Part LXXIII
Safe and Secular
It started with a victory.
The 2002 Turkish elections represented a change, a departure from the political and economic chaos of the 90’s, and the martial law of the 80’s. A new era for the country. This change came off the back of cascading failures, with the end of complete military rule in 1987, an uneasy period set in, as succeeding governments failed to gain a real guiding hand over the nation.
The military threatened to step in again in 1997, prompting a change of government, and though the government of men like Mesut Yilmaz and Bulent Ecevit promised top-down structural financial reforms with the eventual goal of entering the European Union, those hopes were sullied after banking scandals and a horrific earthquake that killed ten’s of thousands and as the government was faulted for its failures to adequately respond, its popularity collapsed.
This was only rendered more disastrous by the economic crash that occurred in February 2001, which shredded any remaining goodwill the governing parties had, spawned spontaneous protests, and led to the embarrassing moment when an angered tradesman threw a cash register at the Prime Minister in frustration. Though the government was able to finally hammer through some economic reforms, it was too little, too late. A snap election was called, and a new day dawned.
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(Left to right) Aftermath of the major earthquakes, AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and AKP supporters celebrate
The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which painted itself as a big-tent moderate Islamic party was swept into power, helmed by its charismatic and fresh-faced champion. The former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He had wooed the country with his campaign, highlighting his poor background and strong reputation for ‘cleaning up’ and modernizing the ancient city, but perhaps most importantly his anti-corruption critiques of the government stood tall when compared to the other parties all soaked in past scandals.
By the time the votes had been counted, though his party had won a third of the electorate, and captured a majority of the seats, as only the AKP, the old guard Kemalists (CHP) who had returned to parliament and the True Path Party the only surviving party to keep seats after the election, who narrowly surpassed the 10% threshold.
Erdogan’s victory prompted ecstasy from supporters and tremendous anxiety from detractors, who feared that his roots as a pro-Islamic activist who had briefly spent time in prison for reciting a religious poem, tightened restrictions on alcohol, refused to shave his mustache and whose wife was covered. The parties’ unsubtle religious connections deeply threatened the secular writ of Turkey, which had been embedded in the nation since the father of the nation Ataturk, and many segments of Turkish society, especially the nation's paternalistic military.
Erdogan for his part sought to soften his image, disavowing his former hardline views, and pledged to steer the country closer to the West through the European Union and the United States, while keeping his wife away from public events and ceremonies. In turn, the military softened and adopted a
“wait and see” approach allowing the AKP to go on, knowing themselves that too open an intrusion into politics would harm the country's international reputation.
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(top to bottom) PM Erdogan, 2002 Turkish election wiki box, Turkish military guard Ataturk's tomb
Erdogan seemed to live up to his pledges, with almost a free legislative hand, the government cut regulations, accepted IMF and American loans, and opened the country to foreign investment. Labor laws were strengthened, which created a 45-hour work week, stabilized the consumer base, and fuelled an economic boom, alongside efforts to ramp up education spending including a widely praised scheme to dilute disparities between male and female education rates.
His leadership was globally championed, a pragmatist who was earnestly backing his country's quest for democratization.
“Our most urgent issue is the EU, and I will send my colleagues to Europe...We have no time to lose.” Those were his initial words, and he had stuck by them, enforcing human rights commitments and step by step, adjusting the country into compliance with the 80,000 pages of rules before entry could be considered. But those prospects were improving little by little every day.
“He put Turkey joining the EU as the No. 1 priority on his agenda. The government has done a lot of economic and social reforms, and foreign direct investment shows this.” said the director of Akbank one the Turkey's largest banks.
