An attempt to bypass Russia annoys the United States
COCKING a snook at America seems an odd way to launch a second term in office for a government eager to prove its pro-Western credentials. Yet that is what Turkey's mildly Islamist Justice and Development party (AK) appears to be doing, just weeks after its landslide victory in the July 22nd parliamentary election.
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dispatched his energy minister, Hilmi Guler, to Iran last week where he concluded a raft of deals. They include the establishment of a joint company to carry up to 35 billion cubic metres of Iranian natural gas via Turkey to Europe, and the construction of three thermal power plants by Turkish companies in Iran.
America swiftly complained. “If you ask our opinion, do we think it's the right moment to be making investments in the Iranian oil and gas sector, no we don't,” sniffed a State Department spokesman. There were mutterings about possible sanctions. But Turkey insists it has the right to pursue its interests. And Iran is delighted. “Nobody can come between Iran and Turkey,” Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, crowed recently.
Mr Erdogan's critics have seized on his dealings with Iran as proof that he is trying to steer Turkey away from the West. In fact, they have just the opposite aim: to boost Turkey's chances of joining the European Union by making it a vital energy corridor for oil and gas flowing between the energy-rich former Soviet states, the Middle East and Europe.
This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. EU countries import half their energy, with around a fifth of their oil and gas coming from Russia's state monopoly, Gazprom. The need to diversify sources was driven home in 2005 when Gazprom arbitrarily increased the price of gas it supplies to Ukraine by pipeline. Russia's use of its energy riches to flex its muscles on the world stage is one reason why America is lobbying so hard for the creation of an east-west energy corridor—a network of oil and gas pipelines running from former Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan via Turkey, and on to European markets.
The first big step towards weakening Russia's grip was the inauguration in 2005 of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline carrying Azerbaijani oil from offshore Caspian fields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, in the southern Mediterranean. This provocation, from the Russian point of view, was compounded by the launch of a parallel line carrying natural gas from Azerbaijan (and eventually, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan), which was completed last year. But Gazprom hit back by raising the price of the gas it sells to the Azerbaijanis, who rely on Russia for nearly half their supply.
This, in turn, forced them to use more of their own gas, leaving them unable to fill the Turkish pipeline, which lay idle until last month.
In a further blow, Gazprom announced a venture with Italy's Eni in June to build a line across the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria. All this makes it less likely that Turkey will, by 2011, achieve its dream of extending a recently completed pipeline to Greece as far as southern central Europe.
That is why Turkey has turned to Iran, according to Necdet Pamir, a veteran Turkish energy analyst. Iranian gas would not only help to fill the Nabucco pipeline, another mooted conduit from the Middle East or Central Asia, bypassing Russia, but would also reduce Turkey's own dependence on Russian supplies: over half of Turkey's natural-gas demand is met by Gazprom. Unlike the former Soviet producers, Iran controls several shipping lanes and borders Turkey. “The paradox for America is that Iran is the only country other than Iraq that can truly undermine Russia's [energy] supremacy,” observes Mr Pamir.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
TURKEY AND ISLAM Tolerance and tradition in Turkey
Turkey, the first secular republic with a majority Muslim population, is expected to soon have a president who prays in public and whose wife wears a headscarf as a manifestation of her religious convictions. Anti-religious secularists in the Muslim world see this development as a threat to Turkey's laicism. But it could also be an opportunity to define secularism in the Muslim world as a political system ensuring separation of theology and state rather than as an anti-religious ideology.
For almost a century, secular elites in Muslim countries have equated secularization with renunciation of Islamic symbols and practices. This rejection of traditional religion was initially a reaction to the efforts of Muslim clerics to enforce Islam by law. But the radical secularism of authoritarian regimes, such as that of the shah of Iran, has contributed to the rise and expansion of Islamist radicalism. Islamists portray their religion as being in danger; the exclusion of practicing Muslims from the power structure in majority Muslim states helps the Islamists build that argument.
The threat to secularism in the Muslim world comes from religious intolerance, not from individual acts of piety. Turkey's election of a conservative Muslim president need not be seen as a deviation from its secular ideals. It is a much-needed embrace of a path different from that of radical Islam as well as radical secularism.
The Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish initials, AK), led by Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan, won parliamentary polls in July with 47 percent of the popular vote and a clear majority of seats in the Grand National Assembly. This was a significant improvement over the 34 percent share of the vote it won in 2002 - an election that first brought the conservative party with Islamist roots to power.
The elections last month were called earlier than scheduled because of an inconclusive presidential vote in April, when, the AK Party's nominee for president, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, faced severe opposition from Turkey's secular establishment led by the military. Gul's election was blocked by technical maneuvers backed by the outgoing president and top army generals, notwithstanding the AK Party's majority in Parliament.
This time around, the party has again nominated Gul for president and, given the recent resounding popular mandate for AK Party, the army might not be able to block his election short of an improbable military coup.
Although the AK Party grew out of a succession of Islamist parties banned by Turkish courts, it describes itself as a moderate conservative party rather than an Islamist one. It does not seek the enforcement of Shariah law, and its performance in office during its first term confirms its claims.
Although both Erdogan and Gul are practicing Muslims who were once active in the Islamist movement, their first stint in office reflected an effort to distance themselves from Islamist politics. Under Erdogan, Turkey pursued European Union membership, maintained close ties with the United States and Israel, and attained new levels of economic prosperity.
The AK Party government has not curtailed civil liberties and continues to observe the basic tenets of secularism by keeping religion out of its political decisions. In the post-9/11 world, Islamist parties and leaders in several countries have become instant converts to moderation. The AK Party's critics insist that it has changed only strategically and that it would revert to demanding Shariah rule if and when it gets a chance.
Such fears must be weighed only in light of available evidence, and so far the evidence favors AK Party's credentials as a religiously conservative party willing to operate within the broad principles of secularism.
For too long, the Muslim world has been polarized between secularists who want all public manifestations of Islamic religion banished from their countries and Islamists who insist on reverting to obscurantist theocracy.
This polarization cannot come to an end without secularists tolerating the practice of religion and Islamists moving away from radical Islam to a middle where individuals can be Islamic even though the state is secular.
As in the West, Muslims need to be able to fuse faith and enlightenment while also accepting the rights of unbelievers.
Under a Gul presidency, Turkey will hopefully continue to combine tolerance with tradition. This would open the way for secularism in the Islamic world that concerns itself with protecting individual freedom and pluralism instead of being preoccupied with debates over issues such as headscarves.
For almost a century, secular elites in Muslim countries have equated secularization with renunciation of Islamic symbols and practices. This rejection of traditional religion was initially a reaction to the efforts of Muslim clerics to enforce Islam by law. But the radical secularism of authoritarian regimes, such as that of the shah of Iran, has contributed to the rise and expansion of Islamist radicalism. Islamists portray their religion as being in danger; the exclusion of practicing Muslims from the power structure in majority Muslim states helps the Islamists build that argument.
The threat to secularism in the Muslim world comes from religious intolerance, not from individual acts of piety. Turkey's election of a conservative Muslim president need not be seen as a deviation from its secular ideals. It is a much-needed embrace of a path different from that of radical Islam as well as radical secularism.
The Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish initials, AK), led by Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan, won parliamentary polls in July with 47 percent of the popular vote and a clear majority of seats in the Grand National Assembly. This was a significant improvement over the 34 percent share of the vote it won in 2002 - an election that first brought the conservative party with Islamist roots to power.
The elections last month were called earlier than scheduled because of an inconclusive presidential vote in April, when, the AK Party's nominee for president, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, faced severe opposition from Turkey's secular establishment led by the military. Gul's election was blocked by technical maneuvers backed by the outgoing president and top army generals, notwithstanding the AK Party's majority in Parliament.
This time around, the party has again nominated Gul for president and, given the recent resounding popular mandate for AK Party, the army might not be able to block his election short of an improbable military coup.
Although the AK Party grew out of a succession of Islamist parties banned by Turkish courts, it describes itself as a moderate conservative party rather than an Islamist one. It does not seek the enforcement of Shariah law, and its performance in office during its first term confirms its claims.
Although both Erdogan and Gul are practicing Muslims who were once active in the Islamist movement, their first stint in office reflected an effort to distance themselves from Islamist politics. Under Erdogan, Turkey pursued European Union membership, maintained close ties with the United States and Israel, and attained new levels of economic prosperity.
The AK Party government has not curtailed civil liberties and continues to observe the basic tenets of secularism by keeping religion out of its political decisions. In the post-9/11 world, Islamist parties and leaders in several countries have become instant converts to moderation. The AK Party's critics insist that it has changed only strategically and that it would revert to demanding Shariah rule if and when it gets a chance.
Such fears must be weighed only in light of available evidence, and so far the evidence favors AK Party's credentials as a religiously conservative party willing to operate within the broad principles of secularism.
For too long, the Muslim world has been polarized between secularists who want all public manifestations of Islamic religion banished from their countries and Islamists who insist on reverting to obscurantist theocracy.
This polarization cannot come to an end without secularists tolerating the practice of religion and Islamists moving away from radical Islam to a middle where individuals can be Islamic even though the state is secular.
As in the West, Muslims need to be able to fuse faith and enlightenment while also accepting the rights of unbelievers.
Under a Gul presidency, Turkey will hopefully continue to combine tolerance with tradition. This would open the way for secularism in the Islamic world that concerns itself with protecting individual freedom and pluralism instead of being preoccupied with debates over issues such as headscarves.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Turkey Ready to take office
Turkey's Abdullah Gul will soon become president. Then what?
ABDULLAH GUL, Turkey's foreign minister, took another step towards the presidency on Monday August 20th as parliamentarians held a first round of voting for the post. Mr Gul, a pious Muslim whose earlier bid for the job sparked political turmoil, won 341 votes in the 550-member chamber. He fell short of the two-thirds of ballots needed to win the presidency outright in the first round, though he is all but assured of eventual victory. His closest rival, Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, a former defence minister fielded by the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), got just 70 votes.
Mr Gul is expected to become president after a third round of voting on August 28th, when a simple majority will suffice. He is backed by his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which won 341 seats in snap parliamentary polls last month. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) boycotted Monday's session and claimed that Mr Gul's earlier involvement in Islamist politics posed a threat to the secular system laid down by the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.
The job of president is partly ceremonial, but the incumbent has influence over politics through his right to block legislation. He may also name judges and veto appointments to the government and is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Mr Gul’s first go at the presidency in April was greeted with mass anti-government rallies called by secularists, including many women who voiced concern that their liberal lifestyles might be threatened. Tensions escalated when the army, which has toppled four governments since 1960, threatened to intervene. His effort came to an end when the constitutional court upheld a claim by the CHP that the parliament lacked a quorum in a first round of balloting. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then called an early general election.
In the event, the AK Party romped back for a second term with nearly 47% of the vote. Four years of robust economic growth, political calm and democratic reforms have kept the public happy. Voters may also have been offering a mandate for Mr Gul’s attempt on the presidency. Fearful of a fresh dust-up with the army, Mr Erdogan at first balked at his colleague's continued presidential ambitions. But Mr Gul persisted and won the backing of the AK's conservative rump led by Bulent Arinc, a former speaker of parliament, forcing Mr Erdogan’s hand. As important, the MHP announced after the elections that its parliamentarians would take part in the vote for president, ensuring there would be a quorum.
Mr Gul says that, as president, he will reach out to all Turks and that he will remain loyal to the secular tenets of the constitution. His four years as foreign minister leave little room for doubt. He was the driving force behind the many reforms that persuaded European Union leaders to open long delayed membership talks with Turkey in 2005. And it was Mr Gul who engineered the defection of fellow moderates from the overtly Islamist Welfare Party which was bullied out of office by the generals in 1997.
His sole handicap appears to be his wife, Hayrunnisa. She wears the Islamic style headscarf that is banned in all government buildings and schools. In a sop to the secularists she is expected to tie it in a more fashionable style. Over time they should grow accustomed to her headgear just as they eventually accepted Mr Erdogan's wife, Emine, who became the first ever prime ministerial spouse to cover her head.
As for relations with the army, there remains scope for more tensions with the ruling politicians. Mr Erdogan is promising to write a new “civilian” constitution to replace the one that was imposed by the generals after their last direct coup in 1980. But Mr Gul is, for now, playing down the prospects of confrontation. It is rumoured that he has already met the chief of general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, in recent days to offer personal assurances that he will not stray from Ataturk’s path, although Mr Buyukanit denies any meeting has taken place. It would seem to be in nobody’s interest to spark fresh political upheaval once again.
ABDULLAH GUL, Turkey's foreign minister, took another step towards the presidency on Monday August 20th as parliamentarians held a first round of voting for the post. Mr Gul, a pious Muslim whose earlier bid for the job sparked political turmoil, won 341 votes in the 550-member chamber. He fell short of the two-thirds of ballots needed to win the presidency outright in the first round, though he is all but assured of eventual victory. His closest rival, Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, a former defence minister fielded by the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), got just 70 votes.
Mr Gul is expected to become president after a third round of voting on August 28th, when a simple majority will suffice. He is backed by his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which won 341 seats in snap parliamentary polls last month. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) boycotted Monday's session and claimed that Mr Gul's earlier involvement in Islamist politics posed a threat to the secular system laid down by the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.
The job of president is partly ceremonial, but the incumbent has influence over politics through his right to block legislation. He may also name judges and veto appointments to the government and is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Mr Gul’s first go at the presidency in April was greeted with mass anti-government rallies called by secularists, including many women who voiced concern that their liberal lifestyles might be threatened. Tensions escalated when the army, which has toppled four governments since 1960, threatened to intervene. His effort came to an end when the constitutional court upheld a claim by the CHP that the parliament lacked a quorum in a first round of balloting. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then called an early general election.
In the event, the AK Party romped back for a second term with nearly 47% of the vote. Four years of robust economic growth, political calm and democratic reforms have kept the public happy. Voters may also have been offering a mandate for Mr Gul’s attempt on the presidency. Fearful of a fresh dust-up with the army, Mr Erdogan at first balked at his colleague's continued presidential ambitions. But Mr Gul persisted and won the backing of the AK's conservative rump led by Bulent Arinc, a former speaker of parliament, forcing Mr Erdogan’s hand. As important, the MHP announced after the elections that its parliamentarians would take part in the vote for president, ensuring there would be a quorum.
