ELECTION FEVER WITHOUT TOO MUCH OF A FUNDAMENTALISM HEADACHE

As a development very much out of character for elections in Turkey, external factors play a bigger role than domestic issues in influencing the voter’s choice in next week’s elections. Consequently, issues like headscarves, secularism and even economic matters like inflation draw less attention from voters than external issues. An outcome of this unusual factor is the DSP’s rising star. Another is the expectation for the continuation of the 55^th and 56^th governments in the post election period by the Ecevit-Yilmaz team. State agencies are on the lookout to prevent any politician’s moves against national interest. Below is the possible impact of this fact on the formation of the new government and the reasons for this vigilance.

The biggest fear about the current election campaign was that it could give way to religious exploitations, especially over the ban of headscarves in schools and offices. The election campaign has already entered the final stage of the last ten days when political parties will address the nation on television (TRT), according to certain periods allotted to them by law.

During previous election campaigns these broadcasts played a considerable role in determining the result, but it is doubtful that this will be the case on April 18^th. This is mostly because of exciting external developments such as the arrest of Abdullah Ocalan, the crackdown on the PKK and religious fundamentalists like the Kaplan group in Germany, as well as the hot confrontation in Kosovo that are preoccupying the public. Also, a record number of 20 political parties are now competing for both the general and local elections and no one has any patience or time to spend over boring and repetitive election broadcasts.

For all these reasons, domestic factors have not played an important role in the election campaign so far. The fear was that there would especially be hot scenes of religious exploitations during the campaign with the headscarf ban in schools and offices, but luckily this fear has so far proved unwarranted. The credit partially goes to the FP (Virtue Party) Chairman, Recai Kutan, who seems to have come to reason after his party’s defeat at the last battle in Parliament for postponing the elections.

FP may be a reasonable Islamist party under Kutan

This responsible behaviour on the part of the FP chairman may have a far-reaching influence on other important national issues such as the election of the President in May 2000. PM Ecevit has been advocating that President Demirel’s term should be renewed and Recai Kutan does not object to it. With ANAP’s support this may well be possible in the new parliament, even though it requires a constitutional amendment. At this stage though, this is no more than just a possibility, as the election returns will finally shape these trends.

PM Ecevit boasts of having the calmest elections of recent years thanks to the security provided by his government. "There are two party leaders upsetting the calm during the election campaign. One is Ciller and the other is Baykal. As the elections draw nearer they realise that they will lose and they, therefore, upset the calm," he says.

PM Ecevit said on Wednesday (7^th) that religious exploitations during the current elections have been the least. DYP Chairperson Tansu Ciller, he complained, was an exception as she was racing with the FP about religion in politics.

It is true that at the outset of the election campaign Tansu Ciller flirted with certain sects in choosing her party’s candidates and resorted to some actions to win over religious votes. For instance, at the DYP’s rallies she used to attack the Ecevit-Yilmaz team violently for their closing down several religious imam-hatip schools and distributed headscarves with her photograph on for women to cover their heads. In time she changed this policy upon the advice of her colleagues and tuned down her religious exploitations. Now Ciller says, "We want freedom for all. Whoever wants can cover their heads and others can keep them uncovered." One of Tansu Ciller’s advisers told Taha Akyol of Milliyet (8^th) about this change of strategy on the part of the DYP, "At the beginning Ciller wanted to get votes by appearing religious. Now she is speaking as a liberal calling for freedom for all about wearing or not wearing a headscarf. She has now adopted a liberal outlook in keeping with the February 28^th process. She is committed to it at the moment, because we carried out surveys and found out that a liberal Ciller is more persuasive than a religious one. It is so even in the rank and file of the FP."

The FP has also tuned down its policy of exploiting the headscarf issue. It originally planned to have women candidates wearing headscarves, insisting that they could enter Parliament wearing headscarves if they were elected, but when they realised that there was not the slightest hope of carrying it out, they also changed their minds about insisting on it. At the moment, there is only one US-educated FP candidate wearing a headscarf and that is only of a tentative nature. She will have to remove it to be able to take the parliamentary oath if she is elected. The High Electoral Board has also ruled that it was not possible for party representatives to address the nation over the TV at the time allotted to political parties if they are women wearing headscarves.

So contrary to the initial fears of heated scenes at election rallies over religious questions, the campaign is drawing to an end calmly with low profile arguments over headscarves and other religious questions, as PM Ecevit has said.

Is a DSP-ANAP coalition a foregone conclusion after the elections?

As things stand at the moment, either the FP or, more likely, the DSP will be the first party and a stable government will eventually appear after the elections. Would the President designate Recai Kutan as Prime Minister if the FP is the first party is not yet known. Even if he does it is almost certain that it will not go any further than that. The PM-designate Kutan will have to hand back the duty to the President in frustration after a week or so, just as Yalim Erez did before the formation of the current Ecevit Government a couple of months ago.

ANAP Chairman Mesut Yilmaz has already announced that he would never form a coalition with the FP because it is the continuation of a fundamentalist party banned by the Constitutional Court and is remote controlled by the ousted chairman of that party. DSP Chairman Bulent Ecevit has the same outlook, even though he has not yet made such a public statement. The CHP can never go along with the FP if it enters parliament, which leaves only the DYP as a possible coalition partner for the FP, and no one can stomach another Haji-Baji period in Turkey at the moment. There are enough constitutional safeguards to forestall such an eventuality, as the outgoing parliament has proved.

