TURKPULSE No:45..........AUGUST 6th, 2001
Opinion polls show that the Turkish people now seek, under the influence of the prolonged economic crisis, a new party or movement. Recep Tayyip Erdogan is bidding to address this need with a new party in the offing and ANAP is trying to steal a march on it. The following article is an analysis of the future developments and pitfalls in this competition. The biggest pitfall concerns the victor last week of the ANAP national convention, Mesut Yilmaz. His performance was up to expectations and forecasts of Pulse, but there were also some signs of a major policy shift on his part.
If there are elections tomorrow the three ruling parties may not even be able to pass the 10 percent threshold required by law for a party to be represented in parliament. This judgment based on some valid or invalid opinion polls is the predominant feeling of all walks of people in the country, even though it may not be totally true. The government circles’ answer to this claim is simple - “There will be no elections tomorrow.”
Attempts to force early elections have fallen through
Indeed, the majority of parliament has no intention of holding elections before they are due in April 2004 and it seems there is no power at home or abroad to force them into it, given the facts that the opposition in parliament is simply in a shambles and external forces have lost all their leverage after having abortively tried to force such a possibility or an interregnum in Turkey through two major financial crises in November 2000 and last February.
The question now is whether or not there will be another economic earthquake in Turkey, even bigger than the previous two Black Wednesdays. Some claim it will be in September and some others talk of a November syndrome. The economy is certainly still in the balance. The weakest point, the banking system, has now recovered considerably. The foreign exchange gap of Turkish banks has been reduced from $8.3 billion on April 27th, to $2,147 million, thanks to $6,153 million raised by the Government on June 15th, with foreign exchange based bonds, and even this smaller debt figure turns into a $143 million surplus when the foreign exchange time deposits are taken into account, according to the announcement of the BDDK (Banks Supervision Board).
Even though the interest rates are still too high (compound interest rates standing at 88-89%) and the efforts to pull down the dollar rates have not been successful, the fundamentals of the economy are strong and there is no apparent threat to the economic stabilization efforts, now that the banking system is in much better health.
Apart from a possible economic collapse, which is not very likely, there is no serious reason in Turkey to force early elections within the next two years. The three coalition partners that are basically worlds apart from one another in their initial principles and philosophies have managed to iron out a working cooperation and there is no sign that this harmony will be disrupted in any foreseeable future. They all appreciate the fact that they will lose any elections before they put the economy in order and they are determined to be in power long enough to do that.
Rush for the “new” – how realistic is it for the new party in the offing?
According to various opinion polls, the great majority of Turkish people are fed up with the existing political parties and they intend to vote for a new party in the next elections. That is why the Recep Tayyip Erdogan faction of the banned FP is now wavering between claiming the FP’s legacy and forming a brand new party to address the need for “the new” in Turkish politics. After a former Interior Minister, Meral Aksener’s (Ind-Kocaeli) shock departure from this group with the charge that there was “nothing new” in the new party in the offing, the Tayyip group has reportedly decided to break away from the defunct FP’s “milli gorus” (national outlook) philosophy, while the newly founded Saadet Partisi (SP) put five stars on its party flag to associate itself in the minds of the people with the five principles of Islam and with the claim to be the fifth party based on Necmettin Erbakan’s national outlook. All its four forerunners (the MNP, the MSP, the RP and the FP) faced the same fate; they were all closed down by the Constitutional Court as anti-secular and unconstitutional. What’s more, much to the shock of Erbakan’s followers, the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) has approved of the closing down of the RP in 1997 on the grounds that it did not breach the European Human Rights Convention.
This latest development seems to have affected the Tayyip group, which had been holding meetings in remote places in an attempt to shape the cadres and principles of their new party. Two tendencies kept on clashing at these meetings - the claim to the FP’s legacy or a brand new party with new principles. After the European court’s verdict about the RP, the pendulum swung for dissociating the new party from the defunct FP and its three forerunners. Its first impact will be seen on the headscarf issue. The new party may wisely decide to steer clear of insisting on headscarves for women in schools and public offices. In return, this wise move may result in turning the party into a meaningless political gathering with no distinct characteristic on any national issue. Then time would certainly work for the SP in its competition with the Tayyip group.
