Nationalism casts shadow over Turkey’s poll battle
Today’s crucial election is pitting the secular against the
Islamic. But growing ethnic tensions and violence are emerging that
could prove to be the decisive factor
Nicholas Birch in Istanbul
Sunday July 22, 2007
The Observer
Standing in front of a crowd in the north-eastern Turkish city of
Erzurum, Devlet Bahceli waved a length of greased rope. ‘If you can’t
find any,’ he yelled, addressing the Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan,
‘you can hang him with this.’
The man he wanted hanged was Abdullah Ocalan, captured in 1999 after
the Kurdish separatist war he started had killed an estimated 35,000
people. Turkey sentenced him to death, but under pressure from the EU
commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Turkey today holds perhaps the most important parliamentary elections
in its history. The poll was called four months early after the
political deadlock over a suitable presidential candidate that
paralysed the country in May.
The governing AKP has based its campaign on its economic record. The
opposition parties have focused on accusing the Islamic-rooted party
of threatening Turkey’s secular system.
But it is the reigniting of the Kurdish conflict, which has killed
more than 70 soldiers this summer, that has become the unexpected big
issue for voters in today’s elections, bolstering nationalist
candidates such as Bahceli.
Head of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) that is likely to win at
least 80 seats in parliament today, his supporters are descendents of
the semi-fascistic ‘Grey Wolves’ of the bloody civil conflict of the
1970s. MHPhas mellowed with age. The same cannot be said of the
Republican People’s Party, or CHP,set up by the founder of the Turkish
Republic, Kemal Ataturk, and torch-bearer of his secularist legacy. In
the 1990s, at the height of the Kurdish war, CHP wrote one of the most
liberal reports on Turkey’s gangrenous Kurdish issue.Now, it has slid
into overt nationalism, and leads the growing band of Turks opposed to
EU membership.
‘We’re a social democratic party,’ said CHP spokesman Onur Oymen. He
insists that nationalism in Turkey has none of its European
connotations of racism. ‘It simply means defence of national
interests,’ he said.
It is a curious way of describing the comments of another CHP deputy,
Bayram Meral, during recent debates on a law to enable non-Muslim
Turks to reclaim properties confiscated by the state. ‘What’s this law
about? It’s about giving "Agop" his property back,’ Meral railed,
using a common Armenian name. ‘Congratulations to the government! You
ignore the villagers, the workers and the farmers to worry yourself
with Agop’s business.’
CHP opposed the law, as it has opposed countless efforts by Turkey’s
government to reform a system where the rights of individuals limp in
a distant second behind laws protecting the state.
Much of the blame for the secularists’ slide into authoritarianism
lies with Europe, whose growing Islamophobia and bungling over Cyprus
has convinced many Turks that their three-year-old accession bid is
going nowhere.
‘I fought all my life for Turkey’s EU bid,’ says Onur Oymen, a former
ambassador to Germany. ‘Now some European friends are saying we can
only ever expect secondary status. We cannot accept that.’
There is much talk of European hypocrisy. but the roots of CHP’s
malaise are much older. Most left-wing parties are born out of
opposition, but CHP began its life as the state, and it retains the
authoritarian mindset of the early years of the republic. It
increasingly suggests that time can be turned back to the party’s
1920s heyday, when Ataturk cut all ties with the Ottoman past and
replaced them with imported ‘contemporary civilisation’.
Onur Oymen is a case in point. ‘Is Erdogan capable of doing what
Ataturk did?’ he angrily replied to a governing party deputy who had
the temerity to suggest his party was modern.
There was the same sense of time warp at the huge secularist marches
in April and May, pointed out by Segolene Royal, unsuccessful
candidate in France’s recent presidential elections, as evidence that
Turkey should join the EU. In fact, the ubiquity of pictures of
Ataturk, and the rhetoric, created an atmosphere redolent of the
1920s.
‘We won the Liberation War despite the fanatics and we won’t lose
now,’ ran one poster, referring to the war leading to Turkey’s
foundation in 1923. Others had badges reading simply: ‘Ataturk will
win the war.’
