PULSE of TURKEY No. 12.................. THURSDAY, June 11th, 1998
CAUTIOUS RELAXATION AFTER YILMAZ-BAYKAL AGREEMENT
How realistic is the Yılmaz-Baykal agreement? Who is the winner? What is at stake for the country and the economy? Elections under which system? What is the priority in legislating bills? How many of the bills will be enacted?
The Yılmaz-Baykal agreement on the general election to be held on April 18th 1999, along with local elections, brought about a noticeable relaxed atmosphere to political and economic life in Turkey, but a number of unknowns about future developments are still apparent.
The President’s reaction to the Prime Minister’s prospective resignation at the end of this year was: “Hayırlı olsun” (May it be for the best), but whom will he choose for Prime Minister and when will it be known by the public?
Even though these answers may not be known exactly for some time to come, it is a fact that the deadlock is over and Parliament is working again. The pulse of the Turkish economy is also ticking regularly despite the dangers involved for the so-called “election economy”.
Who won, Yılmaz or Baykal?
Baykal’s sympathizers are claiming a victory by noting that what was agreed upon on April 23rd but not fulfilled by the other side happened now, exactly 40 days after the initial agreement. The Yılmaz government will resign and an election government will be formed, as Baykal had demanded, they say.
ANAP quarters are not so sure of Deniz Baykal’s claim to victory and say that he made two big concessions on the April 23rd consensus. One is that the caretaker government’s period has been reduced from six months to three, as he was insisting on Mesut Yılmaz’s resignation in October and it has now been pushed to the end of the year. The second is that he gave up insisting on an Independent Prime Minister. Now anyone may succeed PM Yılmaz and this may well be Yılmaz himself again. Baykal, however, rules out that possibility and says that they agreed about Yılmaz’s not continuing in any way. Yet the President may keep him on as a caretaker premier, like when Sadi Irmak ruled for 4½ months in 1974-75, with no vote of confidence.
Furthermore, while Baykal’s side of the bargain is full of commitments for the CHP such as passing the necessary bills before the parliamentary recess on which they have already begun work, Yılmaz’s commitments are precarious. It is a fact that Mesut Yılmaz is honour-bound to resign at the end of this year and he cannot possibly go against it. But even that is conditional. The Prime Minister says that it depends on Baykal’s keeping his promise about operating Parliament productively. If the bills are passed in the next few weeks to the nation’s satisfaction, the Prime Minister has no alternative but to resign on December 31st, the latest.
The rest of Yılmaz’s responsibilities are beyond him and they may well not come true. What are they?
How realistic are the arrangements?
First, the new prime minister. It is up to the President to chose him. No one can expect the outgoing premier or Baykal to determine who it should be. President Demirel has not made any commitment either, even though certain names, such as Kaya Erdem of ANAP and the Speaker, Hikmet Çetin of the CHP, are speculated about as part of the Yılmaz-Baykal arrangements.
Second, Mesut Yılmaz’s commitment about a general election is also conditional. It is subject to the High Electoral Board’s ruling.
Holding local elections at the end of March or beginning of April is a constitutional requirement and cannot be changed, because Article 127, paragraph 3 of the Constitution reads, “The elections for local administrative bodies shall (and not may) be held every five years…” . When the Özal Government passed a bill for early local elections, the Constitutional Court ruled in 1987 that the date of local elections could not be changed. As the Sacrifice Holiday is at the end of March, there may be one or two week’s delay for the renewal of the March 27th, 1994 local elections, but only that much.
Holding the general election on the same day, April 18th, is not definite, because local elections require several elections. The mayors, village muhtars (headmen), municipal councils, and provincial councils will be elected and in big cities both the metropolitan mayors and council members and those of the smaller municipalities within that metropolitan area are elected by the same voter. “You need ten different ballot boxes to also hold the general election the same day,” says DSP Chairman Bülent Ecevit. The High Electoral Board (HEB) also seems to be of the same opinion. It will now consider the issue and take a ruling about whether or not local and general elections can be held on the same day. While local elections cannot be held other than every five years, this is not the case for a general election. Paragraph 2 of Article 77 of the Constitution allows early election for Parliament. If the HEC rules that the two sets of elections cannot be held at the same time it will mean postponing the general election and frustration for Baykal.
Can elections be held under this system?
Another important point at stake in the Yılmaz-Baykal arrangement is the election system and the adjustment bills needed under the 1995 constitutional amendments.
Parliament’s agenda is chock-a-block with bills and motions. There are about 300 bills awaiting legislation and only passing the most urgent ones will be enough to fill Parliament’s limited time until the recess.
Some of these bills are small with a few articles, but the Tax Bill has 88 articles and may take a few weeks to pass even if no one resorts to filibustering. So passing any major bills by the end of July is quite a task. Yet these nearly 300 bills do not even include the new Election Bill, the votes of Turks abroad and other adjustments needed under constitutional amendments.
