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Turkish parliament's double-fisted
knockout
By Robert M Cutler
Press reports, especially in North America,
suggested that a deal between Ankara and Washington was
just a question of money, using the metaphor of the
bazaar to explain Turkish negotiating behavior. In the
end, this description was shown to be ill-conceived and
inaccurate. More was at stake than just the amount of
money. Turkish leaders consistently said so, but no one
in Washington seemed to hear them. The American
administration also appeared to assume that the ruling
Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara could make
its parliamentary deputies fall into line as easily as
the Republican Party in the US can whip its congressmen
and senators into supporting administration policy.
For weeks, the Turkish and American
administrations negotiated back and forth over the
content of the assistance package, which was variously
reported at either $16 billion or $26 billion. This
discrepancy was due to the fact that $1 billion of the
outright grant became earmarked as a guarantee for
another $10 billion loan that was formally outside the
assistance package. Towards the end of the negotiations,
some press reports suggested that Turkey had upped its
requirements to $32 billion. This misstatement reflected
only Ankara's desire for an immediate infusion of cash
on the war's very outbreak.
Not unreasonably,
Turkish leaders contended that the Ankara stock market
and the Turkish lira would be hit immediately on the
commencement of war, before the assistance package as a
whole could be approved by the US Congress and
implemented. This dispute was linked to the question,
never fully resolved between the two sides, whether the
overall package would be subject to conditions of the
loan regime established by the International Monetary
Fund in its continuing attempts to compel reform of the
Turkish economy.
Also, Congressional approval
would be required for the assistance package, and
Washington insisted that that was not possible overnight
and would indeed take six to eight weeks. In response,
the Turkish government made it clear that it would
accept as a guarantee nothing less than a letter signed
by President George W Bush. This is not only because
oral American promises of assistance in the run-up to
the 1991 war proved to be worthless. It was also because
oral American promises to then-prime minister Bulent
Ecevit 14 months ago, concerning the extension of a free
trade agreement with Turkey, turned out to be similarly
not followed up: just like oral American promises to
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to open American
markets further to textile imports from Pakistan, as
well as oral American promises to Russia's President
Vladimir Putin for concrete measures in his favor since
September 11 have yielded these leaders no tangible
benefits.
As the weeks of negotiation followed
one after the other, an interesting attitudinal reversal
appeared to occur between Prime Minister Abdullah Gul
and de facto AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the
beginning it was Gul who was the more concerned with
diplomatic initiatives having as their explicit goal to
make the US war against Iraq something other than
inevitable, and it was Erdogan who was publicly more
intent on reaching agreement with the US on an economic
package. This was probably because Erdogan felt a need
to prove his credentials as a reputable alliance
partner, while Gul was more strongly influenced by his
connections with the AKP's parliamentary caucus, which
was always divided, and remains so, over the question of
war with Iraq.
As time passed, though, Gul was
more and more socialized into his government role and
responsibilities, while the prospect of Erdogan's
entering parliament via the scheduled by-election in
Siirt made him feel more secure and in need of proving
less. Indeed, in the iconic photograph following the
announcement of the "no to the US" vote in Ankara, it is
Gul who, head in hands, appears vexed and Erdogan who
has the philosophical air.
There are two
significant details in all this that have escaped
general attention. The first is that the government
motion was in fact neither rejected nor adopted. That is
because an absolute majority of deputies did not vote
either for or against it. It will be recalled that
immediately after the 264-251 vote in favor, the
resolution was declared adopted.
However, the
leader of the opposition, the Republican People's Party
(CHP) leader Deniz Baykal, drew the attention of the
speaker of the assembly to Article 96 of Turkish
constitution, which reads in relevant part that "the
Turkish Grand National Assembly ... shall take decisions
by an absolute majority of those present". In light of
this provision, and taking account of the 19
abstentions, the speaker Bulent Arinc declared that in
fact an absolute majority of those present had not voted
in favor and that the motion was therefore not adopted.
Because the motion was not rejected, the
government may in theory resubmit it at any time. In
practice, however, it will not do so in the near future.
This is not because Arinc opined that to submit the same
motion again without revisions would be "politically
incorrect". Rather, it is because to do so and to see
the motion again fail to pass would represent the
government's loss of a vote of confidence. In a meeting
24 hours after failing to win approval, the AKP
leadership was unable to reach agreement on resubmission
of the motion. This spelled the effective decision for
no quick resubmission.
American pressure then
led the AKP to clarify that it did not exclude seeking
another vote, and would in fact seek one. However,
leading party members have stated to the press that this
will not happen until at least two to three weeks have
passed, not least because of the need for further
consultations within the party itself, including wide
discussion among its elected representatives. The AKP
leadership simply cannot control the votes of its
parliamentary members over this issue. That is why there
was what in British practice is called a "free vote" in
the first place. It now seems probable that there will
be no resubmission of such a motion before Erdogan is
elected a member of parliament in the by-election in
Siirt and is able to form a new government with himself
as prime minister.
The second result of the
Turkish vote that has passed almost unnoticed is its
effect on the war planned in northern Iraq and on the
future of Iraq as a whole. The motion that was not
adopted had two major aspects. The approval of the US
economic assistance package was only one of them. The
other was authorization for Turkey's army to enter
northern Iraq. The Turkish constitution requires a
parliamentary vote to send the country's armed forces
outside its own borders. The same vote that rejected the
American aid package failed to authorize Turkey's
military intervention in northern Iraq.
The wide
ramifications of this widely unremarked aspect of the
vote in Ankara will be explored in a subsequent article.
Dr Robert M Cutler, http://www.robertcutler.org, is Research
Fellow, Institute of European and Russian Studies,
Carleton University, Canada.
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