15
July 2002
2. "Turkey's Future Political System as Viewed by an Outsider", Turkish politics reached the height of instability over the past week, apparently triggered by illness on the part of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit.
3. "Turkey's choice", it was Tsar Nicholas I of Russia who dubbed the Ottoman Empire "the sick man of Europe", just before going to war with Britain and France in the Crimea in 1854. They fought a pointless and bloody combat over the spoils and resolved almost nothing.
4. "HADEP: We are ready for the election", saying that "there is an awful competition", Bozlak stated that right now the situation was not clear but it would be clear soon. HADEP Chairman pointed out that those who resigned from DSP (Democratic Left Party) had a plan to take the power by gaining majority in the parliament and in order not to give this an opportunity MHP (Nationalistic Action Party, a fascist party) had brought early elections into the agenda. Bozlak believed that there would be an election at the end of October or November.
5. "Pressure on Iraq comes at bad time for Turkey", if and when the US launches an attack on Iraq, Saddam Hussein's neighbours in Turkey will have an uncomfortably close view.
6. "One Big Hizballah", Uri Avnery about the U.S. strike against Iraq, the Kurds and Israel. He is a free-lance journalist and an activist of the peace organisation "Gush Shalom".
1. - AFP - "As Ecevit clings on, not if, but when for early Turkish poll":
ANKARA / 14 July 2002 / by Florence Biedermann
As ailing Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit clings to power after
a mass high-level defection that plunged the country into chaos, the
question is not if but when early elections will be held. The five-time
prime minister, 77, has rejected persistent pressure for him to quit
and call early elections despite a direct challenge from his charismatic
former foreign minister Ismail Cem, who has announced the formation
of a rival political party.
But early elections are seen by many as the only way out of the country's crisis as it prepares for European Union membership. Political parties are already jockeying for position in the expectation that Ecevit will sooner or later sound the starting bell by resigning. Ecevit has said he opposed bringing elections forward from 2004 because it would cost Turkey valuable time at a time of deep economic crisis and a deadlock over key reforms required under Turkey's bid to join the EU.
But the premier, who has been off work due to illness for the past two months, may have no choice but to stand down if his shaky coalition loses its parliamentary majority. His Democratic Left Party (DSP), which lost another two members Saturday, is now the third largest party in parliament with 82 seats, and the embattled leader has admitted that he may consider quitting if the government no longer has a majority. The business community and the markets see early elections as preferable to the chaos which has gripped the country since Ecevit's health deteriorated in early May.
But the big question is: who would emerge the winner from early polls? Opinion polls are generally unreliable in Turkey as they tend to be run by interested parties. Polls currently put Islamists in the lead, benefitting from the disillusionment of a population which has been plunged into a serious economic crisis for the past year. Polls particularly favour the Islamist party of the former mayor of Istanbul, popular Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The possibility of the Islamists coming to power, however, is deeply unpopular with Turkey's secular establishment and the country's powerful army, which intervened in 1997 to drive Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan from power.
The pro-European modernists of Cem, who Friday announced the creation of a new eurocentric "renewal party," seems the most likely to get Turkey into the European Union and continue tough economic reforms decreed by the International Monetary Fund. But although he is backed by two other political heavyweights, Ecevit's former deputy Husamettin Ozkan, and Economy Minister Kemal Dervis, the party has not yet been formally set up, and may have little time to garner public support.
Polls put the three coalition parties losers in an early
election, and even out of parliament. However, Ecevit's coalition partners
hope they may win from his party's demise. MHP, far-right partner in
the coalition government, now has 127 of the 550 assembly seats, ahead
of the opposition centre-right True Path Party (DYP) of former premier
Tansu Ciller with 85. 
2. - Theran Times - "Turkey's Future Political System as Viewed by an Outsider":
15 July 2002
Turkish politics reached the height of instability over the past
week, apparently triggered by illness on the part of Prime Minister
Bulent Ecevit.
