Issue No. 594
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11 - 17 July 2002 Issue No. 594 Region |
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Autumn of the patriarch?
Turkey's increasingly fragile coalition government was rocked by a series of resignations last week as Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit stubbornly rejected calls that he step aside. Gareth Jenkins reports from Ankara
On Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Husamettin Ozkan, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's right-hand man for over a decade, tendered his resignation after Ecevit accused him of failing to refute the growing chorus of calls for him to step down. Within 24 hours of Ozkan's departure another four ministers and 22 MPs from Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DLP) also resigned. As a result, the DLP's representation in Turkey's 550 seat unicameral parliament fell from 128 to 101, slashing the tripartite coalition government's majority from 118 to 64. With more resignations expected over the following days, the coalition was living on borrowed time and early elections appeared inevitable.
At 77-years-old, Ecevit has long been in poor health. On 4 May, he was briefly hospitalised after suffering a reaction to medication he was taking for Parkinson's disease. Since then, his ailments have included intestinal problems, a vein infection, a cracked rib and a spinal injury. With the exception of visits to the hospital and brief public statements, Ecevit has spent the last two months resting at home. Ecevit's occasional public appearances have shown him to be physically very frail and mentally vague, encased in a steel corset to protect his brittle bones, unable to walk up steps and confusing names and simple facts.
The ultimate humiliation came last Friday when Sinan Aygun, the chairman of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, filed a petition with the courts requesting that the state appoint a legal guardian for Ecevit on the grounds that he was no longer physically or mentally able to conduct his duties as prime minister. "It upsets me to have to do this, but there isn't any choice," said Aygun.
Since Ecevit was first hospitalised in early May, Turkey's tripartite coalition government has been paralysed. The political reforms required by Turkey's application for EU membership, including allowing cultural plurality and relaxing the country's often Draconian restrictions on free speech, have ground to a halt. Prices on the Istanbul Stock Exchange have plummeted, while real interest rates have more than doubled to over 40 per cent, threatening to derail any hopes of a recovery for an economy which shrank by 9.4 per cent last year.
Yet Ecevit appears to have little understanding of the damage resulting from the vacuum in the government caused by his poor health. He is being cared for by his wife, the 79 year-old Rahsan Ecevit, who is also the deputy chairman of the DLP. Rahsan has not only barred nurses and doctors from visiting her husband but also taken the opportunity to tighten her grip over the party. She had long feared Ozkan, whom she saw as a rival and potential successor to her husband. With her husband confined to the family home, Rahsan was able both to end Ozkan's access to the prime minister and spread rumours that Ozkan was plotting to put together a new coalition with himself as prime minister.
On Sunday Rahsan Ecevit allowed a local TV station, CNN Turk, into her home for a rare interview with her husband in which he repeated that he had no intention of resigning.
"I really don't understand why some quarters are so insistent on me stepping down," said Bulent Ecevit. Astonishingly, he suggested that media calls for his resignation were engineered by "interest groups who stand to lose as the result of our successful handling of the economy".
But the prime minister also took the opportunity to take a swipe at his deputy, commenting that he and his wife had been disappointed that Ozkan had failed publicly to refute demands that Ecevit should step down. On the following day, Ozkan issued a terse written statement announcing that he was resigning from both his ministerial position and the DLP.
But Rahsan Ecevit's attempts to protect her husband now appear set to backfire. At the same time as Ecevit was appearing on television to denounce Ozkan, the second largest party in the coalition, the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Action Party (NAP), called for general elections to be held on 3 November this year -- 18 months ahead of schedule. No one, with the possible exception of Rahsan and Bulent Ecevit themselves, seriously believes that Ecevit can run for another term in office. In an opinion poll conducted by the daily Hurriyet, nearly 93 per cent of respondents said that Ecevit should resign immediately.
But even if Turkey can struggle through to November with what would effectively be a lame duck government, there is no indication that elections would provide much-needed political stability. Opinion polls indicate that if elections were held immediately, none of the coalition partners would be able to pass the 10- per-cent threshold required for representation in parliament and that elections would be won by the Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP).
The current chaos comes at a time when the country is entering one of the most critical periods in its recent history. In autumn this year, the Greek Cypriots are expected to be granted EU membership, a move which could strain Ankara's often testy relations with Brussels to the breaking point and effectively put an end to Turkey's own hopes of eventual accession. In late autumn the US is also expected to ask for Turkish support, perhaps even the deployment of Turkish troops, for a military campaign against Iraq in early 2003.
Privately, Turkey's powerful military is already warning that it cannot allow the country to enter such a critical period under a weak government. But it also fears that early elections would bring the Islamists to power.
"We could never allow the Islamists to come to power, stay there and try to erode secularism," said a source close to the military. "But neither can things go on as they are. We need a strong government under a strong prime minister. But we don't know who could form one."
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