Mr Gul says that, as president, he will reach out to all Turks and that he will remain loyal to the secular tenets of the constitution. His four years as foreign minister leave little room for doubt. He was the driving force behind the many reforms that persuaded European Union leaders to open long delayed membership talks with Turkey in 2005. And it was Mr Gul who engineered the defection of fellow moderates from the overtly Islamist Welfare Party which was bullied out of office by the generals in 1997.
His sole handicap appears to be his wife, Hayrunnisa. She wears the Islamic style headscarf that is banned in all government buildings and schools. In a sop to the secularists she is expected to tie it in a more fashionable style. Over time they should grow accustomed to her headgear just as they eventually accepted Mr Erdogan's wife, Emine, who became the first ever prime ministerial spouse to cover her head.
As for relations with the army, there remains scope for more tensions with the ruling politicians. Mr Erdogan is promising to write a new “civilian” constitution to replace the one that was imposed by the generals after their last direct coup in 1980. But Mr Gul is, for now, playing down the prospects of confrontation. It is rumoured that he has already met the chief of general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, in recent days to offer personal assurances that he will not stray from Ataturk’s path, although Mr Buyukanit denies any meeting has taken place. It would seem to be in nobody’s interest to spark fresh political upheaval once again.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
The A.K.P.'s Complex Victory in Turkey
The A.K.P.'s Complex Victory in Turkey
Drafted By: Dario Cristiani
http://www.pinr.com
On July 22, 2007, the Turkish public voted in early parliamentary elections called after the parliament failed to appoint a new president. The election of a new chief of state was the reason for the political stalemate in April and May and of the harsh split between the Kemalist military establishment of the Turkish Armed Forces (T.S.K.) and the Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.), the Islamic-rooted party led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The attempt at appointing an important Islamic political personality, such as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, as the new president was the last straw between the T.S.K. and the A.K.P.
The military perceived the appointment of Gul as a presidential candidate (the president is also the commander-in-chief of the T.S.K.) as a direct menace for Turkey and its secular character. It also saw the act as one that would further weaken the power of the military. In light of these developments, the Republican People's Party (C.H.P.), the leftist party created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and whose ideology is based on a strict observance of the principles of Ataturk, moved to block the election of Gul as president and, after the second failed vote, Gul withdrew his candidacy.
The results of the July 22 elections were as follows: the A.K.P. came in first with about 46.5 percent of the vote and will have 341 seats in the next Turkish unicameral parliament, which is made up of 550 seats. The C.H.P. came in second with about 21 percent of the vote, giving it 112 seats in the new parliament. The ultra-nationalist and right-oriented Nationalist Movement Party (M.H.P.) came in third with 14.3 percent of the vote, giving it 70 seats. The independents took 26 seats and a large part of them were from the Party for a Democratic Society (D.T.P.), the Kurdish party.
The Structural Roots of A.K.P. Consensus
The elections have represented a sort of paradox for the A.K.P.: they have demonstrated how the party has strongly increased its popular support but, at the same time, has fewer seats than before the elections. That is because the M.H.P. has exceeded the electoral threshold of ten percent. Hence, while the A.K.P. has received an autonomous parliamentary majority, it does not have the capability to elect the president on its own.
The elections, however, have demonstrated again the electoral power and the consensus that the A.K.P. has among the Turkish electorate. This consensus is rooted in a series of structural and contingent factors, which explain how the A.K.P. has strengthened its popular support during the past few years.
From a structural viewpoint, the first factor that must be taken into account is the progressive Islamization of the public and political space in Turkey. Such a development, even though abhorred by the military and secularist elites, has allowed Islam, its symbols and its cultural and social values to play a stronger role in the public discourse and to be a fully recognized part, by the largest component of the population, of the Turkish political mainstream.
Certainly, the presence in power of the A.K.P. since 2002 has reinforced such a trend, with Islam and Islamic values becoming the core of the political discourse. However, the process began before the A.K.P. took power and its increasing consensus is partly a result of the resurgence of Islam in the political sphere.
The second structural factor is the presence of a new, different middle class, characterized for its Islamic roots, in search of political representation. The so-called "green capitalists," united under the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (MUSIAD), promote an Islamic, conservative vision of society associated with a liberal and market-oriented vision of the economy. The emergence of such a social and political actor is one of the more durable results of the economic liberalization process and the market-oriented reforms implemented by the Turgut Ozal-led government in the 1980s.
The appearance of such a group has created a new economic power faction, whose creation has had several important political implications. It has represented not only an economic concurrent for the secular state elite, but a political one too. This new middle class has weakened the concept of a "strong state," a stronghold of Turkey since its foundation, and one of the consequences of such a weakening has been the end of the hegemony of secularism and nationalism as the main political narratives within the Turkish political scene.
Unlike its predecessors, the A.K.P. has repudiated the Welfare Party and Virtue Party legacy, in order to avoid a new "February 28, 1997" -- the day in which the T.S.K. ousted the Welfare Party from power -- with the aim of demonstrating the clear discontinuity between these experiences and its full acceptance of the modern lifestyle, the secular nature of the Turkish republic and the parliamentary confrontation, managing, at the same time, to keep intact its credentials as an Islamic-oriented party.
Moreover, the A.K.P. has an impressive and branched party machine and a strong network of local administrators. These two elements give the party a rooted and deeper presence in the country, which is a tool for building and consolidating its consensus. The presence of many A.K.P. mayors and the control over the local administrations, strengthened after the local elections in 2004, give the party a fundamental instrument for creating several consensus networks using welfare and local services in order to reinforce the clientele networks based on the lavishing of jobs in the public sector or the redistributing of wealth, above all in the less developed areas of the country.
Contingent Factors of the A.K.P. Affirmation and the Weakness of Nationalist Responses
In the affirmation of the A.K.P. in the latest election, an important role has been played by those factors closely linked to the political and economic situation in the country. For example, the economic growth rate of the country, close to 5.5 percent in 2006, and the overall economic record of the A.K.P. government in the past five years are elements that have had a fundamental role in its victory.
Moreover, the performance of the A.K.P. as a reformist party during its first mandate in the way of European Union membership, even though such an attitude has been weakened in the past two years, has caused liberal sectors of the society to look with interest to the A.K.P.
The run toward the European Union is an important goal for Turkey; however, Erdogan and his party have used the European Union also as an instrument for changing the domestic political and institutional panorama and the internal balance of power. The power of the military establishment has been weakened by the reforms implemented with the aim of fulfilling the so-called "Copenhagen Criteria."
A clear example of such an attitude has been the popular response to the April 27 Military Memorandum, which has not been as strong as it has been in the past for a similar event. Erdogan has also used as a propaganda instrument military interference within the political arena. He has tried to show that the A.K.P. is a genuine democratic force concerned about the future of democracy in Turkey and that the party wants to "normalize" the democratic life of the country, avoiding direct interference by the army in the political sphere. Hence, it has been a tool to acquire leverage and influence over the more liberal sectors of Turkish society that do not agree with an active role of the military in politics.
Finally, the lack of electoral depth of the political adversaries was the final factor. The concern, that still exists in some sectors of Turkish society, over the possible existence of a hidden, radical Islamist agenda of the A.K.P., expressed by the military and the nationalist parties, has not been as strong as in the largest part of the electorate. The main adversaries of the A.K.P. -- the C.H.P. and the M.H.P. -- have only played the nationalist card. Such a move has been useful for securing their targeted electorate, but this has prevented them from gaining influence over the part of the electoral body farther from their positions. By choosing the card of a harsh nationalist response to the moves of the Erdogan-led party, they have polarized the electorate: on one side, there are the nationalist and secular electors, while on the other there are the rest, consisting of the conservatives, the Islamic-oriented population, the lower middle-class, the liberals and the part of the left that does not agree with the aggressive nationalist turn of the C.H.P.
Conclusion
The impressive victory of the A.K.P. in a country in which the ruling party has had historic difficulty being reelected is rooted in many structural factors. However, while this victory has reinforced the government's party from a political viewpoint, from a strictly numerical point of view the A.K.P. does not have the necessary numbers to appoint a party's candidate as chief of state. It will need the support of other parliamentarians in order to reach the threshold of 367 members.
In the end, the situation is complex and unclear. The candidature of Gul will bring further tension within the Turkish political scene. The military will try to move in to avoid an election of an Islamic-oriented president, even though they are weaker than before. The political problem correlated to the election of the chief of state could also bring some problems to the tenure of Erdogan's position within the party.
The A.K.P. clearly won the latest elections, but the problems that it is going to face are more difficult and complex than they were prior to the elections.
Report Drafted By:
Dario Cristiani
Drafted By: Dario Cristiani
http://www.pinr.com
On July 22, 2007, the Turkish public voted in early parliamentary elections called after the parliament failed to appoint a new president. The election of a new chief of state was the reason for the political stalemate in April and May and of the harsh split between the Kemalist military establishment of the Turkish Armed Forces (T.S.K.) and the Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.), the Islamic-rooted party led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The attempt at appointing an important Islamic political personality, such as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, as the new president was the last straw between the T.S.K. and the A.K.P.
The military perceived the appointment of Gul as a presidential candidate (the president is also the commander-in-chief of the T.S.K.) as a direct menace for Turkey and its secular character. It also saw the act as one that would further weaken the power of the military. In light of these developments, the Republican People's Party (C.H.P.), the leftist party created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and whose ideology is based on a strict observance of the principles of Ataturk, moved to block the election of Gul as president and, after the second failed vote, Gul withdrew his candidacy.
The results of the July 22 elections were as follows: the A.K.P. came in first with about 46.5 percent of the vote and will have 341 seats in the next Turkish unicameral parliament, which is made up of 550 seats. The C.H.P. came in second with about 21 percent of the vote, giving it 112 seats in the new parliament. The ultra-nationalist and right-oriented Nationalist Movement Party (M.H.P.) came in third with 14.3 percent of the vote, giving it 70 seats. The independents took 26 seats and a large part of them were from the Party for a Democratic Society (D.T.P.), the Kurdish party.
The Structural Roots of A.K.P. Consensus
The elections have represented a sort of paradox for the A.K.P.: they have demonstrated how the party has strongly increased its popular support but, at the same time, has fewer seats than before the elections. That is because the M.H.P. has exceeded the electoral threshold of ten percent. Hence, while the A.K.P. has received an autonomous parliamentary majority, it does not have the capability to elect the president on its own.
The elections, however, have demonstrated again the electoral power and the consensus that the A.K.P. has among the Turkish electorate. This consensus is rooted in a series of structural and contingent factors, which explain how the A.K.P. has strengthened its popular support during the past few years.
From a structural viewpoint, the first factor that must be taken into account is the progressive Islamization of the public and political space in Turkey. Such a development, even though abhorred by the military and secularist elites, has allowed Islam, its symbols and its cultural and social values to play a stronger role in the public discourse and to be a fully recognized part, by the largest component of the population, of the Turkish political mainstream.
Certainly, the presence in power of the A.K.P. since 2002 has reinforced such a trend, with Islam and Islamic values becoming the core of the political discourse. However, the process began before the A.K.P. took power and its increasing consensus is partly a result of the resurgence of Islam in the political sphere.
The second structural factor is the presence of a new, different middle class, characterized for its Islamic roots, in search of political representation. The so-called "green capitalists," united under the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (MUSIAD), promote an Islamic, conservative vision of society associated with a liberal and market-oriented vision of the economy. The emergence of such a social and political actor is one of the more durable results of the economic liberalization process and the market-oriented reforms implemented by the Turgut Ozal-led government in the 1980s.
The appearance of such a group has created a new economic power faction, whose creation has had several important political implications. It has represented not only an economic concurrent for the secular state elite, but a political one too. This new middle class has weakened the concept of a "strong state," a stronghold of Turkey since its foundation, and one of the consequences of such a weakening has been the end of the hegemony of secularism and nationalism as the main political narratives within the Turkish political scene.
Unlike its predecessors, the A.K.P. has repudiated the Welfare Party and Virtue Party legacy, in order to avoid a new "February 28, 1997" -- the day in which the T.S.K. ousted the Welfare Party from power -- with the aim of demonstrating the clear discontinuity between these experiences and its full acceptance of the modern lifestyle, the secular nature of the Turkish republic and the parliamentary confrontation, managing, at the same time, to keep intact its credentials as an Islamic-oriented party.
Moreover, the A.K.P. has an impressive and branched party machine and a strong network of local administrators. These two elements give the party a rooted and deeper presence in the country, which is a tool for building and consolidating its consensus. The presence of many A.K.P. mayors and the control over the local administrations, strengthened after the local elections in 2004, give the party a fundamental instrument for creating several consensus networks using welfare and local services in order to reinforce the clientele networks based on the lavishing of jobs in the public sector or the redistributing of wealth, above all in the less developed areas of the country.
Contingent Factors of the A.K.P. Affirmation and the Weakness of Nationalist Responses
In the affirmation of the A.K.P. in the latest election, an important role has been played by those factors closely linked to the political and economic situation in the country. For example, the economic growth rate of the country, close to 5.5 percent in 2006, and the overall economic record of the A.K.P. government in the past five years are elements that have had a fundamental role in its victory.
Moreover, the performance of the A.K.P. as a reformist party during its first mandate in the way of European Union membership, even though such an attitude has been weakened in the past two years, has caused liberal sectors of the society to look with interest to the A.K.P.
The run toward the European Union is an important goal for Turkey; however, Erdogan and his party have used the European Union also as an instrument for changing the domestic political and institutional panorama and the internal balance of power. The power of the military establishment has been weakened by the reforms implemented with the aim of fulfilling the so-called "Copenhagen Criteria."
A clear example of such an attitude has been the popular response to the April 27 Military Memorandum, which has not been as strong as it has been in the past for a similar event. Erdogan has also used as a propaganda instrument military interference within the political arena. He has tried to show that the A.K.P. is a genuine democratic force concerned about the future of democracy in Turkey and that the party wants to "normalize" the democratic life of the country, avoiding direct interference by the army in the political sphere. Hence, it has been a tool to acquire leverage and influence over the more liberal sectors of Turkish society that do not agree with an active role of the military in politics.