As of Saturday, seven ministers and 45 members of Parliament had deserted Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP) thus removing the party's majority in the Turkish Parliament. The embattled Turkey's prime minister was dealt another blow when leaders of Turkey's political parties called on him to step down.
On Turkish chaotic political scene, Tehran Times Political Desk solicited the views of Dr.
Assadollah Athari, a lecturer of International and Middle East Studies at Tehran University. The following is the text of the exclusive interview.
Q: Dr. Athari, what do you think is the reason Turkish ministers and members of Ecevit's cabinet are deserting him? Is it his illness or there are other problems? A: There seems to be three different factors that have driven political leaders to oppose Ecevit.
These are the economic crisis crippling Turkey, the Turkish application for membership to the European Union and EU demands that it improve its treatment of its Kurd minority in connection with allegations of human rights violations in the country. These factors have all together driven Turkish political leaders to use Ecevit's illness as a pretext to bring him down from office.
The Turkish economy is currently propped up by massive foreign debts and is facing rampant inflation in addition to other economic woes. On the other hand, problems such as its treatment of its Kurdish minority are delaying approval of its application for membership with the EU. These problems will continue to create instability in Turkey for as long as they are not solved as shown by Ankara's concerns on its territorial integrity as there is the possibility the Kurds could start a rebellion. These insecurities have led the Turkish government to consider hostile policies to crush the Kurds. This, in itself, is already a violation of human rights and will keep Turkey far from realizing its ambition of joining the EU.
Q: Dr. Athari, considering the fact that several Turkish political figureheads have resigned from Ecevit's cabinet to set up a new political bloc, do you believe the emerging new party will be able to end Ankara's internal conflicts? And, how do you view the new party's prospects? A: Turkey is currently going through a temporary stage in its political career. Instability that characterizes Turkish politics now could be regarded as something natural. In fact, this is not the first time that Turkey is facing instability. The Turkish government has gone through instability during different periods of its history.
Q: What is the reason for these different bouts of instability? A: It is because there is no dominant political power camp ruling the country. Turkey is still a very fledgling democracy and Turkish political intellectuals have not been able to set up a civic government in the country. And remember, the Turkish government has always been identified as a military government.
Q: But Ecevit is known to be the rock in Turkey's chaotic political scene and rose on the assurance that he can bring the Turkish political power camps together and set up a broad-based coalition.
A: Ecevit assured the Turkish people that he would lead a charismatic administration, that he would succeed in bringing the political power camps together. He may have been successful in his efforts, but the domestic economic crisis will not allow the situation for which he has been campaigning to prevail.
Q: How do you see the prospects of the new Turkish center-left political party? A: This new political party's prospects for success or failure will be determined in the elections. Also, the array of political figureheads will definitely have a considerable say.
Q: What should be done to pull Turkey out of instability? A: Turkey has no other option but to hold early elections to get out of the current crisis. There must be reforms in the country. Reforms and the way it addresses the allegations of human rights violations could solve Turkey's problems to some extent. The Turkish government is ready for reforms and it is future elections that will determine what kind of reforms will be implemented in Turkey. The array of power and the stances of Muslim and secular parties in the elections will also have a considerable influence in shaping the political future of the country.
Q: Turkish Minister of Economy Kemal Dervis-- a former World Bank official who engineered the $16 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan to Turkey, has been able to use IMF financial policies to improve the Turkish economic system.
The fall of the Ecevit government would, no doubt, make
all his efforts futile. What do you think? A: The economic crisis has
been a major factor in the deteriorating instability in Turkey. The
IMF loans were merely a passing relief for the ailing Turkish economy
while the IMF financial policies have clearly failed to improve the
over-all economic situation in the country. It seems that Turkey should
have used its internal resources and capabilities instead of having
relied on foreign and ultraregional powers. Ankara should have improved
cooperation with its neighbors, the countries in the region. If Turkey
and Iran can broaden their economic and trade ties they will definitely
be able to complement each other.