Erdogan pursued friendly relations with Europe’s leaders, playing football with German chancellor Stoiber and shmoozing with the tight-knit eurocrats, while continuing to back Western military endeavors, granting the ongoing usage of Turkish bases for the implementation of the Iraqi no-fly zones, backed the anti-terror campaign in Afghanistan and the numerous security resolutions over Darfur, Lebanon, and Iraq. Occasionally over the heads of his more hardline Islamist supporters, disappointed that their leader wasn’t living up to his responsibilities to God,
“We are Muslims first!” said religious protesters flanked by police, as they chanted near the parliament in Ankara, amid the Iraqi disarmament crisis,
“We don’t want to be America’s stooge, where has our Erdogan gone?”
Despite the widespread approval of his government (His polling regularly peaked in the 70s), especially after the implementation of a more expansive health system, Erdogan continued to suffer from a slighted opposition, both on the opposition benches and more importantly the military. His efforts to reduce the general's oversight over politics, the creation of a civilian-led National Security Council, and the enforcement of tighter budget controls, led to allegations that he had a ‘secret agenda’ to neuter the military before the passing of more radical policies. These claims were evidenced by so-called ‘secret speeches’ by Erdogan's ally, Abdullah Gül that revealed his and the PM's continued support for stricter ‘morality laws’, to criminalize adultery, abortion, alcohol, and smoking. Allegations that Erdogan swiftly threw cold water on.
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(Left to right) Erdogan meets with Swedish PM Lindh, Gül at NATO meeting, Anti-US Protesters, Ergogan in Germany
The strongest standard bearer for secularism was the President of the nation, Ahmet Sezer, who wasn’t afraid to noisily trumpet what he saw as the encroaching threat of Erdogan and the AKP, always extremely happy to threaten a Presidential veto on plenty of pieces of legislation including a reduction of the defense budget or the stripping the militaries tribunal powers who frequently excluded AKP politicians from events over
“over religious sentiments” and backed claims that the party should be banned for violations of secular laws.
Erdogan’s biggest political conundrum resolved around resolving the country's intractable conflict with the Kurds, controversially through a peace agreement with the most prominent and powerful rebel group the PKK.
Following large conflicts in the late 90s that left the group severely bruised and the capture of its leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, the militant group was on the back foot and declared a unilateral cease-fire with the Turkish government, largely withdrawing from southern Turkey and into the autonomous mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, declaring an end to the near quarter-century insurgency and pledging to adopt peaceful methods to achieve the objective of greater Kurdish autonomy.
These overtures were largely viewed with suspicion by the Turkish government which accused the group of still plotting smaller-scale operations and continued to carry out periodic raids and missions into Iraqi-Kurdistan against the PKK and other more active groups who attracted more radical and fundamentalist elements.
Erdogan’s victory initially meant small but meaningful changes to the Kurdish policy. Given that his government was less willing to enforce strict religious restrictions, the government softened its stance on the use of the Kurdish languages, leaving many within the PKK hierarchy to split over whether the group should or should not recommit to the armed struggle. This split included senior leaders and following tense debate and discussion in 2003, following a group congress, the PKK decided to ‘unilaterally disarm’ a decision that was made thanks to the beginning of secret negotiations through the imprisoned Ocalan and his brother, to the frustration of both Kurdish hardliners like Bahoz Erdal who left to the PKK to continue the armed struggle and hardline Turkish nationalists in the Nationalist Movement Party, like its leader Devlet Bahçeli who accused Erdogan of treason for his dealings
“these are criminals responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Turkish people, we cannot treat with them”.
One reason for the PKK’s decline was a simple lack of military resources, traditional allies like Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and eventually black market dealers in Russia and Belarus turned their backs on the group. And though they operated from Iraqi-Kurdistan they were still under constant pressure from Turkish, Iraqi-Kurds, and Saddam’s government, leaving them with few resources for an organized struggle inside Turkey and unlike jihadist terror groups who flourished could not promise glorious bloody martyrdom to their followers, left mainly with its sway over Kurdish public opinion through banned tv stations and shuttered newspapers.