Finally, the lack of electoral depth of the political adversaries was the final factor. The concern, that still exists in some sectors of Turkish society, over the possible existence of a hidden, radical Islamist agenda of the A.K.P., expressed by the military and the nationalist parties, has not been as strong as in the largest part of the electorate. The main adversaries of the A.K.P. -- the C.H.P. and the M.H.P. -- have only played the nationalist card. Such a move has been useful for securing their targeted electorate, but this has prevented them from gaining influence over the part of the electoral body farther from their positions. By choosing the card of a harsh nationalist response to the moves of the Erdogan-led party, they have polarized the electorate: on one side, there are the nationalist and secular electors, while on the other there are the rest, consisting of the conservatives, the Islamic-oriented population, the lower middle-class, the liberals and the part of the left that does not agree with the aggressive nationalist turn of the C.H.P.
Conclusion
The impressive victory of the A.K.P. in a country in which the ruling party has had historic difficulty being reelected is rooted in many structural factors. However, while this victory has reinforced the government's party from a political viewpoint, from a strictly numerical point of view the A.K.P. does not have the necessary numbers to appoint a party's candidate as chief of state. It will need the support of other parliamentarians in order to reach the threshold of 367 members.
In the end, the situation is complex and unclear. The candidature of Gul will bring further tension within the Turkish political scene. The military will try to move in to avoid an election of an Islamic-oriented president, even though they are weaker than before. The political problem correlated to the election of the chief of state could also bring some problems to the tenure of Erdogan's position within the party.
The A.K.P. clearly won the latest elections, but the problems that it is going to face are more difficult and complex than they were prior to the elections.
Report Drafted By:
Dario Cristiani
Ataturk’s Turkey: A Model For the Greater Middle East?
Sedat Laciner
Friday , 17 August 2007
Recently, there is a hot debate on Turkey’s importance as model for Iraq, Pakistan or any Muslim country among the American thinkers. ‘Turkish model prescription’ is very important for the US who has confronted with difficulties in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq. US decision-makers have no hope for Muslim democratization or liberalization, they think that Muslims can not become democrats, Muslims can not develop liberal economy and Muslims can not be integrated to the global political and economic system. The Western World has lost its all hopes about Iran and Arabs. For them, Arab means poverty, war, terrorism, backwardness, uneducated children and humiliated women. Iranians are similarly perceived as barbarian, militarist people who want to destroy Israel and the West. The US’ post 9/11 measures against terrorism and extremism nourished religionist terrorism and extreme movements in Muslim world instead of moderate groups. Despite of this simple fact, the fresh republican prescriptions for international terrorism and relations with the Muslims are not different and/or better than Bush policies. For example, one of the republican presidential nominees affirmed “If there is a need, we will bomb Mecca and Medina, two holiest Muslim cities.” Proposal of the Democrats is not much different than the Republicans’. Even Democrat presidential candidate Barrack Obama, who is pacifist and anti-militarist, affirmed that the US may occupy Pakistani territories and overthrow Musharraf’s government in order to fight terrorists. Similarly in Netherlands, which is considered the most liberal European country, there are some discussions about forbidding Koran, Islam’s holly book.
In such an atmosphere, Turkey appears as a different example compared with the rest of the Muslim world. Even tough Turkey has no natural energy resources; it is the biggest economy among the Muslim countries. Turkish economy is the 5th largest economy of Europe and 17th of the world. By courtesy of economic reforms realized within last years, Turkish economy became industrial and service economy instead of agrarian economy. Level of education, use of internet and other educational indicators are closer to European countries than Muslim countries. During last 5 years, thanks to the legal reforms important clauses of Turkish law (including penalty of death) were changed. As a result of the economic, political and legal reforms, the European Union (EU) accepted that Turkish democracy, human rights records and Turkish economy fulfilled the criteria for full membership to European Union and negotiations for full membership started on 3 October 2005. It means that Turkey’s membership to the European Union is a matter of time.
This awkward Muslim country, Turkey, attracts specially US’s attention and the American intellectuals and experts try to understand secret of this success. For them, reason of this success is Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his up-to-down policies of modernization. In other words, Americans and some Europeans do the same mistake again; they simplify cases, explain the causes as they want to see (wishful thinking). But Turkey’s story can not be reduced only to Ataturk or anyone in spite of Ataturk’s undeniable contribution to Turkish development. Moreover, the model that Ataturk formed can not be evaluated as dictatorship or “aggressive reforms” under the military protection. A society can not be changed only by the efforts of a man; democracy, human rights and liberalism can not nourish under any army’s pressure. Secret of Turkey’s success story is more complex than the Western experts think.
First of all, ‘Turkish Islam’ concept has always been different than other Muslim nations’ religious understanding. Ghaznavid Empire (Gazneliler), Karakhanids (Karahanlar), Seljuk Empire (Selcuklular), Ottoman Empire (Osmanlilar) and other Turkish states in the past saw expanding Islamic borders as ultimate aim as French, Italian states who had seen increasing Christianity as state politics. But these Turkish states at the same time were never been administered by solely religious rules contrarily to modern Iran and Saudi Arabia. Although Turkish Sultans were caliph, they did not act as the highest ecclesiastic, thus the religious rules didn’t dominate the society. Ottoman sultans acted as a secular political power and Sheyhülislam (the chief religious official in the Ottoman Empire) represented religious authority. However, when Sultan’s and Sheyhülislam’s point of view were in contradiction in any issue, the Sheyhülislam lost his post and ‘secular’ Sultan’s decisions were implemented. Although the Ottoman Empire is defined as modern Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Iran in some books published in Western countries, in reality, the Ottoman case was so different. There were pubs in 19th century Ottoman Empire, people wore whatever they wanted with no official pressure and religious and sectional minorities executed their religious exercises without restriction. Chief rabbi, Armenian, Bulgarian, and Greek Patriarchs were deputies for the Sultan, and Jewish and Christian minorities were autonomous in their internal affairs, including legal issues and taxation.
It could be argued that Turkish people and statesmen acknowledged their mistakes about politics, religion and economics earlier than other Muslim peoples. As early as the end of the 18th century the Ottomans started to discuss why European countries were relatively more developed than the Ottoman Empire and they started to introduce reforms. In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was part of the European system and balance of power and Europeanization in diplomacy, politics, social life and economy continued during the 19th century. The Ottoman State even applied some of the fundamental concepts of modern liberal democracy such as democracy, decentralization, liberal economy, liberty, civic rights, constitution and fundamental rights to its very values and principles in 19th century. The Ottomans had parliamentary system almost more than one century ago. At the end of 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was a parliamentary kingdom as most of the European states. At this period of time, the Ottoman Empire had elections, a constitution, an elected parliament, a lively press and an opposition who criticized even the Sultan and the government. Minority rights were also under statutory protection. If we compare Ottoman Empire and other European States by this point of view, we see no substantial difference between them. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sultan’s competences were reduced and governments formed by the Committee of Union and Progress party were more powerful than the Sultan. At this period of time, the Sultanate was a more symbolical position. Reforms executed by Ataturk after the foundation of Turkish Republic had been proposed and even started to implant at this period of time. For example, use of Latin letters, change of weekend holidays, costume reform, reforms in educational system, support to modern arts, etc. were all Ottoman ideas. Modern educational system for instance wasn’t fully formed after foundation of Turkish Republic. II. Abdulhamit had made great contribution to establish fundamentals of modern educational system in Turkey. Primary, secondary and high schools were built not only in the city centers but also in the remote towns during the Hamidian period.
Another important factor which makes Turkey different than other Muslim states is that Turkey had never been colony of any other Western countries. Except for the short occupation period which was after First World War, more than 1000 years, Turkish people have been independent. In addition to independence, they could stand puissant against the Western World for a long time. The self-confidence and self-reliance of the Turks continued during the 20th century and Turkey has been one of the rare countries who could debate the problems with the Western countries equally. For example, Turkish war of independence was against the western countries, Turkish army’s detachment to Cyprus came true in spite of the US’s USSR’s and European Communities’ (EU’s) strong objections. And also, although Turkey has disagreements with western countries on Armenian issue, Cyprus issue and even on combating terrorism issue, sometimes Turkey can execute its policies without asking the West’s permission or support. When we compare Turkish attitude before the West with Arab Governments’ submissive attitudes, Turkey’s difference could easily be understood. That’s why after the Iraq War one of the Lebanese newspaper called Turkey ‘more Arab than the Arab states’.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Model
In brief, Ataturk was one of the best Ottoman generals and he succeeded to realize the transformation at Turkish Republic that Sultans and the CUP at Ottoman Empire tried to perform. Unfortunately, the number of articles at which Ataturk is defined as a ‘dictator’ or militarist has increased recently. At these articles Ataturk is compared to Hitler and Saddam Hussein and only difference between Ataturk and them is explained by Ataturk’s success and the others’ failure. All these claims are not true and not.
Although Ataturk was a soldier, reforms that he executed didn’t aim to form a militarist country. Even when the country was surrounded by conflicts, Ataturk and his friends didn’t delay the elections and Mustafa Kemal defined the parliament as the uppermost authority over any power. Deputies had ardent discussions while deciding to ratify Mustafa Kemal’s supreme military commend though the enemy armies were just 90 km away from the Parliament. In a phrase, Ataturk refused to abjure the will of people even at war. While organizing resistance, he lost his military ranks and continued organizing the war of salvation as a civilian. After the foundation of Turkish Republic, he preferred to define himself as a civilian. He might declare himself general or the super-general as the leaders in many Third World countries did, but he did not follow such a way. Ataturk even forced his friend to leave their military posts when they applied for general elections. ‘Ataturk laws’ prevented the soldiers to make politics. The generals had to chooce military post or MP seat in the parliament. It was obligatory to choose to become a civilian to be a candidate at elections. In this frame, some of Ataturk’s friends abdicated and became politicians while the others chose to continue their work as soldiers. In most of militarist, authoritarian countries, politicians prefer to call themselves by military appellations although they had never been soldiers in the past.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk told that continuity of republic is depended on education and developed economy instead of military instruments. That’s why he gave more importance to education which makes Turkey different than many other Muslim countries. Unlike Saddam-like leaders in the Muslim world, Mustafa Kemal did not try to create a one-leader country. Republican educational system aimed to create a pluralistic youth, because Kemal had no doubt that pluralism and free minds are the only way to save Turkey’s future. Mustafa Kemal’s ideal country was United Kingdom, United States or revolutionary France, not the Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany
People who affirm that Mustafa Kemal was a dictator show the number of political parties at that time and ineffectiveness of opposition as proofs. This is an anachronistic approach. At that period of time, Turkey was as liberal and democrat as many other European countries. We should remember that the Czech Republic was the only liberal state at continental Europe at this period. Ataturk made efforts to pass to multiparty system but because of international crisis and conjectural depressions in Turkey, he couldn’t succeed. But after Ataturk’s presidency, Ismet Inonu, one of his closest friends, succeeded to pass to a multiparty system. And in 1950, multiparty system started to be carried out without pressure of Western countries and Turkey took part between the prestigious countries of Europe by the courtesy of its relatively liberal and democratic structure.
Defining Ataturk as a dictator, whose power depends only on army, and offering such a model for countries like Pakistan and Iraq is a capital mistake. Unfortunately, the Western World misunderstands Ataturk’s policies and Turkish model just like they misunderstand the Middle East in general.
17 August 2007
Translated by Jale Aktug and Meral Tuzce
Friday , 17 August 2007
Recently, there is a hot debate on Turkey’s importance as model for Iraq, Pakistan or any Muslim country among the American thinkers. ‘Turkish model prescription’ is very important for the US who has confronted with difficulties in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq. US decision-makers have no hope for Muslim democratization or liberalization, they think that Muslims can not become democrats, Muslims can not develop liberal economy and Muslims can not be integrated to the global political and economic system. The Western World has lost its all hopes about Iran and Arabs. For them, Arab means poverty, war, terrorism, backwardness, uneducated children and humiliated women. Iranians are similarly perceived as barbarian, militarist people who want to destroy Israel and the West. The US’ post 9/11 measures against terrorism and extremism nourished religionist terrorism and extreme movements in Muslim world instead of moderate groups. Despite of this simple fact, the fresh republican prescriptions for international terrorism and relations with the Muslims are not different and/or better than Bush policies. For example, one of the republican presidential nominees affirmed “If there is a need, we will bomb Mecca and Medina, two holiest Muslim cities.” Proposal of the Democrats is not much different than the Republicans’. Even Democrat presidential candidate Barrack Obama, who is pacifist and anti-militarist, affirmed that the US may occupy Pakistani territories and overthrow Musharraf’s government in order to fight terrorists. Similarly in Netherlands, which is considered the most liberal European country, there are some discussions about forbidding Koran, Islam’s holly book.
In such an atmosphere, Turkey appears as a different example compared with the rest of the Muslim world. Even tough Turkey has no natural energy resources; it is the biggest economy among the Muslim countries. Turkish economy is the 5th largest economy of Europe and 17th of the world. By courtesy of economic reforms realized within last years, Turkish economy became industrial and service economy instead of agrarian economy. Level of education, use of internet and other educational indicators are closer to European countries than Muslim countries. During last 5 years, thanks to the legal reforms important clauses of Turkish law (including penalty of death) were changed. As a result of the economic, political and legal reforms, the European Union (EU) accepted that Turkish democracy, human rights records and Turkish economy fulfilled the criteria for full membership to European Union and negotiations for full membership started on 3 October 2005. It means that Turkey’s membership to the European Union is a matter of time.
This awkward Muslim country, Turkey, attracts specially US’s attention and the American intellectuals and experts try to understand secret of this success. For them, reason of this success is Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his up-to-down policies of modernization. In other words, Americans and some Europeans do the same mistake again; they simplify cases, explain the causes as they want to see (wishful thinking). But Turkey’s story can not be reduced only to Ataturk or anyone in spite of Ataturk’s undeniable contribution to Turkish development. Moreover, the model that Ataturk formed can not be evaluated as dictatorship or “aggressive reforms” under the military protection. A society can not be changed only by the efforts of a man; democracy, human rights and liberalism can not nourish under any army’s pressure. Secret of Turkey’s success story is more complex than the Western experts think.