According to reliable calculations, a political party has to receive 37% of the total valid votes to be able to come to power alone and it is almost impossible for any party to score it. The most that any party can get is estimated to be 25%. A coalition is, therefore, inevitable after the elections and the best chance in this regard rests with the ANAP-DSP partnership. Mesut Yilmaz believes that these two parties will be the first and second biggest after the elections. According to his belief and claim, the DSP will get a higher rate of votes than ANAP, but ANAP will get more seats in Parliament than the DSP.

Will these two parties be able to get more than half of the seats in Parliament? This question is the biggest unknown of the post election period. If they cannot achieve it, there will be a fairly uneasy period in the new Parliament, because it will mean a tripartite coalition with most probably the DYP, as it is not certain if the CHP or the MHP will be able to surpass the 10% national threshold.

Setbacks of a coalition with the DYP

There are still a number of setbacks concerning a tripartite coalition with the DYP. It is because in Ciller’s time the Mafia and organised crime that infiltrated into the State mechanism has still not been totally purged. Nearly 2000 members of these organised criminal gangs have been arrested in the last two years during the Yilmaz and Ecevit governments, but the purge has not yet been completed. There are reasons to believe that this fight will not be successful if Tansu Ciller has any say in the future Government.

A case in point is the current Ecevit Government. It was formed only two months ago with the DYP’s cursory support, subject to Tansu Ciller’s condition that she would have a say in the three independent ministers, those of the Interior, Justice and Communications. She also objected to Hikmet Ulugbay as the Minister of Education because he had closed down a good many imam-hatip schools and banned headscarves in schools.

Ciller’s choice for the Minister of Justice, Selcuk Oztek, drew severe criticisms from the media with claims that he was the Ciller family’s legal adviser at several corruption charges. Two assignments the current Minister of Justice Selcuk Oztek made in his short term in office met with the objection of the State organs and were turned down by President Demirel. He signed a decree and had it signed by PM Bulent Ecevit for replacing the Justice Ministry Personnel Chief, Akin Demir, by Nesrin Yilmazcan who has ultra nationalist pro-MHP tendencies. Also, the Chief Deputy Prosecutor of Ankara, Ali Turhan, who went places when Mehmet Agar and Sevket Kazan were Ministers of Justice, was made Deputy Under-Secretary of Justice by the same decree.

The importance of these assignments is that the Personnel Chief of the Justice Ministry does not only affect the promotions and assignments of the Ministry personnel, but also prepares the files for the assignments and promotions of thousands of prosecutors and deputy prosecutors throughout Turkey.

These key assignments by Minister Selcuk Oztek was turning into a new drive for bringing to the judicial system ultra nationalist MHP militants and were frustrated by the President at the last minute in March. PM Ecevit was also criticised for signing this decree. Yilmazcan who was forfeited from getting the Personnel Chief position had been instrumental in purging prosecutors of secular tendencies during the Mehmet Agar and Sevket Kazan periods. ( Government’s Fight against Organised Crime)

What if Ciller’s support is needed for the post election Government?

For all these reasons, the ANAP-DSP coalition to be formed after the elections should not include or need the support of the Ciller-led DYP, if the fight against organised crime will continue and it certainly will because there are NSC resolutions about it. So what will happen if the future DSP-ANAP coalition cannot get more than 50% of the seats in Parliament?

This possibility is the weakest point of Turkish politics in the post election period. It means a prolonged political uncertainty in the new parliament and a costly future for the national economy. Most probably, such a crisis will eventually be solved with the help of President Demirel and the State organs, but it may take weeks, even months to achieve it.

Mesut Yilmaz declared that he was ready to co-operate with the MHP (Nationalist Action Party) and praised the new chairman, Devlet Bahceli’s management of the party. The Ecevit-Yilmaz team may try such a tripartite coalition with the MHP if the election results so determine. Given Deniz Baykal’s very sour relations with both Ecevit and Yilmaz, a tripartite coalition with the CHP is less likely, but not impossible.

Another possibility is to orchestrate a splintering in or triggering off resignations from other parties, especially if the margin is small for the majority. After the 1977 elections, Bulent Ecevit arranged the resignation of 11 members from Demirel’s party and made all of them ministers in his Cabinet, thus ruling for nearly two years, from January 5^th, 1978 to November 12^th, 1979 with a very narrow majority.

The Yilmaz-Ecevit coalition was also formed after such a splintering in the DYP in mid-1997 when the country came to the brink of a military takeover during the Erbakan-Ciller period. So the recurrence of such developments should never be ruled out in Turkish democracy, no matter how painful they prove to be.

One thing is certain, however, the Government after the elections will be of a structure to enable it to continue with the so-called "28 February process". The backbone of that government will certainly be the Ecevit-Yilmaz team. It is to be hoped that the people’s votes will not make this formation difficult or painful as Turkey underwent in the outgoing parliament. uras@ada.net.tr, April 10^th, 1999