Biting the bullet
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is forced to choose between a rock and hard place, writes Gareth Jenkins from Istanbul
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP), was finally officially appointed as Turkish prime minister last week, four months after the landslide election victory that brought the JDP to power. But even before his government had secured a parliamentary vote of confidence, Erdogan was already faced with a major political crisis that, if handled incorrectly, threatened not only to divide his party but could result in what had been unthinkable just weeks earlier -- the prospect of armed clashes between Turkish and US troops in northern Iraq.
Erdogan had been prohibited from running as a candidate in the November 2002 general election because of a 1998 conviction for allegedly inciting religious hatred. Although he led the JDP to a crushing victory, taking 363 seats in the 550-seat unicameral parliament, he was unable to head the new JDP government because Turkish law stated that the prime minister had to be a member of parliament. While the JDP passed a series of legal amendments to enable Erdogan to stand for election as soon as a seat became available, the new government was headed by Abdullah Gul, the JDP's deputy chairman.
On 9 March Erdogan successfully ran for parliament in a by-election in the southeastern town of Siirt. Two days later he was sworn in as an MP and Gul resigned to allow Erdogan to take over as prime minister. Last Friday, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer officially approved Erdogan's cabinet. On 11 March Erdogan outlined the new government's programme in parliament prior to seeking a vote of confidence on the following Sunday.
Given the JDP's huge parliamentary majority, the vote of confidence should be a mere formality. But it is a sign of how much has changed over the last four months, and how fragile the JDP has become, that Erdogan was afraid even to introduce new names into the cabinet for fear of triggering a split in the party, which was still reeling from the rebellion on 1 March when the government had failed to persuade parliament to pass a motion allowing US troops to enter northern Iraq via Turkey. Erdogan merely excluded two ministers who had challenged his authority by publicly opposing the deployment of US troops and was also forced to dismiss Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis in order to open up a suitably prestigious position for Gul. Erdogan retained the rest of Gul's cabinet although he was thought to have planned originally to appoint several of his own close associates to ministerial positions.
Despite the failure of the parliamentary motion to allow US troops onto Turkish soil, military planners in Washington were still anxious to open up a second front against Saddam Hussein in northern Iraq. At the beginning of last week Erdogan came under intense pressure from the Bush administration to submit a new motion to parliament. He received a telephone call from US Vice President Dick Cheney and a letter from President George Bush himself. But with 94 per cent of the Turkish public opposed to US plans for a military campaign against Iraq, Erdogan did not dare risk another parliamentary rebellion.
However, by Tuesday it looked as if Erdogan would have little choice. The Turkish military remained adamant that, once hostilities broke out, it would move troops across the border into northern Iraq to crush any hopes the Iraqi Kurds might have entertained of declaring a state. The Iraqi Kurds had already warned that they would resist what they described as Turkish plans to invade and occupy their territory.
Before 1 March the US had appeared ready to broker a compromise by promising the Iraqi Kurds that Turkish and US troops would enter and leave northern Iraq together. But, after the failure of the 1 March parliamentary motion, the US has been in no mood to do Turkey any favours. Last week the US began moving warships from the eastern Mediterranean -- from where they had planned to use Turkish airspace to launch missile attacks against Iraq -- into the Gulf. On Saturday US officials informed Ankara that the multi-billion dollar aid package it had originally offered Turkey in return for using Turkish territory as a springboard for an attack on Iraq was "no longer on the table". On Sunday US Secretary of State Colin Powell bluntly warned Ankara that if Turkey unilaterally deployed troops in northern Iraq they would be attacked by US forces.
On Monday, as Erdogan chaired his first cabinet meeting, the realisation that no financial aid would be coming from the US sent prices on the Istanbul Stock Exchange tumbling by over 10 per cent, while interest and foreign exchange rates soared. The Turkish General Staff, too, was becoming increasingly restless, unwilling to risk a military confrontation with the US or to remain on the sidelines if the Iraqi Kurds obtained a state in post- Saddam Iraq. Late on Monday evening, as George Bush prepared to give Saddam an ultimatum to leave Iraq within 48 hours, Erdogan, President Sezer and Chief of Staff General Hilmi Ozkok held a summit meeting at the presidential palace in Ankara. The government on Wednesday said it would ask parliament to grant the US military the right to use Turkish airspace to attack Iraq but would not immediately ask the legislature to vote to allow in American troops. Cabinet spokesman Cemil Cicek said a resolution allowing airspace rights would be voted in parliament today, Thursday, and that a separate motion allowing US troops could be considered at a later date.
Sources close to Erdogan privately insist that Turkey has no choice but to submit to US pressure. But there is no doubt that, even if Erdogan can force the motion through parliament, it is now too late to repair all the damage that has been done to US-Turkish relations. Any new motion would deal a severe blow to Erdogan's already failing domestic public popularity and could trigger the first split in the JDP.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 20 - 26 March 2003 (Issue No. 630)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/630/re6.htm