05
November 2002
2. "Turkey's Experiment", Turkey's voters didn't necessarily intend to marry Islamic values with Western democracy when they gave a parliamentary majority to the upstart Justice and Development Party in Sunday's general elections
3. "Cyprus diplomacy at center stage", with Turkey’s elections over, and with the EU summit in mid-December expected to decide on Cyprus’s accession, diplomacy aimed at solving the Cyprus issue will intensify this week.
4. "Markets take sanguine view of election result", emerging market debt may be set to rally further now key elections in Brazil and Turkey are out of the way as investors lock in hefty yields and look to expected U.S. and European interest rate cuts to boost liquidity. Emerging market assets have suffered jitters since mid-April as investors eyed elections in Brazil and Turkey.
5. "Turkey hit by 'Anatolian revolution'", for a country not known to rise up in revolt, Sunday's electoral slaughter of a whole generation of old-style leaders was the closest Turkey is likely to come to a revolution.
6. "Bar on Kurd MPs attending Iraq meet", Iran has turned down a request by Kurdish legislators to attend a regional parliament in northern Iraq on the grounds their participation would fuel tensions with its old foe, a parliamentary source said yesterday.
1. - The New York Times - "Turkey Votes for Change":
November 5, 2002
Turkey's voters have thrown out a failed government and selected leaders who are in disfavor with the country's military and political establishment. This is the kind of opportunity people elsewhere in the Islamic world want and deserve. Turkey's election was noteworthy for passing power to the Justice and Development Party, which has been evolving from roots in Islamic sectarianism toward support for ties with Europe and the United States.
The next steps are crucial. Justice and Development must honor its pledges to protect the rights of the worldly as well as the devout. Its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared that his party would guarantee Turkey's constitutionally mandated secularism, rightly noting that "secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions."
Mr. Erdogan has been banned from Parliament and the new government for reciting a poem that, according to Turkey's courts, incited religious hatred. The ban should be lifted, not just because accountability will suffer but because poetry recitation is no bar to serving in elective office in any decent democracy. Now prosecutors are trying to outlaw the whole party. That offensive litigation should be immediately abandoned. The legal assault on Mr. Erdogan and his party, which has been made more threatening by the apparent backing of Turkey's military, must cease. There must be no repeat of the destructive meddling five years ago when the army forced an elected Islamic-oriented government from power.
Since then, Turkish democracy has been reinforced by reforms passed in the hope of smoothing admission to the European Union. Turkey will not be among the 10 new members likely to be added in 2004, but it should follow soon thereafter.
Turkey is one of America's most strategically located military allies,
and the White House would be eager to have the use of Turkey's bases
in any war with Iraq. Mr. Erdogan has suggested that he might leave
Turkey's military role in such a conflict up to its generals. For
its part, Washington should use its influence with Turkey's generals
to discourage them from meddling in democratic politics.
2. - washingtonpost.com - "Turkey's Experiment":
November 5, 2002
TURKEY'S VOTERS didn't necessarily intend to marry Islamic values with Western democracy when they gave a parliamentary majority to the upstart Justice and Development Party in Sunday's general elections. By most accounts, Turks mainly wanted to punish the entrenched political establishment for leading the country into a deep economic crisis, attended by seemingly endemic corruption. Yet the alternative the voters chose amounts to something of a political experiment. With roots in earlier Islamic parties outlawed for testing Turkey's secular order, Justice and Development describes itself as a center-right movement that aspires to create a Muslim-world analogue to the Christian Democratic parties of Europe. Many Turks fear this platform is doomed to fail, or that it may be mere camouflage for a more fundamentalist agenda. Yet, for Turkey's sake and for that of democracy in the Middle East, it should be given a fair chance.