3. - Fincial Times - "Turkey's choice":
13 July 2002 / analysis & comment by Leyla Boulton
and Quentin Peel
It was Tsar Nicholas I of Russia who dubbed the Ottoman Empire "the
sick man of Europe", just before going to war with Britain and
France in the Crimea in 1854. They fought a pointless and bloody combat
over the spoils and resolved almost nothing.
Nearly 70 years later, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the secular Turkish republic on the ruins of that empire, determined to transform it into a prosperous modern power in its own right. That struggle has been continuing ever since.
The political crisis that came to a head in the past week with the resignation of seven government ministers from the ruling coalition may have confirmed the impression in the rest of the world that the republic is still very sick. The upheaval, precipitated by the illness of Bulent Ecevit, the country's 77-year-old prime minister, threatens to undermine the considerable achievements of an economic stabilisation package backed by the International Monetary Fund, just as its benefits were becoming apparent.
It could scarcely have come at a more difficult moment, both for Turkey and for its international allies. For a start, America is seeking Ankara's support for a military campaign against President Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That is not popular in Turkey - and a weak or divided government will be unable to provide much help.
As for the European Union, it is seeking Ankara's active participation in securing a settlement between the Greek and Turkish communities on the island of Cyprus. Without such a deal, Cyprus's membership of the EU could be called into question and the entire EU enlargement process - to embrace eastern and southern Europe - could be blocked.
Yet the crisis differs from many of the previous political squabbles that have left the country with a reputation for chronic instability. Behind the rivalry between ageing and often corrupt party leaders lies the very tension that Kemal Ataturk sought to resolve - between a defiant and defensive Turkey, suspicious of the western world, and a modern state seeking to be an equal partner with its European neighbours.
The current political struggle was brought to a head by divisions within the fractious three-party coalition over the implementation of human rights and economic reforms for Turkey, required to meet the conditions for future EU membership: to be a fully functioning market economy and a stable democracy.
As Ismail Cem, who quit as foreign minister on Thursday to found a new pro-EU political movement, said: "The government has lost the ability to govern because of infighting. Turkey has reached the point where it cannot make the decisions it needs to." Yet the failure is not simply one of government. It also illustrates the underlying tensions in Turkish society.
"As in lots of other countries, there are two poles in the Turkish political debate," says Andrew Mango, biographer of Kemal Ataturk and an expert on Turkish affairs. "There are those who are afraid of the outside world and those who are not. You still find many people around the country, even in the universities, entertaining old conspiracy theories, convinced that the outside world is ganging up to destroy Turkey . . . Then there are others who are not in the least afraid and want to play a full part."
The modernisers are convinced they can gain a clear majority - but only if they can join forces. Turkish membership of the EU regularly commands the support of at least two-thirds of Turks in opinion polls. But the rest are drawn to hardline nationalists who oppose EU membership and the reforms it will entail.
The latter are now in the ascendant in Mr Ecevit's three-party coalition, on both the right and the left. Sukru Sina Gurel, appointed foreign minister yesterday, is an outspoken national ist and Eurosceptic from the prime minister's party. He is thought likely to resist any settlement in Cyprus.
As for the far-right National Action party (MHP), now the biggest party in government, it is demanding early elections in November. It will be campaigning against EU-related reforms, such as abolition of the death penalty, and lifting the ban on Kurdish language teaching and broadcasting, on an openly nationalist, anti-EU platform.
A second group, straddling the divide between the nationalists and modernisers, is made up of Turkey's Islamists. They are far more moderate than most in the Middle East and are struggling to find a new political identity after the military high command - staunchly secular generals in the Ataturk tradition - banned their party and its leader Necmettin Erbakan in 1997.
Led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the popular former mayor of Istanbul, his renamed Justice and Development party is the only one that currently enjoys the 10 per cent of electoral support needed to enter parliament if early elections are called.
