Cyprus-Forum.com

[Oracle]

Turkey’s political trench warfare

Ralph Boulton
May 19th, 2009

With court charges of corruption against President Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s conservative establishment opens a new front in what amounts to a form of trench warfare between the AK Party and its opponents. One way or another, a showdown of sorts appears to be approaching.

You’re a Turkish patriot. You’re a hardline general, civil servant, judge or a militant nationalist politician. Like everyone you met at the cocktail party last night, you’re convinced Turkey’s AK Party government is turning your country into an Islamist state; backward, oppressive and isolated.

You despair. The population voted for AK in their millions in 2002. As if that weren’t bad enough, they re-elected them by a landslide five years later, disregarding the dire warnings of the General Staff. Worse still, those ‘modern’ secular middle classes of Istanbul, the mainstay of military influence, joined the religious conservatives of Anatolia in backing AK. They were lulled by the country’s economic success, EU-inspired democratic and financial reforms, and by stability. The West, in its embrace of the AK, is either naïve or hell bent on the end the West always sought – the humiliation or dismemberment of Turkey. Extraordinary how many times, I’ve heard that last one at dinner parties and receptions.

So what can you do, you worried ranks?

When the East Germans rose up against communism in 1953, the Party leaders, after crushing the revolt with Soviet tanks, told the population in no uncertain terms how badly the working classes had failed them. Writer Bertolt Brecht, speaking ironically on behalf of the communist masters, suggested they dissolve the people and elect a new one.

In the absence of that as a realistic option, the course for the Turkish hardliner seems to me to be clear enough. Discredit, undermine, sow division in the AK Party, by whatever channels available – the military, the courts, parliament, the streets.

The Justice and Development Party (AK), after all, is not really a party, at all.

AK emerged more as an ‘emergency coalition’ months before 2002 elections and just as the entire structure of the Turkish party system was collapsing.

Years of petty personal feuding and coalition squabbling, economic incompetence, corruption and general self-destructive folly had robbed the traditional parties of all credibility.

The cracks in a coalition are always vulnerable to an insistently probing knife.

Many labelled the Justice and Development Party, which likes to be known by initials that spell out the word for pure and clear, an Islamist party, pure and simple. Leaders Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul had a well-documented past in the Islamist movement. But it wasn’t that simple. AK rallied together centre-right politicians and economists as well as nationalists and the conservative religious core. Erdogan and Gul declared their Islamist days over and pledged loyalty to secularist state founder Ataturk; a blasphemous crime in itself for some.

AK in 2002 was for many simply the last political home standing, as it remains for many.

For the first time in ages the country was ruled by one parliamentary party, held together firmly by the towering figure of Tayyip Erdogan. It pushed through an IMF programme where so many had failed before, reformed rights legislation, promoted business. The AK people were for many Westerners, diplomats, businessmen and journalists alike, a breath of fresh air. You could talk to them about sensitive subjects like the Kurds, Armenia, Cyprus or clashes with the EU without that haunting feeling they would march out in pique. They were more “pro-Western” in their dealings than an ambivalent military, the civil service or the judiciary of those times.

The sceptics would say they were just pulling the wool over our eyes. For those who feared the worst — for the general, the judge — AK provided ample evidence of fickleness from the start. There were the silly things. There was that impromptu prayer meeting in the lobby of the Hilton, local restrictions here and there on drinks licences for restaurants. Then the ill-fated move to lift a ban on Islamic headscarves for women in public buildings.

What has followed is a form of trench warfare, the battle lines being the constitutional strongholds of state.

When AK nominated Gul as president in 2007, the armed forces commander posted a warning on his website that secular democracy was in danger. Surrender of the presidency to an AK leader would remove one of the last checks to its power, allowing it to appoint senior judges and exert influence even over that holy of holies — the armed forces. Not only did AK publicly defy the General Staff, but the electorate had the audacity to back them with a landslide general election victory soon afterwards.

The months passed. There were mass demonstrations in Istanbul warning of a Sharia state. The battle continued in the courts, where AK narrowly evaded a ban on accusations of Islamist activity. A fine however was imposed, the sense of the accusation may have stuck.

The ‘Ergenekon’ coup plot scandal is seen by some as an attempt to discredit AK enemies and the army as power-hungry and anti-democratic. Hundreds, including senior retired officers, have been arrested over alleged plans for a campaign of demonstrations, bombings and assassinations that would clear the way for a military coup. AK holds up its hands, denying any involvement, and says the judicial process must take its independent course.

The courts, though, are arguably the second trenchline, following the military’s failure to bring AK to order. The outright military coups of the 20th century, no-one wants to contemplate, not least against a government with broad popular backing. Parliament, where AK faces only a weak and inept opposition, can play no real role; that is, for the moment.

So, what’s new?

A court’s ruling that Gul should face trial in a case dating back over a decade, involving millions of dollars in political funds, opens a new chapter in the book. Whether there is a case or not, the move will probably founder on Gul’s immunity. Supporters will see it as another attempt by the judiciary to persecute AK, sceptics will see a coverup.

The AK Party, Pure and Clear, came to power promising to sweep away the graft and corruption of the ancient regime. So endemic is corruption in public life, this was always going to be a tall order. If clouds of corruption gather over AK, real or illusory, the party’s and Erdogan’s authority could be seriously undermined.

AK must remain AK, to retain its raison d’etre.

The party’s support fell at recent local elections, but it remains hugely popular.

The Islamist accusations, the military warnings, the court cases, the demonstrations, any suggestion of corruption or instability, all whittle away at this emergency coalition. They test its unity, holding it in check until, as the script might run, it can be prized apart or it disintegrates of its own accord. New parties could form, as nervous middle classes desert, or the old parties, now languishing in disregard, could re-emerge. Parliament might become again a true political battlefield.

For those who would wish away AK, though, whether by attrition or by some cataclysmic events, one poignant question arises in a country still strewn with the political ruins left by the hurricane of 2002: “If not AK, then who? If not Erdogan then who?"

Source: Reuters