Justice and Development and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, would face a daunting political landscape even if they were not subject to pressure from the Turkish military and legal establishment. Turkey is on the brink of economic collapse. Its bid for membership in the European Union appears likely to be rebuffed shortly, and it could face a crisis on Cyprus, where a rump ethnic Turkish state may be stranded by an EU invitation to the government that rules the Greek side of the island. Meanwhile, the United States is preparing for a possible military campaign against Iraq, Turkey's neighbor.
Mr. Erdogan has outlined a moderate and careful approach to these challenges. He has strongly supported Turkish membership in the EU and the political reforms needed to achieve it, and says he will implement economic reforms. On Iraq, he has hewed to the Turkish mainstream, voicing concern about war but signaling that he would defer to the United Nations or to a decision by the Turkish military. Though as mayor of Istanbul Mr. Erdogan pursued an Islamist agenda, he says he has changed his approach. His party has taken in secular conservatives and nominated many women; Mr. Erdogan says his aim is to broaden Turkish democracy and make room for more free expression of all kinds, including moderate Islamic practice.
It's important that Mr. Erdogan be held to this agenda: Turkey cannot
afford a radical change of foreign policy or a domestic revolution
at this moment of crisis. The Turkish military, which ousted a previous
Islamic government in 1997, can be expected to intervene again in
the event of such a shift. But the military and the Turkish legal
authorities, who have prohibited Mr. Erdogan from holding office and
are trying to ban his party, should give Justice and Development an
opportunity to perform. The Bush administration, too, should seek
to build a partnership, while continuing to urge European governments
to begin negotiating Turkey's EU membership. While Mr. Erdogan may
fail, he could succeed in creating a model of democratic political
practice sorely needed in the Muslim world.
3. - Kathimerini (Greece) - "Cyprus diplomacy at center stage":
With Turkish elections over, UN chief expected to present proposals for a reunified island
ATHENS / 4 November 2002
With Turkey’s elections over, and with the EU summit in mid-December expected to decide on Cyprus’s accession, diplomacy aimed at solving the Cyprus issue will intensify this week.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to present a proposal for a solution within the next few days, with the backing of the United States and Britain. US Assistant Secretary of State Marc Grossman will hold talks on the issue with Foreign Minister George Papandreou and Defense Minister Yiannos Papantoniou in Athens today. At the same time, Annan’s special envoy for Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, is expected to meet with Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash’s close aide Ergun Olgan in New York, where Denktash is recovering from major heart surgery.
PM Costas Simitis will visit Paris on Wednesday and Berlin on Thursday to discuss Cyprus’s EU accession.
Cyprus’s attorney general, Alekos Markides, said in an interview with Athens’s Ethnos newspaper yesterday that Annan’s plan could be expected soon. “Just after the elections in Turkey, the UN secretary-general will decide if he will submit his plan, which is almost ready,” he said. “The time has come to shoulder our responsibilities, not avoid them.”
Athens and Nicosia have been trying to work out what Annan’s plan may entail and they have prepared their own proposals.
Cypriot government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou raised a storm over the weekend when he presented details of the Greek-Cypriot proposal. Cypriot political parties charged that these details had not been presented to the country’s national council of political leaders.
The Athens News Agency reported from Nicosia on Saturday that Papapetrou (who will be holding a news conference in Athens today) had told a seminar on the Cyprus issue in London that a reunited Cyprus could be made up of two constituent states with broad authority and a central government. The central government will be based on the principle of political equality rather than on the basis of population size, he said. Executive decisions will be taken by majority vote but must garner a minimum percentage of votes from the Turkish-Cypriot side, Papapetrou reportedly said.
The proposed legislature will be made up of two bodies, one in which the two population groups will be represented proportionally to their size and the other in which they will be equal. Every law will have to be approved by both bodies, he said. The same will apply in the judiciary.
On the issue of security, the Cypriots propose demilitarization and the continuation of the guarantees of 1960 which accompanied the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus. This will allow Greece and Turkey to maintain small military contingents on the island. The proposal also calls for an international military presence to oversee the agreement. If this is found insufficient, then the guarantor powers will have the right to intervene. It was this right that Ankara called on when it invaded Cyprus in 1974 in the wake of a short-lived coup by Greek Cypriots who wanted union with Greece.