Mr Erdogan is currently trying to convince the generals and the middle classes that he is no longer an Islamist, and has pledged support for the EU human rights reforms. His traditional Islamist voter base could well be swollen by the victims of economic reforms that have caused popular hardship in the recent years of economic crisis.
The Islamists' clear overlap with the nationalist camp is illustrated by a recent opinion poll. This showed that fear of loss of religious values and of national identity were the two biggest disadvantages associated by the public with EU accession.
At the other end of the spectrum the pro-EU, pro-western camp is seriously divided. Motherland, led by Mesut Yilmaz, and True Path, led by Tansu Ciller, are the two traditional parties of the centre-right that have most energetically pursued EU membership. But they have also been compromised by opportunism and corruption.
The great hope of Turkish modernisers lies with Mr Cem and Kemal Dervis, the economy minister and architect of the economic stabilisation package. They have launched an as yet unnamed movement, dubbed the dream team by the mainstream media, but their greatest challenge is to sell their message to the masses.
Outside the business community and the educated middle classes, few Turks can see any tangible benefit from the painful IMF-backed economic reforms that have resulted in sharply increased unemployment, even as inflation has fallen. Nor do they see much has been gained from the timid human rights reforms passed by the government.
As one Istanbul business-woman observed: "The new formation is market-friendly, EU-friendly, Ankara-friendly and Istanbul-friendly - but whether it will seem friendly to the man on the street, we have yet to see."
Mr Dervis sees the new movement as "the first step towards the creation of a large movement that brings together the centre and the centre-left". But it is not even certain that the movement can get organised quickly enough to fight early elections if Mr Ecevit is forced to resign.
Yet if the modernisers in Turkey can join forces, and win a convincing mandate, they will present the EU member states with a real dilemma. For just as Turkey is divided over whether it really wants to join the union, so the leading countries of western Europe remain profoundly equivocal on the same question.
In Germany, not least, there are serious doubts about
ever embracing Turkey, which would immediately become the most populous
state in the EU. Edmund Stoiber, the conservative candidate for German
chancellor, is adamant that Turkey should be a friend, not a member.
The challenge for the European Union is not so much in treating the
sick man but in dealing with him if he should recover.
4. - Kurdish Observer - "HADEP: We are ready for the election":
Saying that "there is an awful competition", Bozlak stated that right now the situation was not clear but it would be clear soon. HADEP Chairman pointed out that those who resigned from DSP (Democratic Left Party) had a plan to take the power by gaining majority in the parliament and in order not to give this an opportunity MHP (Nationalistic Action Party, a fascist party) had brought early elections into the agenda. Bozlak believed that there would be an election at the end of October or November.
12 July 2002 / Munevver Cicek 
We held a meeting with Murat Bozlak, HADEP Chairman, about the latest
developments in Ankara.
Saying that “there is an awful competition”, Bozlak stated that right now the situation was not clear but it would be clear soon. HADEP Chairman pointed out that those who resigned from DSP (Democratic Left Party) had a plan to take the power by gaining majority in the parliament and in order not to give this an opportunity MHP (Nationalistic Action Party, a fascist party) had brought early elections into the agenda. Bozlak believed that there would be an election at the end of October or November.
Murat Bozlak said that the indefiniteness concerned everybody and observance was necessary. Emphasizing that it is a fact that the existing government could not solve the problems, Bozlak is of opinion that the government cannot accept the risk of an early election.
Bozlak continued with words to the effect: “A need to an early election has been said for a long time. But the three political parties in power which do not want to lose the advantageous of being in power could not take the risk of an early election.”
"An awful competition"
Drawing attention that now there was an awful competition between MHP and DSP, the Chairman added the following: “There is a traffic between those who have resigned from DSP and ANAP (True Path Party). Therefore what will occur tomorrow is not clear, right now the situation is cloudy. There are those who support the accession to European Union and those who do not. Those who support EU have a plan to gain the majority in the parliament and to come to power, but there is also MHP which has brought the early election into the agenda in order not to give opportunity to them.”
