TURKPULSE No:76..........JULY 25th, 2002
There is absolutely nothing new about the DSP’s splintering group led by Ismail Cem, which has unbelievably called itself the New Turkey Party and taken over a stolen logo. All its 60 odd founders were DSP parliamentarians only until yesterday and the only person new in it, Kemal Dervis, is still wavering about what to do miles away from home. Even if he eventually chooses to join this meaningless gathering which will be a pity for his own political career and more truly for the election chances of the CHP that may well fall below the 10% threshold due to Dervis’s splintering the new votes, it will still not be able to save the NTP. The following are the unbelievable mistakes the splintering group members have made in Turkish politics in such a short time in a critical election period.
Even if the scandal about the stolen logo of the New Turkey Party may be ignored as a mistake of a new political party in a hurry for imminent elections, the entire performance of this makeshift party is a farce. To start with, its name – there is nothing new about it as the New Turkey Party was one of the two parties founded in 1962 with a claim to the legacy of the ousted Democrat Party of executed PM Adnan Menderes after the May 27th, 1960 military coup. The chairman of the first NTP, Ekrem Alican, was the Deputy PM of the Inonu Government when Turkey received the Johnson letter in June 1964 which marked a turning point in Turkey’s near history. President Johnson was saying to Turkey in that letter that if it intervened in Cyprus militarily and the Soviet Union attacked Turkey as Khrushchev was threatening, it was not certain whether or not NATO would come to Turkey’s help.
Similarities between the first and second New Turkey Parties
As a strange quirk of fate, Alican’s resignation from the Inonu coalition took place under very similar conditions as Ismail Cem and his friends when they resigned from the DSP and the Ecevit coalition today, causing similar crises under very critical conditions of the country. PM Inonu was in Washington for a tough exchange with President Johnson over this notorious letter when Alican tendered his resignation in Ankara for petty domestic policy calculations over its strife with the Justice Party about Menderes’s legacy. Inonu faced the embarrassing position of which government he was representing at his talks in the United States. He had just said to Time magazine about the Johnson letter, “If that is the case, the world would collapse. A new world would reshape and Turkey would take its place in it.”
Today the US Deputy Defence Secretary Wolfowitz was in Ankara for a very important military operation in the Gulf against the Saddam regime in Iraq. However, it was not clear how much PM Ecevit was representing Turkey with his party and government disintegrating with resignations by the Deputy PM Husamettin Ozkan and Foreign Minister Ismail Cem leading a meaningless rebellion with no clear motives other than disserving national interests.
The answer of the Turkish nation to the first NTP (or with Turkish acronyms the YTP) was to put an end to its span of life at the first general elections and there is not the slightest shade of doubt that this will be the fate of the second YTP with or without Kemal Dervis. It is true that there is the media factor today and TV sets can be found in the remotest village houses enabling the Disinformation Mechanism to brainwash people in favour of Washington’s favourites at the elections, but there is definitely a limit to its impact. The traditional network of political establishment especially in rural areas are still very much at work as the elections have proved hitherto, as evidenced by today’s government. Three leading politicians, Ecevit in Washington’s bad books for decades, Yilmaz hated by the Americans for his miraculous realisation of the Blue Stream project and Bahceli for his obvious nationalist outlooks, were elected by the nation in April 1999 and have since been ruling much to the superpower’s chagrin. At that time also (only three years ago) the TV was just as widespread as today and it did not influence the election returns too much in favour of the direction the Disinformation Mechanism campaigned for. This time too the world will see how wrong the claim of the Turkish media is that “Tayyip Erdogan is coming to power with pounding footsteps”.
Canvassing politicians have already begun to put question marks in people’s brains. They ask the people “How do you like Dervis?” the answer is usually a sky-high praise because that is what the media does. They ask “How do you like the economic conditions?” The answer is usually an all-out complaint of the hardships suffered from economic conditions, again because that is what the media does. The politician then remarks, “Well that is all Dervis’s doing for the last year and a half so why do you like him so much then?” The speechless interlocutor begins to have second thoughts about it and of course about his vote, because the longest period allowed to a politician or a ruler to do something is 100 days in Turkish political traditions. After that period the people’s rhetorical answer to the politician seeking time is ready, “The ruling power is not the weeping wall. Why haven’t you done something about it so far?”
That is the reason why there is an enormous mass of people to the tune of 40-50% undecided voters in Turkey today and they will make up their minds at the last minute most probably emotionally rather than rationally. Ecevit’s fight for the ruling power at his age and in suffering health conditions may well be this good emotional reason for many people to vote for him, rather than the opposite, because everyone knows that he is absolutely honest and not after the luxury or wealth of the ruling power. This emotional factor in elections becomes the determining factor even in developed nations like the rational and emotion-free German nation. The opposition was campaigning against Willy Brandt with charges of being an illegitimate child at birth. Just before the Election Day, a journalist put this question to him before the cameras. Brandt looked away in sorrow and said of the opposition in a trembling voice and almost in tears, “Yes. It is true. They’ve hit me on the sorest point of my life.” That last minute remark gained him more votes than the entire election campaign.
That the Turkish nation will never forgive the treacherous side of the latest splintering movement by Ozkan and Cem is a foregone conclusion. Dervis’s position, however, will be somewhat more excusable if he eventually becomes one of the Troika because he has never joined the DSP and doesn’t owe Ecevit anything as the rest do in the YTP. What Dervis’s final decision will be remains to be seen next week, but its impact should not be over-exaggerated one way or the other.
The critical Monday in two days about elections and EU accession
It is a foregone conclusion that Parliament will convene an emergency session on July 29th and vote for early elections on November 3rd, despite PM Ecevit’s pitched battle that he has admitted to have lost. What ‘s very much precarious about the whole thing despite the hours that remain is what else Parliament will vote for – nothing else or amendment of the election and political parties laws or the EU accession bills in its entirety or in part or still all of them? The High Electoral Council has told Deputy PM Mesut Yilmaz that they still have time to make the necessary arrangements for the elections on November 3rd if the election bill passes until August 10th, the latest.
So on Monday, two bills will clash. One is that of the MHP for early elections only and the other is that of ANAP and the SP, for passing the 16 EU accession bills as a whole and then voting for the election date. The DYP and some others still talk of changing the election and political parties bills too, but it is impossible, not because it would be illegal (as Pulse wrongly reported last week because this term of parliament has the exception, with a temporary article, of not waiting for a year) but because there is no time or consensus on these points among the political parties. Whereas, ANAP has prepared the EU bills with vast consensus in Parliament and it may well be able to pass them within 3-4 days or five at the most, according to Mesut Yilmaz. In this regard, the MHP and the YTP favour excluding three controversial articles concerned with the death sentence and teaching and broadcasts in the mother tongue and passing the rest, but the DYP wants the whole lot to be brought before Parliament. ANAP is doing everything in its power to pass all the bills no matter under what conditions as long as it is acceptable to the European Union. There are signs of flexibility on the part of the MHP for passing the 13 bills and keeping away from the three controversial ones. PM Ecevit’s party has not signed the ANAP-SP motion but may well tend to support it in the end and there may be other supporters to ANAP’s move, but as it stands today the whole thing is in the balance with a slight slanting in Yilmaz’s favour. But petty political calculations over ANAP gaining a lot by such a consequence undercuts the success of the move despite all the skill that party has manifested in this regard. The safest forecast that can now be made is to wait and see. uras@ada.net.tr - July 25th, 2002