Other sources have said that the Greek and Cypriot sides expect the
UN proposal to include a rotating presidency, which will be mostly
symbolic. They also expect the issue of territory to be solved by
Turkey handing back part of the 37 percent of the island that it occupies,
holding on to about 28 percent of the island and returning Famagusta
and Morphou to Greek-Cypriot administration. Athens and Nicosia’s
greatest concerns relate to the rotating presidency, the way in which
Annan’s plan will deal with sovereignty and how the “Belgian
model” will work.
4. - Reuters - "Markets take sanguine view of election result":
LONDON / November 4, 2002
Emerging market debt may be set to rally further now key elections in Brazil and Turkey are out of the way as investors lock in hefty yields and look to expected U.S. and European interest rate cuts to boost liquidity. Emerging market assets have suffered jitters since mid-April as investors eyed elections in Brazil and Turkey. Neither election produced the markets' preferred result, but higher yields triggered by electoral uncertainty are starting to draw investors back in.
"It is close to the worst case scenario for both Turkey and Brazil, as seen from four months ago," said Isaac Tabor, senior emerging market economist at Merrill Lynch in London.
"But over the last few months markets have been able to digest
these outcomes and turn positive about them. Brazil rallied after
the elections, Turkey is doing the same."
Markets on Monday took a sanguine view of Turkey's election result.
Markets had feared an AKP victory might trigger an intervention by
the military, some members of which view themselves as guardians of
Turkey's secular constitution.
Investors also feared the AKP would not be willing to implement the country's $16 billion International Monetary Fund programme. The aid package was granted after last year's severe economic crisis, which saw the economy contract by 9.4 percent.
"These are not the markets' number one choice in terms of outcomes, but all the candidates are talking market friendly. As long as that remains the case I think the bid for emerging market assets can continue," said Edwin Gutierrez, emerging bond fund manager at Deutsche Asset Management in London.
AKP economic spokesman Ali Coskun said on Monday that the party planned
to complete reforms needed to earn its next IMF loan payment before
moving to discuss any possible revisions.
5. - Financial Times - "Turkey hit by 'Anatolian revolution'":
By Leyla Boulton in Ankara / November 4 2002
For a country not known to rise up in revolt, Sunday's electoral slaughter of a whole generation of old-style leaders was the closest Turkey is likely to come to a revolution.
For years, Turks had complained about their political leaders with a crushing passivity as their living standards sank and government mismanagement and corruption drove the country towards bankruptcy.
On Monday, with one newspaper trumpeting an "Anatolian revolution", citizens seemed surprised by the strength they had demonstrated at the ballot box in a general election called early after the ruling coalition of outgoing prime minister Bulent Ecevit collapsed.
Some remained worried by the victory of the Justice and Development party (AKP), an untried party viewed with suspicion for its Islamist roots, contained by just one opposition rival, the left-leaning Republican People's party, the only other group to cross the 10 per cent threshold required for parliamentary representation.
The expulsion from parliament of parties that have been in office over the past 20 years was another matter, however. With no mercy for left or right, young or old, the cull included AKP's own competition: Contentment, a front party for Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of political Islam forced out of office by the armed forces in 1997.
This time, however, change was brought about not by the army but by the people. The election result gives Turkey its first two-party parliament since multi-party democracy was first introduced in 1954 and then suspended by a military coup in 1960.
On Monday Turks were hoping for a new era of political stability. They will need it, if the country is finally to rehabilitate its shaky economy, and advance towards membership of the European Union.
"We needed a clean-out of the old system," said Behic Ozek,
50, a businessman. Candan Ersoy, a 28-year-old child-minder, agreed.
