TURKPULSE No:77..........AUGUST 3rd, 2002
Last week was witness to the shrewdness of this observation by an official Israeli source, “Turks are at their best when the problems are the biggest.” Indeed, at a time when Turkey was struggling under an old and ailing Prime Minister to overcome its severest economic crisis and facing an ever-widening wedge in the tripartite coalition over the EU accession, a major split in the biggest ruling party imposed a shocking early election phenomenon. In addition to the enormous economic, social and political problems facing this dithering old man and his government at home, the Cyprus and Iraq problems were looming over Ankara’s horizons in the foreign policy domain with threats of an imminent hot war next door with Turkey’s inevitable involvement, one way or another. Under these conditions, the Turkish Parliament did the impossible and passed the so called “EU accession bills” to open the gate for the final and most important stride in the nation’s 200 year old modernisation efforts as a European country.
The two super stars of the unbelievable achievement of this Turkish victory last week was definitely the experienced PM Bulent Ecevit and even more so, his second deputy, Mesut Yilmaz. This Ecevit-Yilmaz solidarity, which brought incredible political stability to Turkey for the last five years, since June 1997, despite very shaky parliamentary arithmetic in two different parliamentary terms, is now heading for general elections on November 3rd, according to the overwhelming majority decision of Parliament (with 449 votes to 62 and three abstentions).
Early elections may still not be a foregone conclusion
Technically, Ecevit can still prevent the elections from taking place in three months, but he would never resort to such political intrigue in view of the overwhelming majority. Otherwise, if it had been a street politician instead of the historic personality, Bulent Ecevit, he could join hands with the dissatisfied parliamentarians once the final electoral lists are determined and have the majority in Parliament to change the election resolution. The decision for early elections on November 3rd is not a bill that will be signed into a law by the President, but a resolution of Parliament, which is not subject to presidential veto or the Constitutional Court`s supervision. Technically it is always possible to change it under Article 78 of the Constitution especially if President Bush continues to toy with the Iraq war idea, as Wolfowitz said in Ankara it was inevitable with or without Turkey. Even without taking recourse to Article 78, this can still be done with the majority of parliament if the dissatisfied parliamentarians are too many and it was tried both before 1995 and 1999 general elections. This time, Ecevit’s objection to the forthcoming election may well make these abortive attempts of previous terms a success, but Ecevit would never resort to such tricky politics unless he sees a big danger for the nation. And all the measures are being taken at “State level” (the equivalent to the American “federal level”) to prevent such dangers to pester Turkey in the post-Ecevit period.
MHP’s manifestations of chauvinism, with moderation behind the scene
A case in point was the legislation of the EU accession bills in the early hours of Saturday (3rd) after a two-day marathon in the house floor stretching 17 hours of non-stop heated debates on the second day and night. An interesting aspect of these debates was that, after having demonstrated quite a reasonable statesmanship for over three years as the first deputy PM, the MHP Chairman Devlet Bahceli allowed his spokesmen at debates to manifest unbelievable chauvinism in the name of “Turkish nationalism” (the word “nationalism” quite often means “patriotism” in Turkish). These manifestations went as far as the claim that by safeguarding communal foundations’ properties Turkey was allowing the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy in Istanbul to eventually become another Vatican State in Rome.
Another unbelievable move on the part of the MHP was their objections to the Justice and State Ministers Hikmet Sami Turk (DSP-Trabzon) and Nejat Arseven (ANAP-Ankara) for talking on behalf of the government. So to “get on with the job” they preferred to speak on behalf of their political parties instead of engaging in unnecessary arguments on legal technicalities and the Constitution. Consequently, the MHP poured out its extremism at the debates screened on the TV to make political capital for the elections. Yet behind the scene, Bahceli was putting down his weight for moderation and EU accession. For instance, at the behind-the-scene debates at the Judicial Committee a day before, the DYP and AKP members joined hands and tabled a motion for taking out the abolition of the death penalty from the bill. If the five MHP members had supported them, the whole bill would have fallen through and the EU accession bills would not have been passed today. But they did not do so and paved the way for the final happy result by abstaining. To prevent Tansu Ciller and Tayyip Erdogan from exploiting this even against the MHP before the electorate they preferred to place reservations to the Committee report about the death sentence and staged a “lion like fight” at the debates on the House floor before the TV cameras.
Mesut Yilmaz’s admirable statesmanship carries the day
If it had not been for PM Ecevit’s historic personality and experience, but more so, ANAP leader Mesut Yilmaz,s perfect handling of the whole operation from the beginning to the end this unbelievable achievement would not have been a fact today.
Yilmaz saw from the outset that his ANAP (79) and Ecevit’s split-up DSP (65) was slightly above the MHP’s 127 seats in Parliament. Unless he won over the opposition it was impossible to pass these bills. Yet the entire nation was supporting the EU accession and the other parties would never allow him to be the heroic politician who passed the bill through. That is why he kept on saying publicly that it was not ANAP’s bill, but that of Parliament. He named Ciller along with Menderes, Inonu, Demirel and Ecevit who made Turkey a promising EU candidate today with their strenuous efforts dating back to 1959 when Turkey became the EEC’s associate member along with Greece. He also promised publicly that he would not use the EU accession bills as political capital for ANAP during the election campaign. His years long contacts with EU countries, the dynamic work of the EU Affairs Secretariat-General under Ambassador Volkan Vural and activities of the Ministers Turk and Arseven on human rights and legal procedures, all under Mesut Yilmaz’s admirable guidance yielded this good result for Turkey.
Now it is expected that the European Union will give the green light to Turkey for starting accession negotiations, first on October 13th with its appraisals of Turkey’s performance and then in December at the Copenhagen summit.
Will Cyprus be a hindrance for the realisation of this happy end for Turkey? Given the fact that Washington has never been in the way, but on the contrary facilitated Turkey’s EU relations, especially under President Clinton, it is almost certain that this will not be the case whether or not the sixth round of talks between Denktas and Clarides will be a success, after the failure of the first five rounds which have just been wound up.
As for the Gulf side of Turkish-American relations, it is not as bright as the above developments, but there again, the Bush Administration will have to come round to Turkey’s outlook along with Colin Powell’s moderation, rather than Wolfowitz’s hawkish designs. The details of this side of Turkish-American relations will be the subject of another article. uras@ada.net.tr - August 3rd, 2002