The parliamentary recess started on July 1^st after a very successful performance by the legislature to pass more than 200 bills since the general elections in April 1999. Another success of the new parliament, the 21^st term since the foundation of the Republic, was to clear the residue of the 20^th term after long debates causing more than friction among the three coalition partners, especially between the MHP and ANAP.

This residue stemmed from the fact that the Mesut Yilmaz coalition formed in July 1997 to succeed the Haji-Baji (Erbakan-Ciller) combination that brought the country to the threshold of a military takeover, was a minority government requiring the support of the CHP, one of the staunch pillars of Ataturk reforms. The notoriously opportunist chairman of the CHP, Deniz Baykal, however, was cursorily supporting the Yilmaz-Ecevit minority government and this constantly declining support became an ever growing problem for Turkey’s political stability in the last term of parliament. Baykal’s dilemma was that he could not possibly topple the Yilmaz-Ecevit Government with a vote of no confidence because it would be tantamount to bringing back the reactionary Haji-Baci combination, yet he did not want to see the success of the Yılmaz-Ecevit coalition either. He eventually found the answer and invented the “investigation committee” system as a tool to bring down PM Yilmaz.

With charges of corruption against Mesut Yilmaz, Baykal’s CHP joined hands with the Erbakan-Ciller team about tabling scores of investigation committee charges. If these committees’ reports resulted in referring the prime minister to the Supreme Court it would be the end of the government because the Prime Minister would have to resign. “We cursorily support the government to avoid the Haji-Baji rule, but let no one expect us to support corruption” was his argument. With this threat, indeed blackmail, PM Mesut Yilmaz agreed with Deniz Baykal to early elections and eventually to resignation. The outcome of the early elections in April 1999 is common knowledge. The nation punished the CHP and Baykal by omitting them from the new parliament (they failed to pass the 10% national threshold at the elections) and brought in the MHP as the second biggest political party in Parliament after Ecevit’s DSP. Mesut Yilmaz’s ANAP and Tansu Ciller’s DYP grew much smaller with claims that they were joining hands to clear one another from corruption charges at the investigation committees.

This excessive abuse and degeneration of the parliamentary investigation system in the hands of some petty politicians was partially rectified by the existing parliament last week and all of the 15 parliamentary committee reports left from the previous term, eight of which were against Mesut Yilmaz and one against Tansu Ciller, were dismissed by the floor before parliament went to recess on Friday (30^th).

Before the recess parliament also passed some very important bills about ratifying international agreements for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, founding a secretariat under an ambassador to handle and coordinate the work to adjust Turkish legislations to those of the European Union, as well as the eighth 5-year development plan and the long-term development strategy until the Turkish Republic’s centenary in 2023. Another significantly important bill that was passed by Parliament at the last minute was a “power bill” authorizing the Cabinet to pass decree-laws within the next three months on economic matters. It will enable the Cabinet to work with the legislature’s powers in recess on economic and social matters. The Ecevit Government will be able to meet both the demands of the IMF-World Bank team and long-term social and economic requirements of the European Union thanks to this power bill even during parliamentary recess.

While the crisis in the tripartite coalition has been averted thanks to these developments just before the parliamentary recess, the solidarity of the coalition is still in the balance. Apparently aimed at his coalition partner, the MHP’s leader and members, Mesut Yilmaz said at the ANAP parliamentary caucus before the recess, “Some people lose their sleep even when they hear of the Copenhagen and Maastricht criteria. There are those whose existence or the powers they have unjustly gained will simply disappear when these criteria go into force in Turkey.” He said about the Kurdish issue, “We have been readily promising the entire world that we will enlarge human rights and freedoms, but as the State we still continue to see some of our people as a danger. We still go on making calculations about snatching everything they have away from them, including their freedoms. We usurp these people’s rights and do it with the sense of fulfilling a national duty.”

MHP Chairman Devlet Bahceli’s definition of these words was “policies inflicted with myopia”. True to the expression, “Whoever the cap fits let him wear it”. Yilmaz did not wear the cap and said, “I didn’t put it on, I don’t have myopia.”

Whether or not the coalition partners pay attention to avoid tension between one another, certain questions stand out as disputes between the MHP and the other two partners.

A case in view is the execution of the PKK’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The MHP is standing in the way of abolishing the death sentence in Turkey because it will save Ocalan. PM Bulent Ecevit said on Thursday (6^th) that neither a Government Bill nor a constitutional amendment was needed for abolishing the death sentence. As all parties barring the MHP were unanimous about abolishing it, they could pass it in parliament without the MHP’s participation. The MHP, on the other hand, first said about its coalition partners that they were free to pass the bill without the MHP if they could. But it is now having second thoughts and seems to be insisting that a government bill is needed because the decision of the three coalition leaders about waiting for the European Human Rights’ Committee’s verdict before Ocalan’s death sentence was enforced was not for giving up the execution, but for putting it off for a while. Will the MHP insist on it is not certain. The fact that General Kivrikoglu, Chief TGS, has said that the Armed Forces are not against abolishing the death sentence has greatly weakened the MHP in its foreseen fight on this issue.

