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  • Ankara Debates Rasmussen’s Candidacy

    Ankara Debates Rasmussen’s Candidacy

    Ankara Debates Rasmussen’s Candidacy for NATO Secretary-General

    Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 58
    March 26, 2009 05:36 PM
    By: Saban Kardas

    Discussions over the replacement of the current NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, scheduled to step down on July 31, has intensified, ahead of the Alliance’s April 3-4 Summit. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, supported by key European allies, has emerged as the main contender for the post. After Washington decided to support Rasmussen, it was reported that Turkey might block Rasmussen’s bid, by using its veto power in NATO (Reuters, March 22). These discussions illustrate Turkey’s delicate position within NATO, and how the troubled course of Turkey’s European integration affects its position within the transatlantic alliance (EDM, February 9).

    During Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to NATO headquarters on March 10, speculation mounted concerning the post. Traditionally, the post of secretary-general has been held by a European, whereas the Alliance’s top military officer has been an American. In addition to Rasmussen, other possible candidates for the post are the Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, and former British Defense Secretary Des Browne. However, Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Soloman Passy is currently the only official candidate.

    Western media sources presented an unclear view of the possible position of European NATO members on their preferred candidate for the post, which was also reflected within Turkey. An absence of any European consensus might influence Washington to switch its support to Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay. Germany, Britain and France, reportedly agreed privately to back Rasmussen who had been tipped as an ideal candidate, not least considering his commitment to Afghanistan and Iraq. In response, Biden left Washington’s options open, saying that the U.S. would continue to deliberate on possible candidates. International observers claimed that based on Turkey’s objections to Rasmussen, Washington might explore other alternatives (Washington Post, March 8; Der Spiegel, New York Times, March 10).

    The Turkish media interpreted these developments as implying that the U.S. had to distance itself from Rasmussen in response to Turkish opposition (Milliyet, March 11). Nonetheless, Washington apparently continued its dialogue with its European allies, and changed its position on Rasmussen. On March 21, NATO diplomats and a U.S. source confirmed Washington’s backing for Rasmussen, but these sources added that securing Turkey’s support would become the focal point in securing a consensus (Reuters, March 21). The next day, citing an anonymous Turkish official, Reuters claimed that Turkey could in fact veto the appointment of Rasmussen, suggesting he was “tainted” from Turkey’s perspective, though its position was not fixed, the official said “it may come to the veto… We will have to see” (Reuters, March 22).

    Misgivings in Ankara over Rasmussen’s candidacy include his opposition to the country’s future membership in the EU, Denmark’s alleged support for the activities of pro-PKK, in particular the militant Roj TV during his administration, and his government’s handling of “the cartoon crisis.” Speculation that such concerns might trigger Turkey’s objection to Rasmussen has long been known. Foreign Minister Ali Babacan recently defined Turkey’s ideal candidate for the post: “a person who understands and embraces the vision, common values and ideals of the organization well, who will be able to maintain [the Alliance’s] relations with all countries in good terms, and whom all member states could trust,” though he did not specify Ankara’s preferred candidate (Anadolu Ajansi, March 5).

    Against this background, Turkey’s media coverage of the controversy has contained a degree of exaggeration (Hurriyet, Sabah, Radikal, March 23). Vatan claimed that Washington’s statements indicate an ‘undeclared crisis’ between Turkey and the U.S. However, it was noted that U.S. backing for Rasmussen was announced only through an unidentified diplomatic source, and it was claimed that Ankara reciprocated by voicing its opinion in a similar manner (Vatan, March 23).

    It is unclear whether Ankara can veto Rasmussen. Many diplomatic observers believe that although Turkey would not be pleased to see him securing this post, it will ultimately accept the transatlantic consensus. Although at face value Turkey’s arguments appear motivated by only narrow concerns, its objections are in fact more principled and take account of NATO’s wider interests (Hurriyet Daily News, March 6). Regarding Turkey’s claim that the Danish government failed to act decisively over the PKK issue, there are also broader implications for the Alliance. Denmark’s attitude towards the activities of Roj TV in propagating the views of the PKK, recognized as a terrorist organization by NATO members, seems to contradict the Alliance’s counter-terrorist agenda. This, at the very least, reflects internal differences of opinion over a common definition of terrorism, which makes more difficult the presentation of a united stance on countering the threat.

    Additionally, Turkey’s assertion that the Danish government failed to act in a responsible manner to alleviate the worldwide concerns of Muslims after the publication of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad within the Danish media, equally has broader significance. Given that NATO treats Afghanistan as a crucial mission, and maintains close relations with other Muslim nations, a candidate with a controversial reputation might face problems in developing ties within the wider Islamic world. From Turkey’s perspective, with its image as a bridge between the Islamic and western worlds, airing the concerns of Muslims is an important part of Ankara’s new foreign policy.

