Page 1 of 2 The week that transformed Turkey
By M K Bhadrakumar
Three developments within a week, and the visage of Turkish politics has
changed beyond recognition: the military's warning to the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) last Friday against pressing ahead with its candidate
for the presidency because of his Islamist leanings; the constitutional court's
ruling on Tuesday that invalidated the first round of voting by Parliament last
week in which the AKP candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, fell
just short of the required two-thirds support; and the AKP leadership's
subsequent announcement that it will dissolve
Parliament and stage early elections.
Turkish politics is entering uncharted waters. No precedent from Turkey's
troubled experience with democracy quite holds good as a compass for the
protagonists. That includes the country's armed forces, the main political
parties, and civil society.
Equally, it is a gross oversimplification to view the developing crisis as a
two-way standoff between "secularists" and "Islamists". The political spectrum
is far too diversified.
And what lends an altogether new dimension to the crisis is that there is
undeniably an international angle, which cannot be overlooked against the
backdrop of the highly volatile regional situation in the Muslim Middle East.
Above all, there is no cut-and-dried solution to the crisis in view. In all
probability, the various contending forces have to play out over the next few
months and, in the meanwhile, a prolonged period of political tension and
uncertainty lies in store.
What is unmistakably clear is that the Turkish military has once again put
breaks on the country's democratic experiment. It is natural that suspicions
have arisen that the country's judiciary might have once again come under
pressure to become the handmaiden of the "pashas" (a title used for military
and civil officers) in subverting the democratic process.
Suspended between the autocratic Middle East and democratic Europe, Turkey is
once again being dragged into the morass of a crisis of identity. Where does
Turkey belong? Last week, it certainly bore a resemblance to its Middle Eastern
neighbors to the east rather than Vienna to the west (which the Ottomans strove
to enter centuries ago by force but failed).
The only glimmer of light on a bleak political horizon is that it is still
possible that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will succeed in salvaging
something substantial out of the debris that the military's heavy boots have
created. In this case, Turkish democracy may live to fight another day and
founding father Mustafa "Ataturk" Kemal's dream of taking a modern Turkish
state into the common European home may be realized.
Erdogan's announcement on Tuesday that, given the circumstances, he was seeking
a way out of the political deadlock by opting for early parliamentary
elections, might seem at first glance as a sign of backtracking under pressure
from the military, but there are undercurrents that must be noted.
Erdogan's calculations
Erdogan is a born fighter, and at the same time he is a pragmatist and a master
tactician. He has, in essence, taken two steps forward and one step backward.
For the first time in the 85-year history of the Turkish republic, a political
party has shown the gumption to reject the military's claim to the role of
political arbiter. The AKP government has stood its ground and has reminded the
military of its place under the constitution. Three cheers for Turkish
democracy on a dark day.
Second, Erdogan has refused to give up the AKP's claim that like any other
political party in the country, it must have the prerogative to put forward its
own candidate for the presidency and that it must be left to Parliament to sit
in judgment. Therefore, Erdogan is sticking to Gul's candidacy. He has also
refused to be browbeaten by the massive Kemalist rallies on the streets of
Ankara and Istanbul in recent weeks condemning the AKP as "neo-Islamists"
allegedly bent on undermining the secular foundations of the Turkish state.
At the same time, Erdogan is avoiding an outright confrontation with the
military. His readiness to break the political deadlock after the
constitutional court annulled the first round of voting seems on the surface to
be eminently reasonable. Also, he met with the military leadership before
announcing the decision on Tuesday evening to call early parliamentary
polls in July rather than scheduled November.
But he has stressed that he will advocate sweeping changes to the country's
constitution, which would involve a direct presidential election along with
parliamentary polls. "If this Parliament cannot elect the president, we will
take the issue to the nation and begin electing the president by popular vote,"
he warned. In other words, he finds it completely unacceptable that the
military can arrogate to itself any right to supersede the popular will of the
nation.
With this stance Erdogan is occupying the center stage of the country's
democratic life. He is setting an agenda that is at once populist but that
many other political parties will find hard to match. In fact, the issue is
bound to prove divisive, and can only help further isolate the main opposition
Republican People's Party (CHP), which is already being seen as goading the
military into helping it.
Finally, Erdogan is also signaling the AKP's democratic credentials to the
international community, especially to Western capitals. On balance, Erdogan's
best bet is that the opposition parties remain in their present state of
disarray and far from united in taking on the AKP in the parliamentary
elections in July. CHP leader Deniz Baykal is a controversial personality with
whom leaders of other political parties have found it difficult to work. There
has been a steady exodus over the years from the CHP by prominent politicians
whose main grouse has been with Baykal.
The Kemalist dilemma
As long as Baykal retains the leadership of CHP, therefore, the prospect of
genuine unity among the leftist political parties seems remote. There is no
charismatic leader who can unite the fragmented spectrum of Turkey's political
left. That is to say, the Kemalist camp will lack an effective political
vehicle during the polls. This explains the attempt of the Kemalist camp in
recent weeks to win back in the streets what it knows it has no chance of
gaining through the ballot box.
Turkey's peculiar electoral laws will ensure that political parties that poll
less than 10% of the votes do not find representation in Parliament. This
stipulation was, ironically, cleverly crafted by the Kemalist forces in the
past for the express purpose of denying Kurdish irredentist elements the avenue
of the democratic process to take their political platform into Parliament.
Thus the badly fragmented Turkish left may not gain any added representation in
the new Parliament. Indeed, Parliament's composition may not be far different
from what it is now.
If anything, some of the rightist political parties that were excluded in the
last Parliament might now cross the 10% threshold. There is no denying that the
AKP has been a
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