First of all, ‘Turkish Islam’ concept has always been different than other Muslim nations’ religious understanding. Ghaznavid Empire (Gazneliler), Karakhanids (Karahanlar), Seljuk Empire (Selcuklular), Ottoman Empire (Osmanlilar) and other Turkish states in the past saw expanding Islamic borders as ultimate aim as French, Italian states who had seen increasing Christianity as state politics. But these Turkish states at the same time were never been administered by solely religious rules contrarily to modern Iran and Saudi Arabia. Although Turkish Sultans were caliph, they did not act as the highest ecclesiastic, thus the religious rules didn’t dominate the society. Ottoman sultans acted as a secular political power and Sheyhülislam (the chief religious official in the Ottoman Empire) represented religious authority. However, when Sultan’s and Sheyhülislam’s point of view were in contradiction in any issue, the Sheyhülislam lost his post and ‘secular’ Sultan’s decisions were implemented. Although the Ottoman Empire is defined as modern Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Iran in some books published in Western countries, in reality, the Ottoman case was so different. There were pubs in 19th century Ottoman Empire, people wore whatever they wanted with no official pressure and religious and sectional minorities executed their religious exercises without restriction. Chief rabbi, Armenian, Bulgarian, and Greek Patriarchs were deputies for the Sultan, and Jewish and Christian minorities were autonomous in their internal affairs, including legal issues and taxation.
It could be argued that Turkish people and statesmen acknowledged their mistakes about politics, religion and economics earlier than other Muslim peoples. As early as the end of the 18th century the Ottomans started to discuss why European countries were relatively more developed than the Ottoman Empire and they started to introduce reforms. In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was part of the European system and balance of power and Europeanization in diplomacy, politics, social life and economy continued during the 19th century. The Ottoman State even applied some of the fundamental concepts of modern liberal democracy such as democracy, decentralization, liberal economy, liberty, civic rights, constitution and fundamental rights to its very values and principles in 19th century. The Ottomans had parliamentary system almost more than one century ago. At the end of 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was a parliamentary kingdom as most of the European states. At this period of time, the Ottoman Empire had elections, a constitution, an elected parliament, a lively press and an opposition who criticized even the Sultan and the government. Minority rights were also under statutory protection. If we compare Ottoman Empire and other European States by this point of view, we see no substantial difference between them. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sultan’s competences were reduced and governments formed by the Committee of Union and Progress party were more powerful than the Sultan. At this period of time, the Sultanate was a more symbolical position. Reforms executed by Ataturk after the foundation of Turkish Republic had been proposed and even started to implant at this period of time. For example, use of Latin letters, change of weekend holidays, costume reform, reforms in educational system, support to modern arts, etc. were all Ottoman ideas. Modern educational system for instance wasn’t fully formed after foundation of Turkish Republic. II. Abdulhamit had made great contribution to establish fundamentals of modern educational system in Turkey. Primary, secondary and high schools were built not only in the city centers but also in the remote towns during the Hamidian period.
Another important factor which makes Turkey different than other Muslim states is that Turkey had never been colony of any other Western countries. Except for the short occupation period which was after First World War, more than 1000 years, Turkish people have been independent. In addition to independence, they could stand puissant against the Western World for a long time. The self-confidence and self-reliance of the Turks continued during the 20th century and Turkey has been one of the rare countries who could debate the problems with the Western countries equally. For example, Turkish war of independence was against the western countries, Turkish army’s detachment to Cyprus came true in spite of the US’s USSR’s and European Communities’ (EU’s) strong objections. And also, although Turkey has disagreements with western countries on Armenian issue, Cyprus issue and even on combating terrorism issue, sometimes Turkey can execute its policies without asking the West’s permission or support. When we compare Turkish attitude before the West with Arab Governments’ submissive attitudes, Turkey’s difference could easily be understood. That’s why after the Iraq War one of the Lebanese newspaper called Turkey ‘more Arab than the Arab states’.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Model
In brief, Ataturk was one of the best Ottoman generals and he succeeded to realize the transformation at Turkish Republic that Sultans and the CUP at Ottoman Empire tried to perform. Unfortunately, the number of articles at which Ataturk is defined as a ‘dictator’ or militarist has increased recently. At these articles Ataturk is compared to Hitler and Saddam Hussein and only difference between Ataturk and them is explained by Ataturk’s success and the others’ failure. All these claims are not true and not.
Although Ataturk was a soldier, reforms that he executed didn’t aim to form a militarist country. Even when the country was surrounded by conflicts, Ataturk and his friends didn’t delay the elections and Mustafa Kemal defined the parliament as the uppermost authority over any power. Deputies had ardent discussions while deciding to ratify Mustafa Kemal’s supreme military commend though the enemy armies were just 90 km away from the Parliament. In a phrase, Ataturk refused to abjure the will of people even at war. While organizing resistance, he lost his military ranks and continued organizing the war of salvation as a civilian. After the foundation of Turkish Republic, he preferred to define himself as a civilian. He might declare himself general or the super-general as the leaders in many Third World countries did, but he did not follow such a way. Ataturk even forced his friend to leave their military posts when they applied for general elections. ‘Ataturk laws’ prevented the soldiers to make politics. The generals had to chooce military post or MP seat in the parliament. It was obligatory to choose to become a civilian to be a candidate at elections. In this frame, some of Ataturk’s friends abdicated and became politicians while the others chose to continue their work as soldiers. In most of militarist, authoritarian countries, politicians prefer to call themselves by military appellations although they had never been soldiers in the past.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk told that continuity of republic is depended on education and developed economy instead of military instruments. That’s why he gave more importance to education which makes Turkey different than many other Muslim countries. Unlike Saddam-like leaders in the Muslim world, Mustafa Kemal did not try to create a one-leader country. Republican educational system aimed to create a pluralistic youth, because Kemal had no doubt that pluralism and free minds are the only way to save Turkey’s future. Mustafa Kemal’s ideal country was United Kingdom, United States or revolutionary France, not the Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany
People who affirm that Mustafa Kemal was a dictator show the number of political parties at that time and ineffectiveness of opposition as proofs. This is an anachronistic approach. At that period of time, Turkey was as liberal and democrat as many other European countries. We should remember that the Czech Republic was the only liberal state at continental Europe at this period. Ataturk made efforts to pass to multiparty system but because of international crisis and conjectural depressions in Turkey, he couldn’t succeed. But after Ataturk’s presidency, Ismet Inonu, one of his closest friends, succeeded to pass to a multiparty system. And in 1950, multiparty system started to be carried out without pressure of Western countries and Turkey took part between the prestigious countries of Europe by the courtesy of its relatively liberal and democratic structure.
Defining Ataturk as a dictator, whose power depends only on army, and offering such a model for countries like Pakistan and Iraq is a capital mistake. Unfortunately, the Western World misunderstands Ataturk’s policies and Turkish model just like they misunderstand the Middle East in general.
17 August 2007
Translated by Jale Aktug and Meral Tuzce
Ruffling feathers - will Turkey invade northern Iraq?
Turkey is once again undergoing preparations for a possible invasion of northern Iraq to disrupt the activities of the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan: PKK). On 7 August, Iraqi and Turkish Prime Ministers Nouri al-Maliki and Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly work towards ending the PKK presence in Iraq. The decision followed Turkey's July general election, won by the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi: AKP), which saw the opposition parties, the Republican People's Party and the National Action Party, running on nationalist platforms.
Such a cross-border operation against the PKK would not be unprecendented. Turkish soldiers have been fighting the PKK in Iraqi Kurdish regions since the mid-1990s, usually just across the border from Turkey. Every few years the fight against the guerrilla movement reaches a minor crescendo, with the Turkish military weighing the option of swooping into the Kandil mountains to completely destroy the PKK's camps. Four significant incursions were launched in the 1990s and 2001.
So far, Turkish deployments inside Iraq have been modest. Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani (nephew of KRG President Massoud Barzani) confirmed in early August that Turkish troops had already begun operating in Iraqi territory. However, their main activity has consisted of preparatory work on the Turkish side of the border, in particular the establishment of 'temporary security zones' in the border provinces of Hakkari, Siirt, and Sirnak. These zones involve tighter controls on civilian movement and could be a prelude to cross-border action.
As these zones and the election demonstrate, attacking the PKK camps is once again being considered seriously in Ankara. Perhaps the most significant reason for this is that the PKK's insurgency has shown surprising resilience by sustaining itself since ending its unilateral ceasefire in May 2004, and there are signs it has taken lethal new tactical turns. In addition, given the PKK's strategic reliance on static camps, the military is confident that it could deal a substantial blow to the organisation in a cross-border operation.
Domestic factors also provide a favourable climate for an invasion in 2007, particularly the ruling AKP's desire to demonstrate its Kemalist credentials. The party narrowly failed to win the two thirds of parliamentary seats necessary to act unilaterally in appointing a president, and so it needs to pander to nationalists such as the National Action Party. Also, a stand-off between the military and the government in May, when the armed forces all but threatened a coup if the AKP's preferred presidential candidate was appointed, demonstrated that the AKP must also take into account the military's wishes in its appointments and policies. An invasion to tackle the PKK is supported within the military and could be seen as a concession to the armed forces from the AKP.
Such a cross-border operation against the PKK would not be unprecendented. Turkish soldiers have been fighting the PKK in Iraqi Kurdish regions since the mid-1990s, usually just across the border from Turkey. Every few years the fight against the guerrilla movement reaches a minor crescendo, with the Turkish military weighing the option of swooping into the Kandil mountains to completely destroy the PKK's camps. Four significant incursions were launched in the 1990s and 2001.
So far, Turkish deployments inside Iraq have been modest. Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani (nephew of KRG President Massoud Barzani) confirmed in early August that Turkish troops had already begun operating in Iraqi territory. However, their main activity has consisted of preparatory work on the Turkish side of the border, in particular the establishment of 'temporary security zones' in the border provinces of Hakkari, Siirt, and Sirnak. These zones involve tighter controls on civilian movement and could be a prelude to cross-border action.
As these zones and the election demonstrate, attacking the PKK camps is once again being considered seriously in Ankara. Perhaps the most significant reason for this is that the PKK's insurgency has shown surprising resilience by sustaining itself since ending its unilateral ceasefire in May 2004, and there are signs it has taken lethal new tactical turns. In addition, given the PKK's strategic reliance on static camps, the military is confident that it could deal a substantial blow to the organisation in a cross-border operation.
Domestic factors also provide a favourable climate for an invasion in 2007, particularly the ruling AKP's desire to demonstrate its Kemalist credentials. The party narrowly failed to win the two thirds of parliamentary seats necessary to act unilaterally in appointing a president, and so it needs to pander to nationalists such as the National Action Party. Also, a stand-off between the military and the government in May, when the armed forces all but threatened a coup if the AKP's preferred presidential candidate was appointed, demonstrated that the AKP must also take into account the military's wishes in its appointments and policies. An invasion to tackle the PKK is supported within the military and could be seen as a concession to the armed forces from the AKP.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Drought in Ankara Praying for water
Aug 16th 2007 | ANKARA
From The Economist print edition
A water shortage that may reflect bad management as much as drought
THE Vatican's ambassador to Turkey, Monsignor Antonio Lucibello, sees building bridges between Islam and Christianity as one of his duties. Last week, he was on a different mission: imploring God for rain, before a congregation of fellow diplomats.
His pleas, echoed by imams in sermons throughout the capital, have yet to be heard. Ankara is experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent history. The city's 4m residents have suffered protracted water rationing: some have had no running water for ten days. Nerves are stretched, as temperatures hover around 40°C. “My wife stinks, my children stink, I stink,” complained Nezih Tatlici, an accountant who said he hadn't had a bath in over a week.
The city's mayor, Melih Gokcek, faces calls to resign after advising citizens to “take a holiday” and, like him, “wash your hair, not your bodies.” What incenses them is that Mr Gokcek blames the water shortage on climate change, even though Turkey's biggest city, Istanbul, is largely unaffected. There is a drought, but Turkey is a mountainous country with lots of water. Reservoirs feeding Ankara have been allowed to fall to only 4% of capacity.
Critics point to mismanagement of resources and poor planning as the real problem. Mr Gokcek has lavished millions on parks and fountains the city can no longer keep going. In Gaziosmanpasa, an upper-class enclave, rows of grass lawns have been burnt dark brown after municipal bans on the watering of gardens. Stray dogs are dropping dead. Hygiene has become such a concern that hospitals are delaying non-critical surgery. Some embassies have rented hotel rooms so that their staff can have a bath; others have postponed official functions. This week Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, summoned Mr Gokcek to demand an explanation.
The mayor insists that a project to divert water from the nearby Kizilirmak river, supposed to be finished by November, will do the trick. Meanwhile he says the “only solution” is that “the Almighty gives us rain or snow.” A growing number of residents have a better idea: getting rid of Mr Gokcek.
From The Economist print edition
A water shortage that may reflect bad management as much as drought
THE Vatican's ambassador to Turkey, Monsignor Antonio Lucibello, sees building bridges between Islam and Christianity as one of his duties. Last week, he was on a different mission: imploring God for rain, before a congregation of fellow diplomats.
His pleas, echoed by imams in sermons throughout the capital, have yet to be heard. Ankara is experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent history. The city's 4m residents have suffered protracted water rationing: some have had no running water for ten days. Nerves are stretched, as temperatures hover around 40°C. “My wife stinks, my children stink, I stink,” complained Nezih Tatlici, an accountant who said he hadn't had a bath in over a week.
The city's mayor, Melih Gokcek, faces calls to resign after advising citizens to “take a holiday” and, like him, “wash your hair, not your bodies.” What incenses them is that Mr Gokcek blames the water shortage on climate change, even though Turkey's biggest city, Istanbul, is largely unaffected. There is a drought, but Turkey is a mountainous country with lots of water. Reservoirs feeding Ankara have been allowed to fall to only 4% of capacity.
Critics point to mismanagement of resources and poor planning as the real problem. Mr Gokcek has lavished millions on parks and fountains the city can no longer keep going. In Gaziosmanpasa, an upper-class enclave, rows of grass lawns have been burnt dark brown after municipal bans on the watering of gardens. Stray dogs are dropping dead. Hygiene has become such a concern that hospitals are delaying non-critical surgery. Some embassies have rented hotel rooms so that their staff can have a bath; others have postponed official functions. This week Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, summoned Mr Gokcek to demand an explanation.