“We continue our efforts”
Bozlak stressed that they has been continuing their organizational
efforts, adding the following: “We are ready for the elections.
We continue our relations with democratic, progressive group which can
solve the problems in Turkey. I do think that debates will ended up
with an early election. I believe that there will an election at the
end of October or November.”
5. - Financial Times - "Pressure on Iraq comes at bad time for Turkey":
WASHINGTON / 14 July 2002 / by Alan Beattie
If and when the US launches an attack on Iraq, Saddam Hussein's
neighbours in Turkey will have an uncomfortably close view.
Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy defence secretary, on Sunday met the Turkish government in Ankara in order to, as one senior Pentagon official put it, "get Turkey's thoughts on Iraq". But with the Turkish government paralysed by a political crisis whose likely denouement is still unclear, this is not an ideal time for the long-standing diplomatic and military relationship between the US and Turkey to endure the severe test of launching a campaign to topple Mr Hussein.
Unless the crisis can be resolved swiftly, allowing Turkey to resume hauling itself slowly out of its economic mess, the US may be forced into some difficult and expensive decisions.
The meeting in Turkey was portrayed as a routine consultation with an ally. Denying that any plans for Iraqi regime change were finalised, the Pentagon official said the Turks always had "a lot of important insights" to bring. The US-Turkey relationship reaches beyond political alliance to military co-operation.
Significantly, Turkey last week signed up to the Pentagon's joint strike fighter project, committing itself to $175m (ý177m) of investment over a decade and facilitating easier joint military operations with the US.
This level of co-operation, though bringing Turkey military aid and support, will also make it a likely target for Iraqi missiles in the event of a US-inspired attempt to remove Mr Hussein. A stable and supportive Turkish government at the time will be an important element in the US's plans.
The US has declined to get involved in Turkey's crisis, with State Department officials referring to it as a "domestic political matter". Nevertheless, there is little doubt that if the current uncertainties threatened to destabilise the alliance, for example by bringing Islamists into government, they would be highly concerned.
The defining decisions for the US may come if Turkey's difficult course of economic reform is derailed.
Struggling with a large debt burden, much of it held by the country's own banks, Turkey is the International Monetary Fund's largest single borrower, with $18bn of debt outstanding and more on the way. In return, the Turks are painfully shoring up the country's fiscal position, cleaning up the banking system and controlling inflation.
So far, Turkey has surprised the IMF and its dominant rich shareholder countries, including the US, by how closely it has adhered to the IMF programme.
But although it has given itself a little breathing space by driving interest rates below target levels before the crisis erupted, Turkey's heavy debt burden means it is acutely vulnerable to any rise in borrowing costs as a result of falling confidence in the government. And since Turkey already starts from a position of massive IMF exposure, the potential for the US to lean on the multilateral lender further to bail out a strategic ally is limited.
So far, there has been little appetite among rich countries, including the US, for replacing the IMF's lending with bilateral assistance of their own.
Given the importance of Turkey to the US's campaign to
remove Mr Hussein from power in Baghdad, however, this attitude may
not survive.
6. - Flash Bulletin - "One Big Hizballah":
Uri Avnery* / 13 July 2002
OK, so we are going to kill Saddan Hussein. America wants it. And if America wants something, we want it, too. Right?
After all, there can be no doubt. The last time, Saddam threw Scuds at us, just in order to win popularity in the Arab world. (At that time somebody invented the story that "the Palestinians are dancing on their roofs"' and Yossi Sarid wrote his article "From now on, the Palestinians can search for me".)