"The best thing about this election is that we won't have to
see the same ugly old faces any more, and that the new government,
at the end of its term in office, will not be able to say 'oh we were
not able to keep our promises because we lacked a parliamentary majority'."
The shakeout was still continuing on Monday, as leaders of defeated parties fell like dominoes. This in itself was unusual, given that Turkish politicians typically have refused to resign even when defeated at the ballot-box.
First to go, in the early hours of Monday morning, was Devlet Bahceli, leader of the National Action party (MHP), the biggest coalition partner. He had called the early election after opposing reforms to join the European Union - a goal shared by a majority of Turks.
Then, instead of capitalising on the small but important anti-foreign vote, as planned, the MHP's support base was split by Cem Uzan, a businessman who used modern advertising techniques and his own media to sell a more dangerous, xenophobic brew.
While Mr Bahceli was praised for his exemplary decision to step down, there were also sighs of relief among educated Turks that Mr Uzan, a businessman who faces criminal court cases at home and abroad, had also fallen beneath the 10 per cent threshold for entering parliament.
But the most pathetic victim of all was Mr Ecevit, the ailing 77-year-old prime minister who slipped from biggest winner in the last elections to biggest loser, with just over 1 per cent of the vote. The veteran politician described his unwieldy coalition's decision to hold early elections as "political suicide".
But many blamed his own refusal to hand over his Democratic Left party to a younger, more dynamic successor before his health problems plunged the government and financial markets into chaos this summer. Ismail Cem, the ex-foreign minister who led a defection from Mr Ecevit's party, simply melted away with little more than a percentage point for his New Turkey party.
Most brazen - until she too stood down from the leadership of the centre-right True Path party - was Tansu Ciller, Turkey's first female prime minister. A populist with a sleaze problem, Mrs Ciller had lectured the outgoing government on its economic failings after herself plunging the country into financial crisis in 1994.
Another casualty, who resigned on Monday, was Mesut Yilmaz, the deputy prime minister and leader of the Motherland party, the junior coalition partner. Although he had worked hard to advance Turkey's candidacy for the EU, Mr Yilmaz was also tainted by sleaze allegations - a reputation not helped by his sacking of Sadettin Tantan, the former interior minister who had dared mount a serious onslaught on corruption.
It is now up to AKP to do better. It has few excuses to fail and
perhaps more incentive to succeed. "Since this party would like
to legitimise its position both abroad and at home, it may represent
a chance for Turkey to accelerate long-overdue political and economic
reforms," argues Omer Faruk Genckaya, a political scientist.
6. - Middle East News - "Bar on Kurd MPs attending Iraq meet":
TEHRAN / 4 November 2002
Iran has turned down a request by Kurdish legislators to attend a
regional parliament in northern Iraq on the grounds their participation
would fuel tensions with its old foe, a parliamentary source said
yesterday.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry judged the trip “could be taken
as interference in Iraq’s internal affairs and Iraqi officials
have adopted negative and threatening reactions in similar cases in
the past,” the source said. Iran opposes any US-led military
action against its western neighbour, while advising Iraq to avert
regional chaos by obeying United Nations resolutions on disarmament.
“Iran has emphasised the territorial integrity of Iraq and since
the developments in northern Iraq are to a large extent linked with
American regional policies, any attendance of Iranian deputies would
be interpreted as taking sides with such policies,” the source
cited the Foreign Ministry as saying.
Iraq’s Kurds reopened their regional parliament in October, aiming
to stake a claim for autonomy from Baghdad should US military might
topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Iran has voiced its opposition
to the formation of an autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq,
fearing that it could spur riots among its Kurdish minorities demanding
the same privilege.
“Disintegration of Iraq and the formation of an autonomous Kurdish
state in the north of that country has always been opposed by Iran
and is against our national security and interest,” the Foreign
Ministry had stressed, the source said.
“Participation of Kurdish MPs in that parliament would provide
credit to this process, which contravenes our national interest,”
he added.