The mayor insists that a project to divert water from the nearby Kizilirmak river, supposed to be finished by November, will do the trick. Meanwhile he says the “only solution” is that “the Almighty gives us rain or snow.” A growing number of residents have a better idea: getting rid of Mr Gokcek.
Turkey Presidential troubles, again
Aug 16th 2007 | ANKARA
From The Economist print edition
This time round, Abdullah Gul will surely become Turkey's president—to the annoyance of the army and the secular establishment
THERE was an ineluctable sense of déjà vu this week when Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, declared his intention to stand for president. When Mr Gul, a former Islamist, was first nominated for the post by the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in April, a political crisis ensued. The army threatened to intervene because of serious risks to Turkey's secular republic. Days later, the constitutional court upheld a case brought by Deniz Baykal, leader of the secular Republican People's Party (CHP), arguing that a first round of parliamentary voting to elect the president was invalid because of the lack of a quorum. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and AK Party leader, was forced to withdraw Mr Gul's candidacy and call an early election on July 22nd, ahead of the scheduled date of November 4th.
In the event AK won almost 47% of the vote, a big jump from the 34% that first took it to single-party rule in 2002. This was a crushing defeat for the generals, who refuse to believe Mr Erdogan's repeated assertions that he and his party no longer mix politics with Islam. Magnanimous in victory, Mr Erdogan was swift to assure Turkey's shell-shocked secular elite that he was sensitive to their concerns. He even pledged to seek consensus when nominating a new president. Many took this to mean that he would choose an AK man with a tamer Islamist past—and one whose wife, unlike Hayrunnisa Gul, does not wear the Islamic-style headscarf, which is banned in all government buildings and schools.
For the army and its backers, the headscarf is an unequivocal symbol of Islamic militancy. To them, a veiled first lady would not only spell the end of Ataturk's cherished republic but also seal the ascendancy of a new, pious bourgeoisie from Turkey's Anatolian hinterland. The army also frets that a President Gul might approve several AK laws that were rejected as unconstitutional by the incumbent, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a fiercely secular judge. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Mr Gul would also have a big say in military and other appointments.
Wary of provoking a fresh confrontation with the generals, Mr Erdogan has tried since the election to douse Mr Gul's presidential ambitions—but he has failed. The question, given his unrivalled authority over AK and his big election win, is why. The other question is how the generals, who have dislodged four elected governments since 1960, will react.
The answer to the first question is now becoming clearer. As Mr Gul himself keeps pointing out, in handing the AK such a big mandate voters were also endorsing his presidential candidacy. Indeed, “Gul for president” was a common refrain at election rallies. The AK has a moral obligation to stand by him, the Gul camp insists.
Several AK bigwigs, notably a former parliamentary speaker, Bulent Arinc, who supported Mr Gul's earlier bid, duly did so again. More important, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which won 71 seats, said his party would take part in a first round of balloting, giving the AK its prized quorum. With 20 Kurdish nationalist members also pledging to show up, Mr Gul is set to become president, if not in the first or second rounds of balloting, which require a two-thirds majority, then in a third round in late August, when a simple majority will be sufficient.
Few doubt that the affable Mr Gul will make a good president. Unlike the reclusive Mr Sezer, Mr Gul is a sophisticated man who speaks fluent English and has lived abroad. As foreign minister, he was the driving force behind the sweeping reforms that prodded European Union leaders into opening membership talks with Turkey in 2005. Even as he has reached out to Turkey's Arab neighbours and to Iran, Mr Gul has worked hard to restore a friendship with America that was bruised by the Iraq war. “Condi [Rice] likes him and trusts him,” says a senior American official.
Mr Gul also promises that defending secularism will be one of his “basic principles”. He has even hinted at a concession: his wife might soon knot the silk scarf that she winds tightly around her head and neck in a hipper style. Atil Kutoglu, a Vienna-based Turkish fashion designer, has been asked to come up with ideas.
If Turkey is really going Islamic, Mr Gul's supporters wonder, why did Saadet, the only overtly Islamist party, scrape a measly 2% of the vote? Nowadays, the Islamic intelligentsia seems less preoccupied with the veil than with whether it is appropriate for pious female Muslims to wear G-string knickers—because, as one luminary has opined, “they keep women in a permanent state of sexual arousal.”
None of this is likely to impress the generals, who say their views on the presidency remain unchanged. Yet “short of an outright coup there is little they can do [to stop Gul],” observes Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bilgi University. Mehmet Ali Kislali, one of the rare Turkish journalists with good connections in the general staff, disagrees. “They have other means to make their weight felt,” he has argued in Radikal, a liberal daily. They could boycott presidential functions, as Mr Baykal's CHP has vowed to do. They could scale down their presence in the presidential palace. More drastically still, they could galvanise the courts into launching a case to close down the AK.
Zafer Uskul, a constitutional lawyer (and one of 150 new deputies recruited by Mr Erdogan to replace more militant party members) may have provided them with ammunition. He has opined that Kemalism (Ataturk's ideology) needs to be “expunged” from a new constitution being drafted by AK to replace the one produced by the generals after their most recent direct coup in 1980. This provoked uproar, and Mr Uskul swiftly declared that his words had been “misunderstood”.
Most commentators concur that, given the scale of AK's victory, the courts cannot touch it without leaving their own credibility in tatters. For the same reason it is hard to see the army stepping in directly. So a more likely outcome is that the generals will be forced to lick their wounds and take Mr Gul on his merits. His record suggests they have nothing to fear—if, that is, they truly believe in democracy.
From The Economist print edition
This time round, Abdullah Gul will surely become Turkey's president—to the annoyance of the army and the secular establishment
THERE was an ineluctable sense of déjà vu this week when Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, declared his intention to stand for president. When Mr Gul, a former Islamist, was first nominated for the post by the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in April, a political crisis ensued. The army threatened to intervene because of serious risks to Turkey's secular republic. Days later, the constitutional court upheld a case brought by Deniz Baykal, leader of the secular Republican People's Party (CHP), arguing that a first round of parliamentary voting to elect the president was invalid because of the lack of a quorum. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and AK Party leader, was forced to withdraw Mr Gul's candidacy and call an early election on July 22nd, ahead of the scheduled date of November 4th.
In the event AK won almost 47% of the vote, a big jump from the 34% that first took it to single-party rule in 2002. This was a crushing defeat for the generals, who refuse to believe Mr Erdogan's repeated assertions that he and his party no longer mix politics with Islam. Magnanimous in victory, Mr Erdogan was swift to assure Turkey's shell-shocked secular elite that he was sensitive to their concerns. He even pledged to seek consensus when nominating a new president. Many took this to mean that he would choose an AK man with a tamer Islamist past—and one whose wife, unlike Hayrunnisa Gul, does not wear the Islamic-style headscarf, which is banned in all government buildings and schools.
For the army and its backers, the headscarf is an unequivocal symbol of Islamic militancy. To them, a veiled first lady would not only spell the end of Ataturk's cherished republic but also seal the ascendancy of a new, pious bourgeoisie from Turkey's Anatolian hinterland. The army also frets that a President Gul might approve several AK laws that were rejected as unconstitutional by the incumbent, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a fiercely secular judge. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Mr Gul would also have a big say in military and other appointments.
Wary of provoking a fresh confrontation with the generals, Mr Erdogan has tried since the election to douse Mr Gul's presidential ambitions—but he has failed. The question, given his unrivalled authority over AK and his big election win, is why. The other question is how the generals, who have dislodged four elected governments since 1960, will react.
The answer to the first question is now becoming clearer. As Mr Gul himself keeps pointing out, in handing the AK such a big mandate voters were also endorsing his presidential candidacy. Indeed, “Gul for president” was a common refrain at election rallies. The AK has a moral obligation to stand by him, the Gul camp insists.
Several AK bigwigs, notably a former parliamentary speaker, Bulent Arinc, who supported Mr Gul's earlier bid, duly did so again. More important, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which won 71 seats, said his party would take part in a first round of balloting, giving the AK its prized quorum. With 20 Kurdish nationalist members also pledging to show up, Mr Gul is set to become president, if not in the first or second rounds of balloting, which require a two-thirds majority, then in a third round in late August, when a simple majority will be sufficient.
Few doubt that the affable Mr Gul will make a good president. Unlike the reclusive Mr Sezer, Mr Gul is a sophisticated man who speaks fluent English and has lived abroad. As foreign minister, he was the driving force behind the sweeping reforms that prodded European Union leaders into opening membership talks with Turkey in 2005. Even as he has reached out to Turkey's Arab neighbours and to Iran, Mr Gul has worked hard to restore a friendship with America that was bruised by the Iraq war. “Condi [Rice] likes him and trusts him,” says a senior American official.
Mr Gul also promises that defending secularism will be one of his “basic principles”. He has even hinted at a concession: his wife might soon knot the silk scarf that she winds tightly around her head and neck in a hipper style. Atil Kutoglu, a Vienna-based Turkish fashion designer, has been asked to come up with ideas.
If Turkey is really going Islamic, Mr Gul's supporters wonder, why did Saadet, the only overtly Islamist party, scrape a measly 2% of the vote? Nowadays, the Islamic intelligentsia seems less preoccupied with the veil than with whether it is appropriate for pious female Muslims to wear G-string knickers—because, as one luminary has opined, “they keep women in a permanent state of sexual arousal.”
None of this is likely to impress the generals, who say their views on the presidency remain unchanged. Yet “short of an outright coup there is little they can do [to stop Gul],” observes Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bilgi University. Mehmet Ali Kislali, one of the rare Turkish journalists with good connections in the general staff, disagrees. “They have other means to make their weight felt,” he has argued in Radikal, a liberal daily. They could boycott presidential functions, as Mr Baykal's CHP has vowed to do. They could scale down their presence in the presidential palace. More drastically still, they could galvanise the courts into launching a case to close down the AK.
Zafer Uskul, a constitutional lawyer (and one of 150 new deputies recruited by Mr Erdogan to replace more militant party members) may have provided them with ammunition. He has opined that Kemalism (Ataturk's ideology) needs to be “expunged” from a new constitution being drafted by AK to replace the one produced by the generals after their most recent direct coup in 1980. This provoked uproar, and Mr Uskul swiftly declared that his words had been “misunderstood”.
Most commentators concur that, given the scale of AK's victory, the courts cannot touch it without leaving their own credibility in tatters. For the same reason it is hard to see the army stepping in directly. So a more likely outcome is that the generals will be forced to lick their wounds and take Mr Gul on his merits. His record suggests they have nothing to fear—if, that is, they truly believe in democracy.
Turkey Presidential troubles, again
Aug 16th 2007 | ANKARA
From The Economist print edition
This time round, Abdullah Gul will surely become Turkey's president—to the annoyance of the army and the secular establishment
THERE was an ineluctable sense of déjà vu this week when Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, declared his intention to stand for president. When Mr Gul, a former Islamist, was first nominated for the post by the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in April, a political crisis ensued. The army threatened to intervene because of serious risks to Turkey's secular republic. Days later, the constitutional court upheld a case brought by Deniz Baykal, leader of the secular Republican People's Party (CHP), arguing that a first round of parliamentary voting to elect the president was invalid because of the lack of a quorum. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and AK Party leader, was forced to withdraw Mr Gul's candidacy and call an early election on July 22nd, ahead of the scheduled date of November 4th.
In the event AK won almost 47% of the vote, a big jump from the 34% that first took it to single-party rule in 2002. This was a crushing defeat for the generals, who refuse to believe Mr Erdogan's repeated assertions that he and his party no longer mix politics with Islam. Magnanimous in victory, Mr Erdogan was swift to assure Turkey's shell-shocked secular elite that he was sensitive to their concerns. He even pledged to seek consensus when nominating a new president. Many took this to mean that he would choose an AK man with a tamer Islamist past—and one whose wife, unlike Hayrunnisa Gul, does not wear the Islamic-style headscarf, which is banned in all government buildings and schools.
For the army and its backers, the headscarf is an unequivocal symbol of Islamic militancy. To them, a veiled first lady would not only spell the end of Ataturk's cherished republic but also seal the ascendancy of a new, pious bourgeoisie from Turkey's Anatolian hinterland. The army also frets that a President Gul might approve several AK laws that were rejected as unconstitutional by the incumbent, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a fiercely secular judge. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Mr Gul would also have a big say in military and other appointments.
Wary of provoking a fresh confrontation with the generals, Mr Erdogan has tried since the election to douse Mr Gul's presidential ambitions—but he has failed. The question, given his unrivalled authority over AK and his big election win, is why. The other question is how the generals, who have dislodged four elected governments since 1960, will react.
The answer to the first question is now becoming clearer. As Mr Gul himself keeps pointing out, in handing the AK such a big mandate voters were also endorsing his presidential candidacy. Indeed, “Gul for president” was a common refrain at election rallies. The AK has a moral obligation to stand by him, the Gul camp insists.
Several AK bigwigs, notably a former parliamentary speaker, Bulent Arinc, who supported Mr Gul's earlier bid, duly did so again. More important, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which won 71 seats, said his party would take part in a first round of balloting, giving the AK its prized quorum. With 20 Kurdish nationalist members also pledging to show up, Mr Gul is set to become president, if not in the first or second rounds of balloting, which require a two-thirds majority, then in a third round in late August, when a simple majority will be sufficient.
Few doubt that the affable Mr Gul will make a good president. Unlike the reclusive Mr Sezer, Mr Gul is a sophisticated man who speaks fluent English and has lived abroad. As foreign minister, he was the driving force behind the sweeping reforms that prodded European Union leaders into opening membership talks with Turkey in 2005. Even as he has reached out to Turkey's Arab neighbours and to Iran, Mr Gul has worked hard to restore a friendship with America that was bruised by the Iraq war. “Condi [Rice] likes him and trusts him,” says a senior American official.
Mr Gul also promises that defending secularism will be one of his “basic principles”. He has even hinted at a concession: his wife might soon knot the silk scarf that she winds tightly around her head and neck in a hipper style. Atil Kutoglu, a Vienna-based Turkish fashion designer, has been asked to come up with ideas.
If Turkey is really going Islamic, Mr Gul's supporters wonder, why did Saadet, the only overtly Islamist party, scrape a measly 2% of the vote? Nowadays, the Islamic intelligentsia seems less preoccupied with the veil than with whether it is appropriate for pious female Muslims to wear G-string knickers—because, as one luminary has opined, “they keep women in a permanent state of sexual arousal.”