The following days will show to the founders of the new party the difficulties involved in this attempt to be “new”, as there is no room in the political spectrum for a new party. In other words, the new party will be stillborn if it denies its religious roots and a poor copy of the SP if it does not. Then its main source of strength will be restricted to the support of the media with external guidance.
Mesut Yilmaz’s claim to “new” and its implications
With a claim to make ANAP a brand new party after the convention, the party chairman, Mesut Yilmaz, won the ANAP national convention comfortably last weekend (4th and 5th) with 921 votes against 287, the votes received by his four competitors put together, and the convention was admittedly conducted under the most democratic conditions.
His address to the national convention was an even-handed summary of the past events as well as a good indication of his future plans and intentions. ANAP Chairman Mesut Yilmaz emphasized his intention to be a new party in Turkish politics after the national convention and brought up the “national security” question as a stumbling block to Turkey’s convergence for the EU membership. He also complained of the “status quo mongers”, apparently meaning the establishment.
Before the convention Yilmaz told Hurriyet editorialist Ertugrul Ozkok, “I will launch a public discussion over the national security concept. Whenever we make a reform we come up against this concept. I am not aware of what it means either. It reminds me of the ‘religion-is-being-discarded’ argument of the Ottoman period. By saying this they used to oppose everything. What is national security? Who determines it? Who supervises it? We have to discuss these things.”
Yilmaz’s address to the convention shed some light on these arguments. He made it apparent that other than the unitary State and secular State principles of the Constitution he would tend not to accept the national security argument in his future political moves for a place for Turkey in the EU. His speech was an evenhanded and fair address of good oratory, but it was also indicative of what to expect of his recent, direct and indirect contacts with Washington.
Above all, Mesut Yilmaz did not utter a single word about his biggest political achievement and greatest service to the nation – the natural gas pipelines grid throughout the country and the gas imports from Iran and especially Russia. Instead he indicated that in future he could oppose economic and energy cooperation with Iran and Iraq. Noteworthy was the fact that the new energy minister Zeki Cakan (ANAP, Bartin) did not start the natural gas imports from Iran on July 30th even though everything was ready and the Iranians were insisting on it. He postponed them to September on the grounds that Iran’s Bazargan pumping station had some shortfalls. This claim had long been the Americans’ argument.
Also the questions Yilmaz voiced in Hurriyet about national security were the points the western diplomats had long been questioning in the Ankara corps diplomatic circles and suggesting to curb the powers and place in the Turkish State Protocol of the Chief, TGS. If a deputy prime minister of Turkey now comes up with that argument in an attempt to patch his grievances with Washington, he will not only undo the excellent service he has so far rendered to this country but will also waste his future career for an adventure. He may then fall into Ercan Vuralhan’s position today.
Vuralhan was a former Turkish Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He won Turgut Ozal’s favour with his service and entered ANAP to eventually become the Defence Minister. But because of his service to Turkish-Saudi relations at the expense of Israel he became the number one target of the Disinformation Mechanism. In the end, he apparently came to an underhanded agreement with Washington and served their purposes with the help of the now retired ambassador Taner Baytok, the then his foreign policy advisor. Today Vuralhan is in a pitiable position of a bankrupt businessman who fails to honour his cheques.
Mesut Yilmaz has so far proved to be the most promising politician of Turkey with honesty and excellent services to the nation, but because of the Disinformation Mechanism’s all out attack on him due to the Blue Stream project, most people think that he is another shady politician like Tansu Ciller. So far he has been saved from these unfair accusations thanks to the sound principles and Ataturkist background of the security forces, despite the highhanded efforts of his own Interior Minister Sadettin Tantan against Yilmaz and his Energy Minister Ersumer. Now that the independent judiciary is about to clear him and his party from these absurd charges, if he chooses the easy way out and makes some underhanded agreements with Washington he will only waste his own future.
Mesut Yilmaz’s political career and performance so far have proved that he is too wise and too honest to fall into such pitfalls. uras@ada.net.tr - August 6th, 2001