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(Left to right) PKK supporters carrying a poster of Ocalan, Erdogan speaks, nationalist leader Bahçeli
Erdogan continued to soften his stance in 2004, following a handover of weapons caches by the militants, and came public with the negotiations in 2005, when he announced to a Kurdish audience that his government would be the first to
“confront the Kurdish problem with new fresh eyes”. Statements that again infuriated the country's nationalists and made the military grin through gritted teeth, especially as some of the radical sects like Kurdish Hezbollah and the Kurdish Freedom Hawks, began a string of attacks against both the PKK and Turkish forces adopting similar tactics to those of other terror groups like the Al-Jihad in Egypt or Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq through a mix of sporadic bombings and assassinations, notably storming a courthouse in the capital Ankara, attacks which both the government and PKK claimed were supposed to derail peace talks, (and some alleged were facilitated in part by the Turkish military).
Nothing was greater evidence of the growing schism between the AKP and the military than Erdogan’s relationship with the Gülen movement an Islamist clique helmed by exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen. Secularists viewed it as the tip of the spear for the Islamist movement and characterized it as a shadowy group, bent on overthrowing the established order, connecting it to political violence and murder to achieve its aims, and it was now in a transparent collaboration with Erdogan’s government to smear his opponents and support his agenda. These claims were routinely denied, but most journalists traced a pattern
“The government faces regular threats from the General Staff, is constantly threatened by the judiciary, it’s not hard to see that members of [The Güllen movement] feel empowered to enter civil society, the police force, schools, public office, and the opposition sees this as the feared infiltration … the black hand” Said a German journalist in Der Spiegel.
By 2007, the country again faced elections for every branch of government, it was widely assumed that despite old-guard grievances Erdogan would keep his seat and potentially expand his majority in the parliament whereas the opposition would attempt to drag the PM down for his Islamism and Kurdish policy.
But the election quickly centered around a constitutional crisis, when the parliament needed to elect a new President, The country was obviously divided but so was the AKP, whose more ardent Islamists had become privately frustrated at the lack of greater progress on that front, and wanted an ideologically inclined President or even Erdogan himself to take the mantle as opposed to more moderate figures like defense minister Vecdi Gönül, whose wife was not covered and was seen as much more acceptable to the military.
A greater political conflict became inevitable after it was clear that though Erdogan would not nominate himself, a close confidant Abdullah Gül, would be the AKP’s candidate. Erdogan unveiled him in a ceremony calling him a ‘dear brother’ but while Erdogan was confident, Gül and other allies were nervous. The opposition parties were bullish, the President was supposed to be elected by parliament and they protested that such a decision should not be so overtly partisan, furious that they had not been consulted on Gül’s selection, implying that Erdogan was hoping that once the election threshold dropped Gül would be rammed through via a simple majority.
The decision was cheered by the country's new class of ‘Religious modernizers’
“This is a new force, a new power, devout men who don’t drink, gamble or take holidays, they have done more for this country than any secular party” said Ali Bulac a newspaper commentator.
But the secularists rallied, and a renewed, invigorated opposition campaign began against an
“Imam President”, with mass demonstrations, the largest in Turkish history staged at Ataturk mausoleum. The subtleties of the campaign were lost on no one, and opposition television stations blared all of Erdogan and Güls most flagrant statements. And pinned images of their covered wives to the front pages.
Erdogan himself began to recognize the threat he now faced, as the economy began to tumble in the wake of the parliamentary gridlock,
“Unity, togetherness, solidarity, these are the things we need most. We can overcome many problems so long as we treat each other with love” he said in a public broadcast that fell on deaf ears.
And the protests gained support from the outgoing-President Sezer and more ominously the Chief of the General Staff, Yasar Büyükanıt who each urged that the new President needed to
“defend Turkey’s secular values” in statements deemed a swipe at Gül and Erdogan by proxy. Subsequently in their most publicly provocative intervention in domestic politics since Erdogan came to power, a memorandum was issued on the Armed Forces official website where it ominously insisted that.
"The problem that emerged in the presidential election process is focused on arguments over secularism. Turkish Armed Forces are concerned about the recent situation. ... the Turkish Armed Forces are a party in those arguments and absolute defender of secularism”.
