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. MHP
has 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 series
of 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.