Turkish Daily News
December 30, 2006 Saturday
2006 A YEAR SPENT IN ‘WHAT’S UP NEXT YEAR’ DISCUSSION
Even during the closing days of 2006, everyone was constantly
preoccupied with debate and controversy over the twin elections to be
held in 2007. Nothing could stand alone to be discussed, somehow a
correlation was established between each and every development and
the upcoming presidential elections in April or the parliamentary
elections currently scheduled for Nov. 4.
The debate was so intense and destructive that fearing a possible
political backlash, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)
government could not adequately celebrate the first-ever Nobel Prize
in Literature win by a Turk, writer Orhan Pamuk, amid claims that the
award was given to him not because of his literary success but rather
for a controversial remark he made regarding the Armenian genocide
allegations.
The tension between the AKP government and the secularist opposition
— including not only political opponents but also the
military-civilian conservative establishment — dominated the entire
year.
A decision by the Council of State’s Second Department stressing that
a teacher wearing the Islamist-style headscarf to and from school
could not be the director of a state-owned kindergarten stirred up
the secularism debate. An attack on the same department of the
Council of State by an Islamist-nationalist lawyer Alparslan Arslan
— a member of the Istanbul bar — resulted in the death of Judge
Mustafa Birden, while three members of the court were seriously
wounded. Arslan was subsequently captured by the police. The event
sparked a major confrontation between the AKP government and the
secular judiciary.
The funeral for slain judge Birden became an anti-Islamist
demonstration by secularists. Together with the top brass of the
military and the judicial bureaucracy, former Prime Minister Bulent
Ecevit attended the funeral. That night Ecevit suffered a stroke and
was hospitalized. Five months later the veteran politician died. His
funeral too was marked by a massive anti-Islamist demonstration, with
tens of thousands of people chanting "Turkey is secular and will stay
so… Its presidency is secular and will stay so."
Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, whose appointment as top commander was
announced a day before the National Security Council (MGK) convened,
contrary to custom — after months of speculation that the government
was trying to avoid him succeeding outgoing Gen. Hilmi Ozkok — was a
development that also reflected the delicate secularist-AKP divide in
the country. Buyukanit and the entire new chain of command, together
with thousands of senior and junior commanders and military cadets,
participated in the entire funeral procession of Ecevit, except the
section at Parliament where Parliamentary Speaker Bulent Arinc had
not wanted a military ceremony.
The Buyukanit sensitivity was partly fallout from an indictment
prepared by Van regional prosecutor Ferhat Sarikaya on the November
2005 blast at southeastern border down of Semdinli. In the
indictment, the prosecutor had implicated the top general, who was
Land Forces commander at the time, in "gang activity." Eventually the
prosecutor was disbarred from the profession and the charges against
Buyukanit were all dropped. However, the development was considered
by many as an effort by the ruling AKP to discredit Buyukanit and
prevent him from becoming chief of General Staff.
Indeed, the renewed secularism debate was a result of a speech made
by Buyukanit immediately after he took up his role heading the
General Staff, in which he warned of a rising threat against the
secular principles of the republic.
The same day of Ecevit’s funeral and its associated massive show in
support of secularism, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdog?an, already
upset with pressures from the conservative and hard-core secularist
power centers of Turkey to agree to a "consensus candidate" for the
presidency, was not only getting his presidency endorsed by the
delegates of the AKP convention but at the same time tacitly
demonstrating to the grassroots of his party that he has chosen
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as his successor as head of the party.
However, Erdog?an stirred up even a bigger controversy when he
branded people at the funeral chanting "Turkey is secular" as being
like "fans at a soccer match."
The huge turnout at Ecevit’s funeral and the reported political will
of the former nationalist-left leader for the establishment of a
"unity of forces loyal to founding principles of the republic" to
form a strong political alternative to the AKP gave way to futile
efforts to forge a new left-right political alliance.
The drive by Bulent Ecevit’s wife, Rahsan Ecevit, which started with
a call on Ecevit’s arch political foe Suleyman Demirel, eventually
died out when the main-opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP)
insisted that any unity must be achieved under its roof.
Efforts to forge unity in the center-right picked up momentum after
the corruption charges against former Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz
were deferred — under the terms of the partial amnesty that was
legislated by the previous three-way Ecevit government in which
Yilmaz was a deputy premier — but also failed to produce any
tangible results.
Even Turkey’s European Union accession bid, the fight against
separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorism and the prime
minister fainting in his car were all exploited throughout the year
as tools to force the AKP to relinquish its right — as the majority
party in Parliament — on nominating and electing the next president.
Though with his ambiguous "Rather than fighting on the mountain, they
(the PKK) should come down and engage in politics" statement True
Path Party (DYP) leader Mehmet Ag?ar helped his party gain some
popularity, at the end of the year public opinion polls mostly
indicated that the AKP remained the dominant party in the country
with public support of around 26-34 percent, while only three other
parties, the CHP, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the DYP
may have a chance of winning over 10 percent of the vote — the
threshold for parliamentary representation — at the next election