None of this is likely to impress the generals, who say their views on the presidency remain unchanged. Yet “short of an outright coup there is little they can do [to stop Gul],” observes Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bilgi University. Mehmet Ali Kislali, one of the rare Turkish journalists with good connections in the general staff, disagrees. “They have other means to make their weight felt,” he has argued in Radikal, a liberal daily. They could boycott presidential functions, as Mr Baykal's CHP has vowed to do. They could scale down their presence in the presidential palace. More drastically still, they could galvanise the courts into launching a case to close down the AK.
Zafer Uskul, a constitutional lawyer (and one of 150 new deputies recruited by Mr Erdogan to replace more militant party members) may have provided them with ammunition. He has opined that Kemalism (Ataturk's ideology) needs to be “expunged” from a new constitution being drafted by AK to replace the one produced by the generals after their most recent direct coup in 1980. This provoked uproar, and Mr Uskul swiftly declared that his words had been “misunderstood”.
Most commentators concur that, given the scale of AK's victory, the courts cannot touch it without leaving their own credibility in tatters. For the same reason it is hard to see the army stepping in directly. So a more likely outcome is that the generals will be forced to lick their wounds and take Mr Gul on his merits. His record suggests they have nothing to fear—if, that is, they truly believe in democracy.
From The Economist print edition
This time round, Abdullah Gul will surely become Turkey's president—to the annoyance of the army and the secular establishment
THERE was an ineluctable sense of déjà vu this week when Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, declared his intention to stand for president. When Mr Gul, a former Islamist, was first nominated for the post by the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in April, a political crisis ensued. The army threatened to intervene because of serious risks to Turkey's secular republic. Days later, the constitutional court upheld a case brought by Deniz Baykal, leader of the secular Republican People's Party (CHP), arguing that a first round of parliamentary voting to elect the president was invalid because of the lack of a quorum. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and AK Party leader, was forced to withdraw Mr Gul's candidacy and call an early election on July 22nd, ahead of the scheduled date of November 4th.
In the event AK won almost 47% of the vote, a big jump from the 34% that first took it to single-party rule in 2002. This was a crushing defeat for the generals, who refuse to believe Mr Erdogan's repeated assertions that he and his party no longer mix politics with Islam. Magnanimous in victory, Mr Erdogan was swift to assure Turkey's shell-shocked secular elite that he was sensitive to their concerns. He even pledged to seek consensus when nominating a new president. Many took this to mean that he would choose an AK man with a tamer Islamist past—and one whose wife, unlike Hayrunnisa Gul, does not wear the Islamic-style headscarf, which is banned in all government buildings and schools.
For the army and its backers, the headscarf is an unequivocal symbol of Islamic militancy. To them, a veiled first lady would not only spell the end of Ataturk's cherished republic but also seal the ascendancy of a new, pious bourgeoisie from Turkey's Anatolian hinterland. The army also frets that a President Gul might approve several AK laws that were rejected as unconstitutional by the incumbent, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a fiercely secular judge. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Mr Gul would also have a big say in military and other appointments.
Wary of provoking a fresh confrontation with the generals, Mr Erdogan has tried since the election to douse Mr Gul's presidential ambitions—but he has failed. The question, given his unrivalled authority over AK and his big election win, is why. The other question is how the generals, who have dislodged four elected governments since 1960, will react.
The answer to the first question is now becoming clearer. As Mr Gul himself keeps pointing out, in handing the AK such a big mandate voters were also endorsing his presidential candidacy. Indeed, “Gul for president” was a common refrain at election rallies. The AK has a moral obligation to stand by him, the Gul camp insists.
Several AK bigwigs, notably a former parliamentary speaker, Bulent Arinc, who supported Mr Gul's earlier bid, duly did so again. More important, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which won 71 seats, said his party would take part in a first round of balloting, giving the AK its prized quorum. With 20 Kurdish nationalist members also pledging to show up, Mr Gul is set to become president, if not in the first or second rounds of balloting, which require a two-thirds majority, then in a third round in late August, when a simple majority will be sufficient.
Few doubt that the affable Mr Gul will make a good president. Unlike the reclusive Mr Sezer, Mr Gul is a sophisticated man who speaks fluent English and has lived abroad. As foreign minister, he was the driving force behind the sweeping reforms that prodded European Union leaders into opening membership talks with Turkey in 2005. Even as he has reached out to Turkey's Arab neighbours and to Iran, Mr Gul has worked hard to restore a friendship with America that was bruised by the Iraq war. “Condi [Rice] likes him and trusts him,” says a senior American official.
Mr Gul also promises that defending secularism will be one of his “basic principles”. He has even hinted at a concession: his wife might soon knot the silk scarf that she winds tightly around her head and neck in a hipper style. Atil Kutoglu, a Vienna-based Turkish fashion designer, has been asked to come up with ideas.
If Turkey is really going Islamic, Mr Gul's supporters wonder, why did Saadet, the only overtly Islamist party, scrape a measly 2% of the vote? Nowadays, the Islamic intelligentsia seems less preoccupied with the veil than with whether it is appropriate for pious female Muslims to wear G-string knickers—because, as one luminary has opined, “they keep women in a permanent state of sexual arousal.”
None of this is likely to impress the generals, who say their views on the presidency remain unchanged. Yet “short of an outright coup there is little they can do [to stop Gul],” observes Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bilgi University. Mehmet Ali Kislali, one of the rare Turkish journalists with good connections in the general staff, disagrees. “They have other means to make their weight felt,” he has argued in Radikal, a liberal daily. They could boycott presidential functions, as Mr Baykal's CHP has vowed to do. They could scale down their presence in the presidential palace. More drastically still, they could galvanise the courts into launching a case to close down the AK.
Zafer Uskul, a constitutional lawyer (and one of 150 new deputies recruited by Mr Erdogan to replace more militant party members) may have provided them with ammunition. He has opined that Kemalism (Ataturk's ideology) needs to be “expunged” from a new constitution being drafted by AK to replace the one produced by the generals after their most recent direct coup in 1980. This provoked uproar, and Mr Uskul swiftly declared that his words had been “misunderstood”.
Most commentators concur that, given the scale of AK's victory, the courts cannot touch it without leaving their own credibility in tatters. For the same reason it is hard to see the army stepping in directly. So a more likely outcome is that the generals will be forced to lick their wounds and take Mr Gul on his merits. His record suggests they have nothing to fear—if, that is, they truly believe in democracy.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Turkey set for clashes over presidency
Turkey was on Monday night facing the prospect of a renewed clash between the government and the country's powerful secular and military elite after media reports that Abdullah Gul, foreign minister, had been selected as the government's candidate for the presidency.
An official announcement of Mr Gul's candidacy was expected on Tuesday.
He is due to meet the leader of a nationalist opposition party on Tuesday to try to win enough support to secure his election by MPs when the process of appointing the new president begins in parliament next week.
The announcement of Mr Gul's candidacy for the presidency in April initiated Turkey's most serious political crisis in a decade after the powerful military, which has ousted four elected governments since 1960, accused the government of trying to undermine the country's secular political and constitutional system.
Mr Gul's wife, Hayrunisa, wears the Muslim headscarf, which is regarded as a controversial political symbol in Turkey and is banned in public and state buildings, including the presidential palace.
But the foreign minister is an immensely popular figure among the rank and file in the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). The party has its roots in political Islam and won a huge re-election victory last month, which has given it a commanding though not decisive majority in parliament.
Turkey's president, who is elected by parliament for a seven-year term, is regarded as the embodiment of the secular republic, founded in 1923 by the soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The post has usually been occupied by either a retired general or a representative of the secular parties, which governed the country for decades until the rise of the centre-right, socially conservative, pro-business AKP at the end of the 1990s.
The current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is a retired judge and former head of the constitutional court. He is an arch-secularist who has often vetoed legislation by the government that he considered a threat to the secular ideals of the republic. His term expired in mid-May but he has remained in the post until his successor has been chosen.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, badly wanted to avoid another clash with the military over the presidency and had hinted that there might be more than one AKP candidate for the post. But it appeared last night that pressure from the party's grassroots and from MPs close to Mr Gul ruled out that option.
There was no immediate reaction last night to Mr Gul's re-nomination. In a television interview early on Monday, Deniz Baykal, the leader of the main secular opposition Republican People's party, accused the foreign minister of being ideologically unsuited to the presidency.
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.
An official announcement of Mr Gul's candidacy was expected on Tuesday.
He is due to meet the leader of a nationalist opposition party on Tuesday to try to win enough support to secure his election by MPs when the process of appointing the new president begins in parliament next week.
The announcement of Mr Gul's candidacy for the presidency in April initiated Turkey's most serious political crisis in a decade after the powerful military, which has ousted four elected governments since 1960, accused the government of trying to undermine the country's secular political and constitutional system.
Mr Gul's wife, Hayrunisa, wears the Muslim headscarf, which is regarded as a controversial political symbol in Turkey and is banned in public and state buildings, including the presidential palace.
But the foreign minister is an immensely popular figure among the rank and file in the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). The party has its roots in political Islam and won a huge re-election victory last month, which has given it a commanding though not decisive majority in parliament.
Turkey's president, who is elected by parliament for a seven-year term, is regarded as the embodiment of the secular republic, founded in 1923 by the soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The post has usually been occupied by either a retired general or a representative of the secular parties, which governed the country for decades until the rise of the centre-right, socially conservative, pro-business AKP at the end of the 1990s.
The current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is a retired judge and former head of the constitutional court. He is an arch-secularist who has often vetoed legislation by the government that he considered a threat to the secular ideals of the republic. His term expired in mid-May but he has remained in the post until his successor has been chosen.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, badly wanted to avoid another clash with the military over the presidency and had hinted that there might be more than one AKP candidate for the post. But it appeared last night that pressure from the party's grassroots and from MPs close to Mr Gul ruled out that option.
There was no immediate reaction last night to Mr Gul's re-nomination. In a television interview early on Monday, Deniz Baykal, the leader of the main secular opposition Republican People's party, accused the foreign minister of being ideologically unsuited to the presidency.
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
After Turkey's election General displeasure
The army refuses to retreat
LESS than a fortnight ago, Sebahat Tuncel, a 32-year-old former nurse, was locked in an Istanbul jail, charged with membership of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). But she jubilantly walked out after being elected to parliament on July 22nd along with 18 fellow members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party. Ms Tuncel's newly-acquired parliamentary immunity protects her from further prosecution in a case that rested on her frequent trips to PKK camps in northern Iraq. Ms Tuncel says she was trying to find a missing brother.
It is the first time since the early 1990s that overtly nationalist Kurds have been represented in the 550-member legislature. Their presence incenses the far-right Nationalist Action Party, which took 71 seats (and whose campaign pledges include a promise to execute the captive PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan).
The Kurdish politicians, some of them lawyers who defended Mr Ocalan in court, have promised to behave. They say they will not address the inaugural session in Kurdish (their predecessors who dared to do so landed in jail). Yet some listed Turkish under “foreign languages” in résumés they submitted to parliament. Worse, none is ready publicly to condemn the PKK, even as the group intensifies its violent campaign in the predominantly Kurdish south-eastern provinces.
Turkey's meddlesome generals, who insist that those who refuse to call themselves Turks are “enemies of the state”, are not happy. Yet, the Kurdish MPs are only a minor irritant compared with the 341 members of the mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) Party who romped back to power. Indeed the generals' public accusation that the country was descending towards religious rule—and the implied threat of a coup—probably helped AK increase its share of the vote to 46.7%.
The generals' ire was provoked when the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, nominated his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to replace the strongly secular president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who was supposed to have stepped down in May. This sparked a wave of demonstrations by millions of secular Turks, who shared the army's aversion to Mr Gul's earlier flirtation with political Islam. Many also took issue with his wife's headscarf; the garment is banned in all government buildings and schools.
Mr Gul withdrew his candidacy, and Mr Erdogan called early elections, after the constitutional court upheld opposition claims that a first round of balloting for the presidency had been invalid because parliament lacked a quorum.
Parliament reconvenes on August 4th and must choose a new president by mid-September, or fresh elections will be held. Mr Gul is campaigning for the top post once again, backed by AK's Islamist rump. Mr Erdogan is in a bind. Endorsing Mr Gul puts his government back on a collision course with the army; General Yasar Buyukanit, the chief of general staff, said the army stood by its views (and thus its opposition to Mr Gul) “with conviction”. Yet, if Mr Erdogan bows to the army's demands, he risks splitting his own party.
“Erdogan can block Gul and lose a few MPs, or back him and lose power altogether,” says a seasoned Turkey-watcher. That is, unless Mr Gul bows out.
LESS than a fortnight ago, Sebahat Tuncel, a 32-year-old former nurse, was locked in an Istanbul jail, charged with membership of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). But she jubilantly walked out after being elected to parliament on July 22nd along with 18 fellow members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party. Ms Tuncel's newly-acquired parliamentary immunity protects her from further prosecution in a case that rested on her frequent trips to PKK camps in northern Iraq. Ms Tuncel says she was trying to find a missing brother.
It is the first time since the early 1990s that overtly nationalist Kurds have been represented in the 550-member legislature. Their presence incenses the far-right Nationalist Action Party, which took 71 seats (and whose campaign pledges include a promise to execute the captive PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan).
The Kurdish politicians, some of them lawyers who defended Mr Ocalan in court, have promised to behave. They say they will not address the inaugural session in Kurdish (their predecessors who dared to do so landed in jail). Yet some listed Turkish under “foreign languages” in résumés they submitted to parliament. Worse, none is ready publicly to condemn the PKK, even as the group intensifies its violent campaign in the predominantly Kurdish south-eastern provinces.
Turkey's meddlesome generals, who insist that those who refuse to call themselves Turks are “enemies of the state”, are not happy. Yet, the Kurdish MPs are only a minor irritant compared with the 341 members of the mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) Party who romped back to power. Indeed the generals' public accusation that the country was descending towards religious rule—and the implied threat of a coup—probably helped AK increase its share of the vote to 46.7%.
The generals' ire was provoked when the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, nominated his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to replace the strongly secular president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who was supposed to have stepped down in May. This sparked a wave of demonstrations by millions of secular Turks, who shared the army's aversion to Mr Gul's earlier flirtation with political Islam. Many also took issue with his wife's headscarf; the garment is banned in all government buildings and schools.
