Issue No. 595
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18 - 24 July 2002 Issue No. 595 Region |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Early elections for Turkey
Turkey's prime minister finally bowed to the inevitable and agreed to call early elections after his tripartite coalition government lost its majority in parliament. Gareth Jenkins reports from Ankara
The news that Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit will call early elections on 3 November, 18 months ahead of schedule, was greeted with relief by Turkey's financial markets, which rose by over five per cent on Wednesday morning on the hope that the setting of a clear date for fresh polls would put an end to over two months of political uncertainty.
The Turkish government had been virtually paralysed since the beginning of May when the 77-year-old Ecevit was hospitalised after suffering a reaction to medication for Parkinson's disease. A string of other ailments followed, forcing Ecevit to spend most of the last 10 weeks resting and recovering at home.
Despite being clearly incapable of fulfilling his duties, Ecevit refused to step down. On 8 July, Ecevit dismissed Deputy Prime Minister Husamettin Ozkan, his right-hand man for over a decade, for failing to criticise public calls for him to resign on the grounds of ill health. It turned out to be a fatal error. Over the next 10 days, 60 of the 128 MPs in Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DLP) resigned, including seven ministers, steadily eroding what had once been a comfortable government majority. By Wednesday, the coalition had a total of just 274 seats in the 550- member unicameral parliament.
On Tuesday, Ecevit called a meeting with the leaders of the other parties in the coalition, Devlet Bahceli of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Action Party (NAP) and Mesut Yilmaz of the centre- right Motherland Party (MP). Government officials present at the meeting said that initially Ecevit tried to persuade Bahceli and Yilmaz that the coalition could continue through to 2004, that the opposition in parliament was divided and would never be unable to unite and force the government to resign. But Bahceli and Yilmaz were unmoved. Finally Ecevit agreed to recall parliament and hold elections on 3 November.
Both Bahceli and Yilmaz are taking a huge political gamble. The government's public approval rating has hovered at seven to eight per cent for over 18 months. Opinion polls currently suggest that none of the parties in the coalition is likely to exceed the 10 per cent of the national vote required for representation in parliament, while the Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP), which targets the same conservative constituency as the NAP, is forecast to win over 20 per cent of the total vote, which would almost certainly make it the largest party in the new parliament.
Last Thursday, a new rival appeared for the MP, which has traditionally targeted the urban middle classes, when former Foreign Minister Ismail Cem, who had resigned from the DLP in the wake of Ozkan's dismissal, announced that he was forming a new centrist party, including both Ozkan and Economics Minister Kemal Dervis.
While there are doubts as to whether the new party would be able to attract enough grassroots support to enable it to form a government, it is likely both to make major inroads into the MP's already faltering voter base and effectively put an end to Ecevit's political career.
However, despite his age and poor health Ecevit remained determined to battle on.
"Of course, I'll lead the party to elections. Who else is there who could do it?" he asked.
In an indication of the detachment from reality, and even paranoia, which now prevails in Ecevit's inner circle, one of the first statements by Sukru Sina Gurel, who replaced Cem as foreign minister, was to dismiss calls for Ecevit to step down as "part of a foreign conspiracy".
In fact, for Turkey's Western allies the political chaos in the country could not have come at a worse time. On Tuesday a high-level US delegation led by Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz arrived in Ankara to try to persuade Turkey to support Washington's plans for another military campaign to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Privately, official sources in Ankara say that Washington has been pushing Turkey not only to allow the US to use bases in the country but also to deploy Turkish troops, moving in to temporarily occupy the north of Iraq behind an advancing front-line of American soldiers.
But if, as expected, the US launches an attack on Iraq in early 2003, the preparations will be taking place while Turkey is in the midst of an election campaign and the operation itself will almost certainly be launched under a new government. There is even uncertainty in Turkey's powerful military. At the end of August the current Turkish Chief of Staff General Huseyin Kivrikoglu is due to retire after completing his four year term and be replaced by the, as yet untested, army commander General Hilmi Ozkok.
The staunchly secularist Turkish military has already made it clear that it will never allow the JDP to take power and remain in government. But that is exactly what opinion polls currently suggest is likely to be the outcome of the 3 November elections.
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