These statements were an unmistakable intrusion into the electoral process by the military dubbed the
E-Coup, which successfully pushed the opposition parties to hold firm in their decisions to pull out of voting and deny the election a legal quorum
. “Where is the process?” said opposition True Path Party leader Mehmet Ağar
“They came to us with one candidate, this is, and must be, an open process!”. In turn, following failed litigation the government was forced to call for an early election.
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(Left to right) AKP Poster Torn, Secularists rally, General Büyükanıt an d President Sezer
It was a gamble, though his government was popular, Erdogan and his party were hoping for a strong enough victory, to force the opposition parties and crucially the military to stand down.
The AKP was organized and had built a strong collation of poor and rural voters who were outraged by the General Staff intervention which concocted memories of military rule, while the opposition remained divided between the Kemalists, Liberals and neo-nationalists but so were they energized by the prospect of encroaching Islamism, peace deals with Kurds and efforts to attempts to reign in the military, with some parties able to form electoral alliances to deny the AKP a majority at any cost.
"This is an election between those who want more democracy and those who want less," says Egemen Bagis, an adviser to the prime minister who put it as his party simply saw it. As opposed to men like Ali Carkoglu an opposition campaigner who said men like him
“feared a coming nightmare scenario, a second Iranian revolution, we may wake up in Saudi Arabia in a few years just look at what’s happening in Iraq?”.
Erdogan and the AKP maintained their lead, but the actual results unveiled another kind of nightmare scenario. Though his party had won the most votes, (twice that of its nearest opponent) with a whopping 42%, three other parties all emerged from the election with a decent share of the electorate to enter the national assembly and denying the AKP its complete majority by only a few seats.
The gambit had failed,
“He’s lost his leverage, the future is uncertain” read the Guardian article ‘Could Europe’s favorite Turk be done for?’. Without a majority, the task of forming a government still rested entirely on Erdogan’s shoulders as, despite their electoral opposition, a coalition between the parties was nigh unworkable and all agreed that a minority AKP government could form as long as according to the Kemalist leader Baykal
“someone who does not offend the secular republic” was selected as President. A sentiment shared again by the nation’s military chief General Yasar Buyukanit who said that the results
“emphasized the nation's sensitivity to secularism … all parties should be considered in the election.”, a pronouncement that was swimming with self-assured vindication.
Factions of the AKP were dismayed and angered, robbed of the Presidency by an arcane system, this time
they could lodge
their protests. Speaker of the Parliament Koksal Toptan suggested that the party could withdraw its own deputies and deadlock the proceedings, party members advocated for an immediate popular referendum to introduce direct elections to the Presidency or strip it of all its remaining power.
Thankfully the situation finally diffused when Erdogan following consultation with Gül and under the watchful eye of the military committed that his party would vote in the coming election, while he continued to deride the
“anti-democratic system we found ourselves bound to”.
The opposition found its ‘consensus’ candidate, Tülay Tuğcu the first female President of the Constitutional Court, who pledged to uphold all the basic rights and freedoms of Turks and recited a predictable speech about protecting the traditions of Ataturk, including secular tolerance. It was seen as a cynical move, by the opposition to change the news cycle, that nominating the nation's first female President would dampen the perception globally that a ‘constitutional coup’ had more or less taken place. The military in league with the old guard and nationalists successfully conspired to blockade a domestic and internationally popular President.
“The community that supports Erdogan, that voted for Erdogan have been betrayed,” said Nihat Zeybekci, mayor of the western city of Denizli
“We are the majority, while those in Ankara were afraid their power would be shaken, well perhaps they should be afraid.”
When the voting came down, rather than fall in line, the Justice and Development Party one by one, made their disrespect known through the vote, backing Erdogan for the Presidency on the first and second ballot, before walking out of the proceedings with the utmost disrespect possible. And steeled themselves for the battles to come.
Special thanks to
@SultanArda for some vital assistance in this chapter