‘We are today’s mad Turks,’ schoolteacher Hasan Devecioglu said,
referring to a popular novel about the liberation struggle published
in 2005. Turgut Ozakman’s Those Mad Turks tells of how, while the
Sultan and his government collaborated with Great Power plans to carve
up Turkey, Ataturk’s Turkish nationalists fought from the depths of
Anatolia. For today’s secularists, it is the pro-Western, pro-market
government that is collaborating in foreigners’ efforts to divide the
country.
It all leaves Turks without a viable civilian alternative to
AKP. Without the reforms AKP has pushed through, Turkey would not have
its place on the ladder to Europe. Since then, it has lost its
way. Doubts are growing as to whether it has any vision beyond the
criteria defining whether a country is eligible to join the EU.
Erdogan appears increasingly irascible, and today’s election is
unlikely to open the way to change. Polls show the government well
ahead and CHP second, similar to the 2002 results that polarised the
secular and the religious-minded. Noose-waving Bahceli is set for
parliament, and a possible coalition with secularists.
It reminds Murat Belge, a prominent left-wing intellectual, of Weimar
Germany. ‘With its constitution and its government, Weimar represented
the high-tide mark of German democracy,’ he wrote in the liberal daily
Radikal on Friday. ‘Within ten years … Hitler was installed as
Chancellor.’
The comparison seems unduly pessimistic, but it should ring a warning
to Europe, whose ambivalence to Turkey has undermined the reform
process.
Turkish election: Q & A
Why the early poll?
Today’s voting was brought forward after a deadlock in the political
system in May when the governing AKP’s (Justice and Development Party)
attempt to elect a new President was blocked by judges. The choice –
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul – brought millions of secular Turks out
in protest and infuriated opposition parties. Gul, whose wife wears
the headscarf, was seen as too close to the religious Prime Minister,
Recip Tayyip Erdogan.
What is at stake?
Opposition parties say this is a referendum on a secular or an Islamic
state, and that a second term for the AKP threatens the heritage of
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of secular Turkey.
The Islamic-rooted AKP says it is a vote for democracy or for
authoritarianism. It says five years of annual economic growth and a
seriesof radical reforms will be ruined by disunited opposition
groups.
But Turkey is not a truly secular state. Religion is not divided from
the government. Since the 1980 military coup, schoolchildren attend
obligatory religious classes.
What have been the issues?
AKP swept to power in 2002 thanks to its promise to reform and pull
Turkey into Europe. AKP delivered both economic growth and a start to
EU negotiations.
But the mood today is different. Nobody talks about the EU any
more. People are more concerned about unemployment (now high at 10 per
cent), the collapse of agriculture and on whether to invade northern
Iraq to suppress any violent Kurdish bid for independence. The
conviction that Washington supports Iraqi Kurdish goals means
anti-Americanism is sky-high, strengthening authoritarian secularist
and nationalist calls to break with the West.
The tax system is also in chaos – Turkey’s unregistered economy is though to
be worth almost 50 per cent of GDP.
Who are the key players?
The AKP has mass support among the religious and conservative
population, but says that rather than Islamist it is pluralist –
defending the rights of religious Muslims against constitutional
restrictions. It backs EU entry, democratic reform and extending the
rights of the large Kurdish minority.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party is left-leaning and
firmly secular, sceptical of reforms promoted by the EU and of
extending Kurdish rights.
It promoted May’s mass rallies. The far-right, nationalist National
Action Party (MHP) is the only other party likely to overcome the 10
per cent threshold needed to enter parliament. It is hostile to the EU
and Kurds, and wants military intervention in northern Iraq to root
out bases of the separatist Kurdish PKK group.
What results are likely?
Most polls suggest AKP will pick up around 40 per cent of today’s
votes, 6 per cent more than in 2002. The chief opposition RPP party is
polling roughly 20 per cent, followed closely by the right-wing
nationalists of the National Action Party. The new parliament is also
likely to contain at least 20 Kurdish deputies.
So with three parties competing this time, AKP is likely to lose seats
despite extra votes. It will almost certainly fall short of the
two-thirds quorum needed to elect a President and make constitutional
changes.
http://observer.guardian.c o.uk/world/story/0,,2131972,00.html