Mr Gul withdrew his candidacy, and Mr Erdogan called early elections, after the constitutional court upheld opposition claims that a first round of balloting for the presidency had been invalid because parliament lacked a quorum.
Parliament reconvenes on August 4th and must choose a new president by mid-September, or fresh elections will be held. Mr Gul is campaigning for the top post once again, backed by AK's Islamist rump. Mr Erdogan is in a bind. Endorsing Mr Gul puts his government back on a collision course with the army; General Yasar Buyukanit, the chief of general staff, said the army stood by its views (and thus its opposition to Mr Gul) “with conviction”. Yet, if Mr Erdogan bows to the army's demands, he risks splitting his own party.
“Erdogan can block Gul and lose a few MPs, or back him and lose power altogether,” says a seasoned Turkey-watcher. That is, unless Mr Gul bows out.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Turkey: A litmus test for the future of democracy
It was the largest support a Turkish party had gained since the 1969 legislative elections.
Erdogan faced the worst crisis of his career in April when the opposition boycotted a parliamentary vote in which his right-hand man, Foreign Minister Abdallah Gül, was almost certain to be elected president.
The crisis climaxed as the influential army warned in a stiff statement that it stood ready to step in to protect the secular system and millions of Turks took to the streets to demonstrate against the prospect of an AKP president.
The army has toppled four governments since 1960.
“The result shows that the people do not blame political tensions on the AKP”, political commentator Taha Akyol said. “The people have now authorized the AKP to elect the next president”.
The vote is “the people’s memorandum” to the army to stay out of politics, veteran journalist Hasan Cemal commented.
The AKP has disowned its roots, pledged commitment to secularism and carried out far-reaching economic and democracy reforms that ensured the start of Turkey’s European Union membership talks in 2005.
It has dismissed the opposition’s accusations that it has a secret Islamist agenda as “scare-mongering” to curb the party’s rising popularity.
Erdogan’s campaign focused on his party’s impressive economic achievements.
His government has drastically reduced inflation, maintained strong growth and attracted record foreign investment with a strong privatization drive.
It has also won credibility for easing access to medical care, providing free textbooks for schoolchildren and building cheap lodgings for the poor.
“The AKP’s economic success was the key factor in its victory”, commented economist Eser Karakas. “The army’s warning [that the secular system was under threat] was not taken seriously”.
The support the AKP garnered should translate into 339 seats in the 550-member Parliament, enough for it to once again form a government on its own.
The party had 352 members in the outgoing house and even though support for it increased by 12 percentage points compared to 2002, the number of its seats will decline because more parties will be represented in the legislature.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), a secularist party, finished second with 20.9 percent of vote and an estimated 112 seats, according to unofficial results. The right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) was third with 14.2 percent and 71 seats.
No other party passed the 10-percent national threshold needed to enter Parliament, but 28 independent candidates won seats, 24 of them Kurds campaigning for broader rights for their sizeable community.
As soon as the new Parliament opens, its first task will be to elect a new president.
Erdogan has said he will seek a compromise in the presidential election, but insists that the candidate must be from his party.
The ‘evolution’ of ex-Islamists
Erdogan’s stunning victory in the polls has firmly placed his party at the center of Turkish politics -- a rare example of a radical Islamist movement evolving into a democratic force, analysts say.
“Rather than Islamization, we saw an Islamist-rooted party entrenching itself in the democratic tradition of the right”, commented Nilufer Gole, a professor of sociology and an expert on Islamist movements.
“This is a success for Turkey’s pluralist parliamentary system. This could well be an example of the evolution of a radical Islamist movement”.
Turkish newspapers said Erdogan’s success also signalled a public backlash against the military, which threatened the government in April over the AKP’s intention to install one of its members as president.
Erdogan was forced to bring elections forward from November after the opposition boycotted the parliamentary vote to elect the next head of state and the army told the government it would intervene to preserve secularism if need be.
But unlike past leaders who bowed to military pressure, Erdogan faced up to the generals, firmly reminding them that they remain under the orders of the prime minister.
“The first message from the ballot boxes is that the people stood by their democratic choice”, the daily Milliyet said.
“The nation has had the last word”, the moderate Islamist Zaman said.
Erdogan was once a religious firebrand who, as mayor of Istanbul, banned alcohol at municipal cafes, urged Turks to choose between Islam and secularism and served jail time for religious sedition.
But in a dramatic turnaround in 2001, the charismatic 53-year-old and his dissident colleagues in a now-banned Islamist party created the AKP, describing themselves as conservative democrats and pledging allegiance to secularism.
The AKP rode to office on its own as an untested party in the 2002 elections, when voters punished center-right and center-left parties for the country’s worst recession since World War II.
Since then, the AKP government has won kudos from the business community for reducing chronic inflation, maintaining high growth and enacting several democracy reforms that allowed it launch membership talks with the European Union in 2005.
“The AKP has embraced all sections of society. Business leaders are voting for the AKP, but so are their workers”, the political commentator Fatih Altayli said.
That kind of support differs largely from past Islamist parties, which relied mainly on pious voters in rural areas and ignored the urban educated classes.
Unofficial results show that one of two voters chose the AKP, allowing it to win even in constituencies that are traditionally seen as center-left or nationalist strongholds, analysts say.
“Since the 1950s, people have voted for change and renovation, not the status quo. There is nothing more to say in the light of what the AKP has achieved in the past five years”, former Parliament Speaker Hikmet Cetin said.
Pledge of reform
“Our democracy has successfully passed a test.... Our unity, democracy and the republic have emerged stronger from the ballot box”, Erdogan told cheering supporters outside party headquarters under a shower of fireworks.
“We will never make concessions from the basic principles of the republic. We will pursue economic and democracy reforms with determination”, Erdogan said, pledging also commitment to the secular system and Turkey’s EU membership bid.
That reform program was also stressed by the European Union, with officials holding out the carrot of membership if it was pursued.
But French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has vocally opposed Turkey joining the EU, showed no indication of changing position, even as he telephoned Erdogan to welcome “his remarkable victory”.
He hoped “our relations of trust will continue despite the divergences France and Turkey may have”, according to a spokesman.
The prospect of a new government with a strong mandate for its business- and EU-friendly policies sent Turkish shares to a record high, closing five percent up.
The polls were largely seen as a litmus test for the future of democracy in the country after the abortive presidential election.
Turkish newspapers were nearly unanimous in ascribing the AKP’s success in large part to a public rejection of military meddling in democratic politics.
“The people do not like governments that quarrel with the soldiers, but the people also do not like military intervention”, the mass-circulation Hurriyet said.
EU leaders urge redoubling of reform efforts
European Union officials welcomed the AKP’s resounding electoral win and urged the country to push ahead with reforms that could lead to EU membership.
European newspapers called the result of the vote a sharp rebuke to the secular military and a turning point for the nation’s democracy.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn urged Turkey to redouble its efforts on European Union-oriented reform.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the vote came “at an important moment for the people of Turkey as the country moves forward with political and economic reforms”.
The commission’s vice president, Franco Frattini, told Italian newspapers there was an “equilibrium” in the vote results that staved off “the risk of an extremist drift”.
Turkey was made an official candidate to join the European Union in October 2005 but its long quest to join Europe’s 27-country club has been dogged by problems.
The EU froze talks in December with Turkey on eight of the 35 policy areas, or chapters, that all aspiring members must complete because of Ankara’s ongoing trade dispute with Cyprus.
Some chapters have since been reopened.
The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant called the election “a clear no to the military”, commenting that “Turkish voters have grown weary of the old political class that has proclaimed itself guardian of the country”.
In France, the right-wing Le Figaro said the vote was “a turning point in modern Turkish history. The country can now look for new ways to try to reconcile the un-reconcilable: secularism and religion”.
The center-left daily Der Tagesspiegel in Germany, which has a large Turkish population, said Erdogan had won a clear mandate to press forward with his drive to bring Turkey closer to the European Union.
“Despite the increased Europe-scepticism of the Turks, it is a clear signal”, it wrote in a front-page editorial. “Europe must get prepared for the Turks to knock harder on the door of the EU soon”.
Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter daily agreed, saying Erdogan “can now follow through on his prudent political reforms” leading Turkey toward the European Union.
In neighboring Greece, newspapers spoke of changes in relations between the two rivals.
“The new Turkish political scene hides traps that demand we adapt our policies”, the left-leaning Ta Nea wrote in an editorial.
Greek Prime Minister Constantin Caramanlis congratulated Erdogan on his election victory and, in a clear reference to Cyprus, said he hoped it would contribute to Turkey “fulfilling all the obligations” for EU membership.
Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Robert Dekker told reporters he hoped the new government would continue with reforms “important for the development of democracy and membership of the European Union”.
In Israel, foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said: “Israel looks forward to continue expanding our relationship of cooperation and friendship with Turkey.”
Turkey has been a key ally of Israel since 1996 when the two countries signed a military cooperation deal, much to the anger of Arab countries and Iran.
Gül looks towards the Presidency
Gul hinted strongly last week that he could run for president again after his party’s victory.
Asked whether he would be a candidate again when the new Parliament meets next month for a fresh presidential vote, he told reporters that his decision was “very clear”, but declined to elaborate.
“I cannot be expected to ignore the will of the people... the signs given at the rallies,” he said, referring to supporters who cheered him as a future president at election campaign rallies.
But he stressed that “there is no need to rush things,” saying the process must continue “with great political maturity in the direction indicated by the results” of the election.
“We have a period of evaluation ahead of us... I believe the other parties in parliament will carefully consider the nearly 50 percent of the vote that we obtained”.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party, a key player in the April crisis, quickly responded that Gul’s Islamist past remained an insurmountable obstacle to his election as head of state.
“We will not support a person who comes from [a radical Islamist] tradition and who has not embraced Ataturk’s principles”, said CHP deputy chairman Mustafa Ozyurek, referring to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Secularists take special exception to the fact that Gül’s wife always wears a headscarf in public, which she would presumably continue to do if her husband was elected. They complain that the presence in the presidential palace of someone wearing a religious symbol would be in flagrant contradiction to the country secular tradition.
If Gül is again put up as a candidate, Ozyurek said his party would again boycott the presidential vote.
The third party that entered Parliament, the Nationalist Action Party, as well as 28 independents, had not yet said whether they will support Gül.
Opponents charge that with Gul in the presidential palace, the AKP will have a free hand to advance what some see as the party’s hidden policy of eroding the separation between state and religion.
Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a hard-line secularist, often vetoed laws he deemed anti-secular and blocked the appointment of senior officials he saw as Islamist government cronies.
And lingering suspicions about the party have been fuelled by its opposition to a headscarf ban in universities and public offices, its encouragement of religious schools and failed attempts to restrict alcohol sales and make adultery a jailable offense.
http://www.mmorning.com
Erdogan faced the worst crisis of his career in April when the opposition boycotted a parliamentary vote in which his right-hand man, Foreign Minister Abdallah Gül, was almost certain to be elected president.
The crisis climaxed as the influential army warned in a stiff statement that it stood ready to step in to protect the secular system and millions of Turks took to the streets to demonstrate against the prospect of an AKP president.
The army has toppled four governments since 1960.
“The result shows that the people do not blame political tensions on the AKP”, political commentator Taha Akyol said. “The people have now authorized the AKP to elect the next president”.
The vote is “the people’s memorandum” to the army to stay out of politics, veteran journalist Hasan Cemal commented.
The AKP has disowned its roots, pledged commitment to secularism and carried out far-reaching economic and democracy reforms that ensured the start of Turkey’s European Union membership talks in 2005.
It has dismissed the opposition’s accusations that it has a secret Islamist agenda as “scare-mongering” to curb the party’s rising popularity.
Erdogan’s campaign focused on his party’s impressive economic achievements.
His government has drastically reduced inflation, maintained strong growth and attracted record foreign investment with a strong privatization drive.
It has also won credibility for easing access to medical care, providing free textbooks for schoolchildren and building cheap lodgings for the poor.
“The AKP’s economic success was the key factor in its victory”, commented economist Eser Karakas. “The army’s warning [that the secular system was under threat] was not taken seriously”.
The support the AKP garnered should translate into 339 seats in the 550-member Parliament, enough for it to once again form a government on its own.
The party had 352 members in the outgoing house and even though support for it increased by 12 percentage points compared to 2002, the number of its seats will decline because more parties will be represented in the legislature.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), a secularist party, finished second with 20.9 percent of vote and an estimated 112 seats, according to unofficial results. The right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) was third with 14.2 percent and 71 seats.
No other party passed the 10-percent national threshold needed to enter Parliament, but 28 independent candidates won seats, 24 of them Kurds campaigning for broader rights for their sizeable community.
As soon as the new Parliament opens, its first task will be to elect a new president.
Erdogan has said he will seek a compromise in the presidential election, but insists that the candidate must be from his party.
The ‘evolution’ of ex-Islamists
Erdogan’s stunning victory in the polls has firmly placed his party at the center of Turkish politics -- a rare example of a radical Islamist movement evolving into a democratic force, analysts say.
“Rather than Islamization, we saw an Islamist-rooted party entrenching itself in the democratic tradition of the right”, commented Nilufer Gole, a professor of sociology and an expert on Islamist movements.
“This is a success for Turkey’s pluralist parliamentary system. This could well be an example of the evolution of a radical Islamist movement”.
Turkish newspapers said Erdogan’s success also signalled a public backlash against the military, which threatened the government in April over the AKP’s intention to install one of its members as president.
Erdogan was forced to bring elections forward from November after the opposition boycotted the parliamentary vote to elect the next head of state and the army told the government it would intervene to preserve secularism if need be.
But unlike past leaders who bowed to military pressure, Erdogan faced up to the generals, firmly reminding them that they remain under the orders of the prime minister.
“The first message from the ballot boxes is that the people stood by their democratic choice”, the daily Milliyet said.
“The nation has had the last word”, the moderate Islamist Zaman said.
Erdogan was once a religious firebrand who, as mayor of Istanbul, banned alcohol at municipal cafes, urged Turks to choose between Islam and secularism and served jail time for religious sedition.
But in a dramatic turnaround in 2001, the charismatic 53-year-old and his dissident colleagues in a now-banned Islamist party created the AKP, describing themselves as conservative democrats and pledging allegiance to secularism.