Neither is there unanimity among the ruling parties and the CHP, let alone with the other two big opposition parties, the Haji-Baji (Virtue Party and DYP), about what to enact first.
On one side is the CHP supported by the military for the legislation of 13 bills to fight reactionary movements. On the other side are the Haji-Baji strongly opposing them and cashing in on people’s religious feelings and making it out to be a fight for democracy. In between are the three ruling parties, ANAP, the DSP and the DTP, which agree with the need to keep religion out of politics, but which do not see eye to eye with the military about the 13 bills in question. ( Issue No.8 “Not All NSC Recommendations are applicable”, says PM.)
“You cannot solve the turban question in the universities with Alexander’s sword. The knot should be undone with patience and diligence rather than by cutting it”, said Deputy PM Ecevit on several occasions. That is why there has not been much progress in legislating these bills, despite the CHP’s pressure. But after the agreement on June 6th, some of these bills, among them the recent one prescribing prison penalties for religious headgear and attire, have been passed with the CHP’s campaigning.
Economic and democratic bills come first for the coalition
Before the agreement, the three coalition parties exerted strenuous efforts to pass the Tax Bill and other economic and social reforms, but with no success. When the CHP did not give its support the Prime Minister was forced to make the latest agreement with Baykal on June 3rd.
The CHP had been complaining that the coalition partners were soft-pedalling the bills to fight religious fundamentalism. Of the 13 anti-reactionary bills only a few had passed through the committees and they ranked between 270th and 280th on the agenda of the House floor, they complained.
This underhanded strife came to daylight when the Ministers of Justice and the Interior did not attend committee sessions during the debates of these bills, because “We have not prepared these bills. Let whoever drafted them come and defend them,” they said.
Now with the CHP’s efforts these 13 bills are being passed, but the economic and human rights bills are still meeting with Baykal’s obstructions.
The case in point is the government’s efforts to reduce the penalties foreseen in Article 312 of the Penal Code. This provision concerns the penalties for “praising an act regarded as a crime by law”. Several former RP members - Necmettin Erbakan, Hasan Hüseyin Ceylan, Şevki Yılmaz and the former Mayor of Kayseri, Şükrü Karatepe, who is now in prison, the Mayor of Istanbul, Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as human rights defenders Eşber Yağmurdereli and Yaşar Kemal will benefit from this amendment. It is especially important for the Mayors Erdoğan and Karatepe who will be able to regain their political rights when the penalty is reduced to less than a year. (Article 75 of the Constitution removes the right to be elected to Parliament for sentences of a year.or more). The CHP is objecting to this bill so it will probably not be legislated until after the elections.
Also, the Reactionary Movements Follow-up Committee set up in the Prime Minister’s Office resolved at its meeting on May 18th that fundamentalist movements are now more active throughout the country. By taking advantage of measures such as banning turbans in schools and new rules about religious teaching they are gaining ground among the religious people, the Committee warned the Government. For all these reasons, it is becoming more difficult to pass liberal bills
Who is helpless, Yılmaz or Baykal?
When Parliament reconvenes in October after the recess it will be preoccupied with the new budget and Mesut Yılmaz’s resignation will further complicate matters as far as human rights bills are concerned.
Meanwhile, we will see how the Yılmaz-Baykal agreement works. The Prime Minister told his colleagues about his surprise agreement with Baykal, “I had no choice. I was helpless. The economic bills had to be passed.”
But will they and how?
The answer rests in an even bigger helplessness of the CHP. They are sincerely working for the legislation of the anti-reactionary bills and will apparently do a good job at the expense of falling out with the conservative parties and masses. That is why before the June 3rd agreement, the FP (Virtue Party) offered ANAP to join hands and pass the economic and social bills together, but forget about the 13 bills. Mesut Yılmaz’s choice was to go along with Baykal by omitting or diluting some of the 13 bills.
In return, the CHP is soft-pedalling the human rights and economic bills as seen above. For instance, with a change they made in the Tax Bill the CHP caused educational and health expenses to be tax deductible. It means a loss of trillions of Turkish Liras in tax revenue every year and partial failure of the tax reform. While the CHP claims to be seeing to the poor labouring masses’ interests by these changes, it is doing the exact opposite, because education and health services are already free in Turkey for large masses. Only the highest income groups pay for these services by going to better private schools and hospitals instead of the crowded public ones. With these changes the Social Democratic CHP is undermining the tax reform by serving the richest groups.
Political bickering and footwork is sure to continue and now that Bulend Ecevit has returned from a long official visit to Beijing, Baykal will have a tough opponent in his political manoeuvres.
All in all, the bills will pass possibly with the filing down of some sharp points in all domaines and the ballot box will eventually come before the nation. “Those who insist on the ballot box may well be unable to come out of the box”, warns the Prime Minister with an indirect reference to the CHP’s passing the 10% “baraj” by the skin of its teeth in December 1995.