Now all this has become topical again. George Bush Jr. wants to start a war, the same war that George Bush Sr. stopped in the middle. The son wants to finish the job begun by the father. How touching. Also urgent. Bush Jr. is deeply involved in the financial scandal that is exciting the American public, and his Vice President (Vice is the right word) is involved even more. In times of government scandals, there is always a tendency to start a little war. A war makes people forget everything else and rally around the leader.
So we are going to have a war. America leading, we following in step, listening to the same drummer. In spite of everything, I suggest that we think about it for a moment. True, Saddam is abominable, and so is his regime. But will killing Saddam and overthrowing his regime be good for Israel?
Let's pose another question first: why did Father Bush stop that war? The Iraqi army was beaten, the way to Baghdad open. So why did Bush order his army to stop? To solve this riddle, one has to know a little more about the country called Iraq. It is an artificial state, created by the British for their own ends. In practice it is a nearly accidental conglomeration of three different states, merged into one by a distant empire.
Schematically, one can divide Iraq into three components: north, middle and south. In the north there are the Kurds, who are different from the Arabs in every respect, except religion. They have their own language and their own culture. Their homeland is Kurdistan, a country arbitrarily cut up and divided between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. They are oppressed by all of them. From time to time they rebel, at one time in one state, another time in another.
In Iraq the Kurds constitute something like a quarter of the population. They are Sunni Muslims and religion plays a big role in their lives. One of the greatest warriors of Islam, Salah-al-Din (Saladin), who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, was a Kurd.
The Iraqi Kurds dream of independence and the unification of all Kurdistan. When they rose up under Mustafa al-Barzani, the Israeli army sent officers and equipment to assist them. For the time being they enjoy some sort of autonomy under the protection of the American air force, which prevents Saddam's from getting near them.
If the Iraqi State falls apart, the Kurds in the north will declare their independence. That may kindle the fire of Kurdish irredentism in Turkey, too. That's why the Turks asked Bush Sr. to stop the war. In the south there are the Shiites. They are Arabs in every respect, but religion divides them from their brothers in the north and connects them with neighboring non-Arab Iran.
The Shiite version of Islam was born in Iraq, where the dramatic events of its inception took place. There the holiest places of the Shia are located. There, generations of Shiite scholars and revolutionaries were brought up - including the Ayatolla Humeini, the father of present-day Iran.
The Shiites are not a small minority. They make up something like half the population of Iraq. Between the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south there are the Arab Sunnis. They are a minority in their country, but they control practically everything. Baghdad is their city, the army is their army. Saddam Hussein, who is, of course, a Sunni Arab, has manned many of the key position with people from his home town, Takrit. (Since all of these, like himself, bear the family name al-Takriti, Saddam has forbidden the use of family names in Iraq, on the grounds that this is a Western habit.)
Even the Americans admit that in Iraq they have no local opposition worth its name. Unlike Afghanistan, where they used local forces to their good advantage, there are no such forces to assist them and to keep a unified Iraq intact after the fall of Saddam. Therefore, upon the elimination of the tyrant, one of two things will happen:
Either - Iraq will break up into three components. In the north, a Kurdish state will emerge, in the center a Sunni-Arab statelet, and the south will join Iran, opening before it the whole Middle East. Iran will become the dominant state in the region, directly threatening the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Or - Iraq will continue to exist as a unified country but will turn, in reality, into an Iranian protectorate, with the same results.
Both cases will pose an existential danger to the Arab states. A rekindled, fanatical fundamentalist fervor will engulf them. That is why the Arab rulers panicked at the time and cried SOS. Bush the Father, who is an intelligent person (and a former intelligence chief to boot) called the war off. But Bush the Son is not known for his exceptional intelligence, and his advisers have other agendas. They don't really care.
But we should care. From the point of view of our national interest, this is an existential danger: the whole region may turn into one gigantic Hizballah.
*Uri Avnery is a free-lance journalist and an activist
of the peace organisation "Gush Shalom". He is a former member
of Knesseth and also a winner of the alternativ Peace Nobel Prize 2001