise Turkish women,” she insists.
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