TURKPULSE No:74..........JULY 13th, 2002
PM
Ecevit has stolen a march over his opponents twice and is fighting a pitched
battle now to survive, in critical health and at the rather advanced age of
77. His adversaries are in the offensive and constantly gaining ground with
non-stop, but slowing-down resignations from his party, the DSP. At the time
of writing this article his party’s seats in parliament had fallen from 128
to 82 and resignations were continuing. However, he still had a margin of 12
seats, along with his coalition partners, to fall below 276, the majority of
the plenary session. Even if that happens there are still 13 vacant seats in
Parliament, which enables him and his allies to continue with the fight,
because, under the Constitution and the Standing Orders of Parliament, it is
the opposition’s responsibility to find the 276 to topple the government
with a censure motion and not the government’s. Below is the interesting
story of this unprecedented event which government circles call the “plot of
profiteering circles”.
Deputy
PM Devlet Bahceli revealed that PM Ecevit had allayed a plot aimed at
eliminating the Prime Minister and the MHP from power by forcing his
right-hand man, Husamettin Ozkan, to resign on July 8th, thus
stealing a march on “the plot engineered by profiteering circles” for the
resignation from the party en masse a
couple of days after. By doing so he curbed the resignations from the intended
70. At the moment, Saturday (13th) afternoon, 46 have resigned from
the party and the coalition parties still have 288 seats (MHP 127, DSP 82 and
ANAP 79). The Ecevit-Bahceli team believes that if they had not cracked down
upon the Huzamettin Ozkan plot, the 70 resigned from the party would form a
coalition with ANAP and DYP, and the AKP, led by Tayyip Erdogan, would support
this new tripartite coalition from outside, thus eliminating Ecevit and the
MHP from the ruling power. They call this the “plot of profiteering
quarters”, but everyone knows that this “civilian coup
d’état “ can only be engineered by a superpower.
Indeed during his current tour of Malatya, Bahceli said this morning (13th)
“the plot of profiteering quarters and their external extensions”. The
whole thing, including Ecevit’s ill health, is not unrelated with these
“plotters”.
Bahceli claims plot amidst “conspiracy theory” campaign
According
to this claim, which the “Disinformation Mechanism guided” media readily
dismisses as “conspiracy theory”, the second plot closely averted by PM
Ecevit is also related with the first one. Ecevit was to have a medical
check-up on July 11th but he did not show up at the hospital. One
of the claims is that he suspected that the hospital would give a report
claiming that he was too ill to continue with his prime minister’s
responsibilities and would thus be eliminated from power. There were reports
in the media that Ecevit had changed the Baskent Hospital equipped with the
most modern American technology and US trained doctors who have been treating
him and that he would continue with the treatment in GATA, the fully equipped
military hospital in Ankara. The Prime Minister dismissed the claim and said
that he did not go to Baskent hospital on Thursday (11th) as
scheduled, in order to avoid new media speculations about his health. He also
affirmed that he was in good health thanks to his doctors’ good treatment.
Reports continue to appear in the media that medical science bans using
cortisone for people over the age of 70 and that this was given to Ecevit
profusely causing his current health problems after a temporary improvement of
health.
Other
accusations concern Husamettin Ozkan’s role in the whole affair. The medical
reports were handed to him and the Under-Secretary of the Prime Ministry, his
right-hand man, instead of the Ecevit family or the Ministry of Health. Ozkan
was the person who settled the Fetullah Gulen religious faction in the DSP and
most of those who resigned today are DSP members of this faction. (Issue
No: turkpulse 46 “Painful Birth of the New Religious Party”) Ecevit,
who re-launched his motto in recent days, “there
is no room for sentimentalism in politics”, invited on Friday the
former Minister of the Interior Sadettin Tantan (Independent-Istanbul) both to
win his single vote at the censure motion battle ahead and possibly to open
the pages of the reports he had prepared against Husamettin Ozkan with charges
of corruption in Halk Bank which was under Ozkan.
Leaving
aside the other aspects of these “profiteering circles’ plot” and
“conspiracy theory” charges and counter-charges, the question facing
Turkey now is what’ll emerge out of the current crisis in Turkey? Who will
win this battle? And what impact will it have on the economy and the future of
the country?
