In all probability the Turkish ruling party, AKP (Justice and Development Party), will experience another victory at the local elections on March 29. Since November 2002, when the AKP came to power with 34 percent of the votes, the party has noted a growing success with 42 percent of the votes in the 2004 local elections and 47 percent at the general election in 2007.
The AKP government has used its six years in power to create a new elite centred around Istanbul, Ankara and industrial cities like Konya, Kayseri and Gaziantep in Anatolia. At the same time the party has replaced the top echelons inside state administration, education, the judiciary and independent boards with supporterswho share the government’s conservative, Islamic values.
By Robert Ellis
For example, last October 600 leading staff from TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) were transferred to posts as “researchers” as part of a process of “restructuring”. And the March edition of the prestigious journal “Bilim ve Teknik” (Science and Technology) was subject to censorship. There was a picture of Darwin on the cover and a 16-page article celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth. But TÜBITAK (Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council) intervened and the cover picture, article and editor were removed.
The editor of Bilim ve Teknik, Dr. Cigdem Atakuman, and the offending cover
Darwin’s theory of evolution is at odds with creationism, which the government supports and which has been introduced into school textbooks. According to Riza Türmen, a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights, this move indicates that what the Turkish government is attempting to achieve is “social engineering, a radical transformation of society”. Incidentally, Riza Türmen’s appointment at the Human Rights Court was not renewed, as he upheld the headscarf ban at Turkish universities in the landmark legal decision in Sahin v. Turkey in 2005.
The secret of the AKP’s success as a political party is that it is a grassroots movement built up on a local level, and therefore a convincing victory on March 29 will mean a consolidation of the AKP’s power base. The fact that now only 19 out of Turkey’s 81 provinces do not have an ban on alcohol consumption at municipal and public restaurants is a good example of how extensive the AKP’s influence is.
Davos
Some days before Israel’s invasion of Gaza the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan confided to Israeli premier Ehud Olmert that he needed a high-profile international diplomatic success to deflect domestic criticism and gain legitimacy from Turkey’s secular opposition. For that reason Erdogan set as a precondition for his participation in the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos that there was to be a panel discussion on Gaza, preferably where Israeli president Shimon Peres would be present.
Seen in this light, Erdogan’s outburst at Peres appears to be a well-planned PR stunt calculated at legitimizing his government on the home front and establishing Turkey as a regional power in the Middle East. The reaction was not long coming. At Istanbul airport Erdogan was greeted as “the conqueror of Davos” and the Lebanese newspaper Dar Al-Hayat suggested that Erdogan should restore the Ottoman empire and be the Caliph of all Muslims. Considering that Turkish foreign policy under the AKP has been dubbed “neo-Ottoman” and that one of Erdogan’s nicknames is “The Imam of Istanbul”, this proposal must have tied in with Erdogan’s ambitions.
But his outburst has also backfired. According to a senior Israeli diplomatic official Erdogan has with his support of Hamas “lost all credibility as an honest broker in peace discussions”. And the official added: “As long as he is the prime minister of the country, Turkey has no place in peace negotiations or discussions. It is not a trustworthy diplomatic partner anymore.”
At the same time Erdogan has painted himself into a corner. His defence of Hamas as a legitimate political party hardly fits in with the ongoing closure case against the Kurdish political party DTP (Democratic Society Party) because of alleged connections with the PKK. The Kurdish vote is decisive for the AKP’s control of eastern and southeastern Turkey, where the party won over half the votes in 2007.
Financial crisis
Erdogan’s heroic status after Davos is, of course, a vote catcher, but the AKP has also resorted to other methods. Local authorities receive most of their funding from the central government, and the Minister of Justice has threatened voters that if they vote for the opposition, it is unlikely those municipalities will receive government help in the future.
In Tunceli province in southeastern Turkey, where the mayor of Tunceli, Ms. Songül Erol Abdi, is from the DTP, the state social aid and solidarity fund (the “Fak-Fuk Fon”) has distributed household appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines and dishwashers, and even computers to the local population. The only problem is that some of the villages are without electricity or running water. The Supreme Election Board has ruled against the distribution of aid but the provincial governor has continued with Prime Minister Erdogan’s support.
Turkey has also been hit by the global financial crisis and there has been a marked rise in unemployment. This year Turkish public and private institutions will need $100 billion in external funding, which is why a new accord with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is imperative. However, as the IMF has demanded cuts in public spending, talks have been suspended until after the March 29 local elections.
Another sensitive issue in connection with the local elections is the underrepresentation of women among the candidates. There are at present 18 female mayors out of 3,225 in Turkey and only 834 out of 34,477 local administrators are women. No significant change can be expected, as there are only 400 women out of 14,000 nominated for local office.
Women constitute 26 percent of the labour force, but last July the AKP passed a social security law which cut maternity leave from six months to one . On Wednesday Economy Minister Mehmet Simsek, who himself comes from a poor Kurdish family, also blamed the rising unemployment rate on housewives looking for jobs.
Columnist Burak Bekdil has criticized Turkey’s new elite for their conspicuous consumption and called them “display Muslims”. Nevertheless, many Turks link their hopes for a better future to the rise of the AK party. As they say in Turkish: Keci can derdinde, kasap et derdinde. The goat fears for its life and the butcher fears for his meat.
Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish press and from 2005 to 2008 he was a frequent contributor to Turkish Daily News. However, after a critical article on the AKP in the Los Angeles Times last March, he was informed by the American editor-in-chief of TDN (now Hürriyet Daily News) he was persona non grata.
This post first appeared on PoliGazette
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