The AKP rode to office on its own as an untested party in the 2002 elections, when voters punished center-right and center-left parties for the country’s worst recession since World War II.
Since then, the AKP government has won kudos from the business community for reducing chronic inflation, maintaining high growth and enacting several democracy reforms that allowed it launch membership talks with the European Union in 2005.
“The AKP has embraced all sections of society. Business leaders are voting for the AKP, but so are their workers”, the political commentator Fatih Altayli said.
That kind of support differs largely from past Islamist parties, which relied mainly on pious voters in rural areas and ignored the urban educated classes.
Unofficial results show that one of two voters chose the AKP, allowing it to win even in constituencies that are traditionally seen as center-left or nationalist strongholds, analysts say.
“Since the 1950s, people have voted for change and renovation, not the status quo. There is nothing more to say in the light of what the AKP has achieved in the past five years”, former Parliament Speaker Hikmet Cetin said.
Pledge of reform
“Our democracy has successfully passed a test.... Our unity, democracy and the republic have emerged stronger from the ballot box”, Erdogan told cheering supporters outside party headquarters under a shower of fireworks.
“We will never make concessions from the basic principles of the republic. We will pursue economic and democracy reforms with determination”, Erdogan said, pledging also commitment to the secular system and Turkey’s EU membership bid.
That reform program was also stressed by the European Union, with officials holding out the carrot of membership if it was pursued.
But French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has vocally opposed Turkey joining the EU, showed no indication of changing position, even as he telephoned Erdogan to welcome “his remarkable victory”.
He hoped “our relations of trust will continue despite the divergences France and Turkey may have”, according to a spokesman.
The prospect of a new government with a strong mandate for its business- and EU-friendly policies sent Turkish shares to a record high, closing five percent up.
The polls were largely seen as a litmus test for the future of democracy in the country after the abortive presidential election.
Turkish newspapers were nearly unanimous in ascribing the AKP’s success in large part to a public rejection of military meddling in democratic politics.
“The people do not like governments that quarrel with the soldiers, but the people also do not like military intervention”, the mass-circulation Hurriyet said.
EU leaders urge redoubling of reform efforts
European Union officials welcomed the AKP’s resounding electoral win and urged the country to push ahead with reforms that could lead to EU membership.
European newspapers called the result of the vote a sharp rebuke to the secular military and a turning point for the nation’s democracy.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn urged Turkey to redouble its efforts on European Union-oriented reform.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the vote came “at an important moment for the people of Turkey as the country moves forward with political and economic reforms”.
The commission’s vice president, Franco Frattini, told Italian newspapers there was an “equilibrium” in the vote results that staved off “the risk of an extremist drift”.
Turkey was made an official candidate to join the European Union in October 2005 but its long quest to join Europe’s 27-country club has been dogged by problems.
The EU froze talks in December with Turkey on eight of the 35 policy areas, or chapters, that all aspiring members must complete because of Ankara’s ongoing trade dispute with Cyprus.
Some chapters have since been reopened.
The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant called the election “a clear no to the military”, commenting that “Turkish voters have grown weary of the old political class that has proclaimed itself guardian of the country”.
In France, the right-wing Le Figaro said the vote was “a turning point in modern Turkish history. The country can now look for new ways to try to reconcile the un-reconcilable: secularism and religion”.
The center-left daily Der Tagesspiegel in Germany, which has a large Turkish population, said Erdogan had won a clear mandate to press forward with his drive to bring Turkey closer to the European Union.
“Despite the increased Europe-scepticism of the Turks, it is a clear signal”, it wrote in a front-page editorial. “Europe must get prepared for the Turks to knock harder on the door of the EU soon”.
Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter daily agreed, saying Erdogan “can now follow through on his prudent political reforms” leading Turkey toward the European Union.
In neighboring Greece, newspapers spoke of changes in relations between the two rivals.
“The new Turkish political scene hides traps that demand we adapt our policies”, the left-leaning Ta Nea wrote in an editorial.
Greek Prime Minister Constantin Caramanlis congratulated Erdogan on his election victory and, in a clear reference to Cyprus, said he hoped it would contribute to Turkey “fulfilling all the obligations” for EU membership.
Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Robert Dekker told reporters he hoped the new government would continue with reforms “important for the development of democracy and membership of the European Union”.
In Israel, foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said: “Israel looks forward to continue expanding our relationship of cooperation and friendship with Turkey.”
Turkey has been a key ally of Israel since 1996 when the two countries signed a military cooperation deal, much to the anger of Arab countries and Iran.
Gül looks towards the Presidency
Gul hinted strongly last week that he could run for president again after his party’s victory.
Asked whether he would be a candidate again when the new Parliament meets next month for a fresh presidential vote, he told reporters that his decision was “very clear”, but declined to elaborate.
“I cannot be expected to ignore the will of the people... the signs given at the rallies,” he said, referring to supporters who cheered him as a future president at election campaign rallies.
But he stressed that “there is no need to rush things,” saying the process must continue “with great political maturity in the direction indicated by the results” of the election.
“We have a period of evaluation ahead of us... I believe the other parties in parliament will carefully consider the nearly 50 percent of the vote that we obtained”.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party, a key player in the April crisis, quickly responded that Gul’s Islamist past remained an insurmountable obstacle to his election as head of state.
“We will not support a person who comes from [a radical Islamist] tradition and who has not embraced Ataturk’s principles”, said CHP deputy chairman Mustafa Ozyurek, referring to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Secularists take special exception to the fact that Gül’s wife always wears a headscarf in public, which she would presumably continue to do if her husband was elected. They complain that the presence in the presidential palace of someone wearing a religious symbol would be in flagrant contradiction to the country secular tradition.
If Gül is again put up as a candidate, Ozyurek said his party would again boycott the presidential vote.
The third party that entered Parliament, the Nationalist Action Party, as well as 28 independents, had not yet said whether they will support Gül.
Opponents charge that with Gul in the presidential palace, the AKP will have a free hand to advance what some see as the party’s hidden policy of eroding the separation between state and religion.
Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a hard-line secularist, often vetoed laws he deemed anti-secular and blocked the appointment of senior officials he saw as Islamist government cronies.
And lingering suspicions about the party have been fuelled by its opposition to a headscarf ban in universities and public offices, its encouragement of religious schools and failed attempts to restrict alcohol sales and make adultery a jailable offense.
http://www.mmorning.com
POORER, LESS EDUCATED VOTERS PREFER TURKEY’S AK PARTY
By Gareth Jenkins
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
A close look at voting patterns in the July 22 Turkish general election suggests that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has broadened its electoral base while retaining its grassroots support among lower-income groups and the more conservative sections of society.
Yesterday, July 30, the Turkish Supreme Electoral Board announced the official results of the July 22 election. The AK Party finished first with 46.5% of the vote and 341 seats in Turkey’s 550-member unicameral parliament, ahead of the Republican Populist Party (CHP) with 20.8% and 112 seats and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) with 14.3% and 70 seats. Another 26 seats were won by independents, including 23 former members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP). One seat remains vacant following the death of a deputy from the MHP on July 26 (NTV, July 30).
In the run up to the elections the AK Party repeatedly attempted to shake off its Islamist image and portray itself as a party of the center-right (Today’s Zaman, July 18). Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to allow 20 hard-line Islamist MPs who had won seats in the 2002 elections to run as AK Party candidates in the July 22 elections. He also included a number of prominent liberals, and even former leftists, in the party’s candidate list. Most were elected on July 22 and several are expected to be named as ministers when the new AK Party government is announced in early August (Turkish Daily News, July 24).
However, most of the hard-line Islamist MPs excluded from the AK Party’s slate had publicly criticized what they regarded as Erdogan’s “authoritarian” style of leadership, Many other equally hard-line AK Party deputies who chose not to criticize Erdogan were allowed to stand for reelection (Milliyet, June 7). Most decisions within the AK Party are taken by Erdogan himself in consultation with an inner court of advisors and prominent ministers. The expectation is that, even if there are new faces in the Council of Ministers, the decision-making core of the AK Party will remain unchanged (Milliyet, July 25).
Public opinion polls conducted in the run-up to the July 22 election suggest that the AK Party retained its traditional grassroots support while also attracting new supporters who had previously voted for nationalist or center-right parties, primarily as a result of the party’s record since winning the November 2002 election (Radikal, July 26). In a survey conducted by the A&G research company on July 7-8, 75.8% of those who said that they would vote for the AK Party cited its record in power as one of the main reasons, compared with 51.4% who said it was because they felt an ideological affinity with the party (Milliyet, July 27).
The surveys also underlined the demographic factors behind the AK Party’s electoral success. Some 57.7% of respondents with only elementary school education indicated that they would vote for the AK Party, compared with 45.2% of those with high school education and 31.6% of university graduates. In contrast, 39.8% percent of university graduates indicated that they would vote for the CHP, compared with 22.1% of high school graduates and 13.6% of those with only elementary school education.
The disparities were even more striking when voting preferences were analyzed on the basis of income. Approximately 55% of those who earned less than $250 a month said that they would vote for the AK Party, falling to 23% for those who earned more than $2,500 a month. The CHP secured the support of just 8% of those earning less $250 a month but of 50% of those who earned more than $2,500 (Radikal, July 26).
Although the AK Party has tried to shake off its Islamist image, it appears to have retained the support of Islamists who voted for it in 2002. The only other party in Turkey that is perceived as having an Islamist agenda is the Felicity Party (SP), which is led by former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan. According to the official results of the July 22 elections, the SP won 2.3% of the vote, down from 2.5% in November 2002.
Although there is no reason to suspect that it is preparing to introduce a radical Islamist agenda, since its landslide election victory the AK Party has been less circumspect when it comes to playing down its Islamist credentials. On July 30, Kursad Tuzmen, the current state minister responsible for Foreign Trade, who is expected to retain his position in the new Council of Ministers, told a meeting of Turkish exporters that Turkey would soon sign preferential trade agreements with what he described as “18 Islamic countries” (Milliyet, July 31). Tuzmen said that Turkish officials had been working on the agreements for five years and expected them to be signed in September (Turkish Daily News, July 31). Not only would the agreements appear to be ideologically motivated, but they would also violate the terms of Turkey’s 1995 Customs Union Agreement with the EU, which came into force on January 1, 1996, and forbids Turkey from extending preferential trading status to any country with which the EU does not have a similar agreement.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
A close look at voting patterns in the July 22 Turkish general election suggests that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has broadened its electoral base while retaining its grassroots support among lower-income groups and the more conservative sections of society.
Yesterday, July 30, the Turkish Supreme Electoral Board announced the official results of the July 22 election. The AK Party finished first with 46.5% of the vote and 341 seats in Turkey’s 550-member unicameral parliament, ahead of the Republican Populist Party (CHP) with 20.8% and 112 seats and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) with 14.3% and 70 seats. Another 26 seats were won by independents, including 23 former members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP). One seat remains vacant following the death of a deputy from the MHP on July 26 (NTV, July 30).
In the run up to the elections the AK Party repeatedly attempted to shake off its Islamist image and portray itself as a party of the center-right (Today’s Zaman, July 18). Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to allow 20 hard-line Islamist MPs who had won seats in the 2002 elections to run as AK Party candidates in the July 22 elections. He also included a number of prominent liberals, and even former leftists, in the party’s candidate list. Most were elected on July 22 and several are expected to be named as ministers when the new AK Party government is announced in early August (Turkish Daily News, July 24).
However, most of the hard-line Islamist MPs excluded from the AK Party’s slate had publicly criticized what they regarded as Erdogan’s “authoritarian” style of leadership, Many other equally hard-line AK Party deputies who chose not to criticize Erdogan were allowed to stand for reelection (Milliyet, June 7). Most decisions within the AK Party are taken by Erdogan himself in consultation with an inner court of advisors and prominent ministers. The expectation is that, even if there are new faces in the Council of Ministers, the decision-making core of the AK Party will remain unchanged (Milliyet, July 25).
Public opinion polls conducted in the run-up to the July 22 election suggest that the AK Party retained its traditional grassroots support while also attracting new supporters who had previously voted for nationalist or center-right parties, primarily as a result of the party’s record since winning the November 2002 election (Radikal, July 26). In a survey conducted by the A&G research company on July 7-8, 75.8% of those who said that they would vote for the AK Party cited its record in power as one of the main reasons, compared with 51.4% who said it was because they felt an ideological affinity with the party (Milliyet, July 27).
The surveys also underlined the demographic factors behind the AK Party’s electoral success. Some 57.7% of respondents with only elementary school education indicated that they would vote for the AK Party, compared with 45.2% of those with high school education and 31.6% of university graduates. In contrast, 39.8% percent of university graduates indicated that they would vote for the CHP, compared with 22.1% of high school graduates and 13.6% of those with only elementary school education.
The disparities were even more striking when voting preferences were analyzed on the basis of income. Approximately 55% of those who earned less than $250 a month said that they would vote for the AK Party, falling to 23% for those who earned more than $2,500 a month. The CHP secured the support of just 8% of those earning less $250 a month but of 50% of those who earned more than $2,500 (Radikal, July 26).
Although the AK Party has tried to shake off its Islamist image, it appears to have retained the support of Islamists who voted for it in 2002. The only other party in Turkey that is perceived as having an Islamist agenda is the Felicity Party (SP), which is led by former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan. According to the official results of the July 22 elections, the SP won 2.3% of the vote, down from 2.5% in November 2002.
Although there is no reason to suspect that it is preparing to introduce a radical Islamist agenda, since its landslide election victory the AK Party has been less circumspect when it comes to playing down its Islamist credentials. On July 30, Kursad Tuzmen, the current state minister responsible for Foreign Trade, who is expected to retain his position in the new Council of Ministers, told a meeting of Turkish exporters that Turkey would soon sign preferential trade agreements with what he described as “18 Islamic countries” (Milliyet, July 31). Tuzmen said that Turkish officials had been working on the agreements for five years and expected them to be signed in September (Turkish Daily News, July 31). Not only would the agreements appear to be ideologically motivated, but they would also violate the terms of Turkey’s 1995 Customs Union Agreement with the EU, which came into force on January 1, 1996, and forbids Turkey from extending preferential trading status to any country with which the EU does not have a similar agreement.
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