Dervis has to clarify his position quickly if he will be one of the “Troika”
A
cloud of thick dust covered Ankara’s political atmosphere on Thursday (11th)
when the Economy Minister Kemal Dervis followed Foreign Minister Ismail Cem in
resigning from the government after his talk with PM Ecevit. However,
President Sezer sorted it out by preventing this event with Ecevit’s
flexibility, thus avoiding the domestic political crisis gaining international
dimensions to everyone’s disadvantage. But still the problem rests there, as
Dervis is one of the Troika in this whole affair (not to say “plot”),
along with Cem and Ozkan, and his remaining in the government is weakening the
deserters’ position about the continuation of the resignations – the key
issue in the outcome of the crisis. Dervis has already declared that his
remaining in the government did not mean that he was not with the new
“formation” and that he would make up his mind about leaving the
government within a week or two. Devlet
Bahceli’s publicly declared answer was that Devis’s marginal use to the
government had now become zero and that he could leave any time he wished. He
was also critical of the President for intervening in this resignation, but in
all fairness it should be admitted that the president played a healthy role in
this affair and most probably inadvertently cut the ground from under the
Cem-Ozkan-Dervis troika’s feet by slowing down the resignations from the
DSP.
Meanwhile,
the government side is gaining vitally important time in both preventing the
disintegration of the DSP and also trying to disintegrate the new
“formation” with calls for the resigned to return to the “flock”, but
only two members have so far returned contrary to the DSP rulers’
expectations. One of them, Zafer Guler (Ind-Istanbul), has again changed his
mind and became the 46th resignee from the DSP.
Time
is indeed working against the deserters because they have nothing much to tell
to the nation. Ismail Cem’s press conference on Friday was a well prepared
document drafted in good diplomatic language, but at close scrutiny it had
nothing much to explain why they had left the government. Much to
journalists’ reaction Cem did not answer questions. One journalist shouted
at him, “What kind of a journalist are
you that holds his press conference at the journalists’ headquarters but
does not answer questions? You could just have well sent the text by fax.”
The
Troika’s dilemma is that they are in an awful position of not explaining the
reasons for their drastic move. The most logical explanation is “Ecevit
is too old and too ill to be prime minister,” but they wisely do
not say it directly and prefer to beat about the bush. The people who have
resigned all owe their political careers to PM Bulent Ecevit and the nation
would never forgive them, according to Turkish tradition, if they now tried “to
smear the father”. Neither do they have the luxury of the opposition to
criticize a “clumsy foreign policy”, the “awful economic mess” or the
“ruthless social conditions against the poor people”. The party-to-be
claims to be on the left and social democratic, but it chooses the rational
path of the West’s “Regulatory Reform” centered around the potential EU
accession. Thus they fail to satisfy Labour and the people suffering from the
economic crisis. That is why a union leader criticized Cem’s statement
because it was no answer to their grievances. The troika will apparently
campaign for EU accession, but there is already a champion of this policy,
Mesut Yilmaz, who has been admired by all except by the “Euro-sceptics”.
Finally,
splintering in Turkish politics has happened very frequently, but has never
been successful in the last 50 years or so. To expect its success against a
historic person like Bulent Ecevit now is not very realistic, to say the
least. The only big and important advantage of the new formation is the
all-out media support, but everyone is now very much aware of the existence of
the Disinformation Mechanism in Turkey and it cuts down considerably the
impact of this enormous force in today’s democracies.
When will the elections be held, this year or in 2003?
Another
key issue in the current political crisis is the date of early elections,
which now seems inevitable even though PM Ecevit is trying to hold on to power
until April 2004, the normal time for elections. No one believes that it is
possible to continue with this government for another 20 months or so. The MHP
has already tabled a motion for holding an emergency session at the beginning
of September to move the election date forward to November 3rd, 2002,
but the High Electoral Council has declared that even though 60 days is enough
legally, they cannot possibly hold the elections before 90 days technically.
Parliament should allot an additional budget of TL30-35 trillion immediately
to be able to do that.