Another case in point is Article 312 of the penal code concerning the sentencing of politicians, writers and intellectuals for provoking hatred and divisions among the people on grounds of religious, sectarian and racist differences. The defunct RP’s chairman and an ex-PM, Necmettin Erbakan, was sentenced to one-year’s imprisonment last week on Article 312 for a statement he had made six years ago. If it goes into force he will serve nearly five months in prison and be deprived of his political rights to the end of his life. Starting with PM Ecevit, all the political parties, other than the MHP, have objected to this sentence. Efforts are in progress to get it quashed at the last highest judicial authority, the heads of all departments of the Court of Appeal. But whatever happens to Erbakan’s sentence, the efforts to amend Article 312 in keeping with the EU’s insistence for wider human rights in Turkey have been given momentum. The opposition parties, the FP and the DYP, are in agreement with Ecevit and Yilmaz that the judiciary should interpret this article more liberally or else parliament should re-word it for a more liberal interpretation, if not abolish it totally. Again the military and all the political parties are unanimous about it, but once again the MHP is standing in the way as a sore point of Turkish democracy. It is also putting similar hindrances in the way of Turkey’s vital energy and foreign policy initiatives, but with an ever-weakening force in the government.

Given the notorious background of the Grey Wolves as the tool of foreign forces that have been trying to destabilize Turkey for the last 3-4 decades, it is apparent that the MHP can only survive if it proves to be helpful to Turkey’s “State policy” which is the equivalent of the American “Federal policy”. No one will have any patience for Deputy PM Devlet Bahceli if he proves to be another Alpaslan Turkes who, as a deputy PM, used to attend the State Security Council meetings in the seventies, listen to and take notes about top secret information concerning the mischief of the right- and left-wing activists and try to find out the security forces’ infiltrations into the Grey Wolves.

Devlet Bahceli’s performance in his first year in power was quite encouraging about dissociating himself from these past scandals, but he has recently begun to falter. The question now is what if he goes on with these externally guided stumbling blocks of Turkey’s political stability. The answer is obvious: the DYP is standing by impatiently to replace the MHP in the tripartite coalition. The weak point of this alternative is also obvious - the DYP’s Chairperson Tansu Ciller whose scandalous performance in power is still fresh in people’s minds.

With underhanded horse-trading between ANAP and the DYP, Ciller was saved in Parliament from her weakness about the mishandling of the PM’s secret funds. It was a foregone conclusion that the Judiciary would convict her for the Parsadan affair (for details see the last issue of Pulse) if parliament had referred her to the Supreme Court, but in exchange for the DYP’s cold shoulder to a parliamentary investigation against Mesut Yilmaz, ANAP went out of its way and saved Tansu Ciller. Thus the personal struggle between the leaders of the two center right parties has disappeared and the door was opened for their cooperation in a coalition in future.

The argument in favour of Ciller in this move was that “Swindling is a crime punishable by imprisonment, but is there such a crime as to be swindled?” Then followed the offences of mishandling the government or negligence in regard to Ciller. Articles 240 and 230 of the Penal Code were considered for her, but they involved prison sentences for up to a year and up to three months, respectively. Given her background and previous clean record it was obvious that even though she would be sentenced it would be greatly reduced and postponed. Furthermore, politics and judicial affairs would have been further intermingled. Eventually, it was decided, for the sake of political stability, to let her go scot-free.

Now the backbone of Turkey’s political stability, the Ecevit-Yilmaz partnership, has to make calculations about the lesser of two evils concerning their third partner in the coalition – Bahceli, Ciller or even Recai Kutan if he saves himself from Erbakan’s religious abuses in politics. At the moment, the pendulum is swinging in favour of continuing with Bahceli’s partnership. The DYP is second at the moment and it will continue until its chairperson proves to be cleansed of her external ties as much as possible. Then comes Kutan, but before trying him there are more attractive alternatives such as carrying out splintering in parliament. After all, staunch pillars of Turkish democracy such as President Demirel are standing by to play active roles in such crises. Significantly, Energy Minister and Deputy PM Cumhur Ersumer visited Demirel last week to give him information about the latest developments concerning energy policies such as the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, the Akkuyu reactor and the latest possibility of extending the Turkmen or Caspian gas and oil to Greece, Italy and Europe via Turkey. Demirel’s weight may be needed to make sound choices about these projects against the MHP-centered foreign designs to frustrate them.