The
official opposition party, the DYP, has collected 80 odd signatures to call
Parliament to an emergency session on July 22nd to legislate the
bills needed for EU accession, to amend the election and political parties
bills and then to hold the elections at the end of September, as ANAP has been
advocating as its second alternative. The proposal simply does not hold water
for several reasons. Above all, it needs one/fifth
of the plenary session, i.e. 110 signatures for this motion to be legal and it
falls far short. Secondly, holding early elections after amending the
political parties’ and election laws means holding no elections before
autumn 2003 because the latest amendments of 34 articles of the constitution
last October ban holding early elections before the lapse of a year if the
election or political parties laws are amended (the amended form of Article 67
of the constitution). For that reason ANAP does not support the DYP’s motion
and no other party fills the DYP’s shortfall of the required 110 signatures.
Then
again the AKP Chairman Tayyip Erdogan has suggested holding early elections at
the beginning of October and MHP leader Bahceli advised the press to ask
Erdogan why he does not accept his party’s proposal of November 3rd.
The search for the answer to Bahceli’s question brought to daylight that the
six-month period recognized to AKP to strip Erdogan of his party founder and
chairman status is due on October 19th. Erdogan is keen on being
elected to Parliament before that deadline in order to take shelter behind
parliamentary immunity against the Constitutional Court ruling. It also showed
the reason for the MHP’s date for early elections – to win over some of
Tayyip Erdogan’s votes.
Finally,
ANAP is choosing to remain in the coalition lest it is blamed for a government
crisis at a very critical period for Turkey with the certain time-consuming
and horse-trading bargaining with so many conflicting parties up against the
solid Ecevit-Bahceli front if the present government falls. ANAP is sincere in
its bid for the legislation of the bills for EU accession before October 13th
and will try to do this within the existing tripartite coalition as all
the parties other than the MHP have been committed to supporting these bills.
The election date does not matter for Mesut Yilmaz if the EU bills are
legislated in time.
So
after all, what seems impossible now about Ecevit’s wish to hold the
elections as late as possible may turn out to be the case in the end. His vast
experience in politics is, in fact, what is keeping his government going today
even though his party has become the third party in Parliament now, falling
behind the MHP’s 127 seats and the DYP’s 85, because he foresaw this
possibility at the formation of the coalition and put a clause in the
coalition protocol that the change of membership among the ruling parties
would not affect the composition of the coalition.
How critical is Ecevit’s health to affect the outcome of the crisis?
As
for another key issue, Ecevit’s ill health, the Prime Minister appeared
quite healthy and in command of his senses during his first live TV broadcast
to NTV about an hour after Ismail Cem’s statement on Thursday. Apart from
his hard of hearing problems and occasional slip of the tongue he was the
usual eloquent Ecevit during this 45-minute live broadcast. It is understood
that the trouble about his ill health is nothing serious to keep him from
doing his duty. To put it in plain language, the overdose of cortisone given
to Ecevit over months made his bones brittle. There have been some fractured
of broken vertebrae which confined him to bed or the house for two months. By
wearing a steel corset and other reinforcements he can now move about as the
steel corset prevents the body weight from breaking other vertebrae and he
continues with his duties. As experts have been alarmed about the plot woven
around Ecevit’s health in order to get rid of him and the MHP, the chance of
success of the new “formation” is diminishing, despite the enormous
external support to the Troika.
Given
the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a successful president of the USA for
12 years and through a world war, despite his physical limitations, and that
Konrad Adenauer saved Germany from the fire and ashes of the war at the age of
87 when he retired in October 1963, who can claim with any fairness that
Ecevit is too old or too ill to rule for another few years. It is true that
the majority of the nation is extensively influenced by the media campaign
that Ecevit is too old and too ill to stay in power. They are surprised to see
a healthy Ecevit, up and about, carrying out his premiership duties, since he
has got rid of his Baskent Hospital doctors whom they say were exaggerating
and aggravating his ill health. Ecevit has declared his intention to head the
DSP during the elections ahead, while the other side claims that it is
suicidal. Time will show who is right. Ecevit is certainly a hard nut to crack
to say the least.