    Considering these reasons, although Turkey might refrain from ultimately using its veto, it would not easily make concessions in response to European pressures to appoint Rasmussen. Since there is no need to name the next NATO Secretary-General at the April Summit, Turkey might force the Alliance to continue their deliberations on possible alternatives. In this case, the burden of forming a “winning coalition” around an alternative name would be placed on Turkey. This presents a real test for Turkish diplomacy: whether Ankara can switch from non-cooperative strategies in the form of threatening to use its veto, to instead achieve its objectives through more constructive diplomacy.

    https://jamestown.org/program/ankara-debates-rasmussens-candidacy-for-nato-secretary-general/

  • Poor Richard’s Report

    Poor Richard’s Report

    WARNING !

    THE SELLERS  HAVE NOT STOPPED SELLINGS SO ONCE DEMAND DRIES UP MOST FINANCIAL MARKETS COULD SEE A SUDDEN DOWN DRAFT. BE VERY CAREFUL

    CHEERIO !

  • One Festival, Two Celebrations: Novruz Highlights Political Tensions in Turkey

    One Festival, Two Celebrations: Novruz Highlights Political Tensions in Turkey

    One Festival, Two Celebrations: Novruz Highlights Political Tensions in Turkey

    Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 55
    March 23, 2009
    By: Saban Kardas

    Novruz, marking the arrival of spring and beginning of a new year, is being celebrated in Turkey between March 20 and 24, along with other Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. This year’s celebrations in Turkey showed that this cultural event still remains highly contested politically, and reflects Turkey’s challenges over the Kurdish question.

    Although its origins are disputed, various cultures and religious groups, including Persians, Zoroastrians, Kurds and Turkish communities in Central Asia and the Caucasus, observe Novruz, though seen as a local tradition mostly among the Kurds in Turkey. During the height of the PKK insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s, the PKK sought to politicize Novruz by organizing large-scale demonstrations, as part of its overall strategy of mobilizing Kurds against the Turkish state which, in turn, forbade Novruz celebrations. There were annual demonstrations and clashes between security forces and PKK supporters and sympathizers, trying to celebrate Novruz illegally in Istanbul and in Kurdish populated cities in Southeastern Turkey. The period preceding Novruz would often hijack the country’s agenda, caused by, in some cases, militants’ provocation of peaceful demonstrators and an overreaction by security forces resulting in violence.

    The Turkish state tried to avoid this accelerating cycle of violence, by capitalizing on growing cultural ties between Turkey and the new Turkish-speaking states in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. In the mid-1990s, Turkish government officials embraced Novruz as a “Turkish festival,” emphasizing its roots in ancient Central Asian culture, and pre-Islamic Turkish mythology. Since then, state authorities have organized official gatherings, and Turkish statesmen have attended festivities, in an attempt to turn the Novruz into a national event. Recently, cabinet members indicated that they would support a parliamentary motion to declare Novruz as an official holiday (Radikal, March 4).

    Consequently the Turkish state, helped by improvements in the conditions of the Kurds, has restored the reputation of Novruz. Indeed, Turkey has taken significant steps to allow greater Kurdish minority rights, such as setting up a TV channel broadcasting in Kurdish on the state-run TRT network. Nonetheless, Novruz still remains a politically significant event for Turkey’s Kurdish population, and Kurdish nationalists resist attempts by the state to co-opt Novruz. Therefore, although scenes of violent clashes are largely absent, the political atmosphere remains tense on the eve of Novruz. This year’s celebrations took place against a similar background. Moreover, the ongoing local election campaigns increased the political importance of Novruz.

    President Abdullah Gul issued a message wishing happy Novruz to Turkey and the Turkic world. Although emphasizing Novruz as a shared tradition within the wider Turkish-speaking community, Gul noted, “Turkey is a country where people of different beliefs, languages, ethnic roots and cultures live together in peace, and which is home to different sociological realities and traditions. Our differences and diversity are our country’s greatest source of richness. Therefore, everyone will celebrate Novruz according to his own traditions” (www.cankaya.gov.tr, March 20).

    Indeed, proving Gul’s point, Novruz was celebrated “differently” across Turkey. On the one hand, public authorities including ministers and governors attended official Novruz ceremonies in major cities. Minister of Culture, Ertugrul Gunay, hosted the festivities in Ankara, where he called on the Turkish people to forget the bad memories of the past and celebrate such festivals in a spirit of tolerance. Gunay and his guests, including U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey, performed Novruz rituals and jumped over bonfires (www.ntvmsnbc.com, March 21).

    On the other hand, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) organized activities in around fifty cities, and turned the celebrations into political rallies ahead of local elections. The party leader Ahmet Turk and other party officials travelled to different cities to attend these meetings. The DTP staged a demonstration in Diyarbakir on March 21, which it claimed to be the largest-scale Novruz celebration in the Middle East. Although Kurdish news sources claimed that around one million people attended the meeting (ANF News Agency, March 21), Diyarbakir governorship reported that only 75,000 participated (www.tempo24.com, March 22). During the demonstrations participants carried pictures of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the outlawed PKK, and chanted his name.

    On March 21, Novruz was celebrated across Turkey through several gatherings organized either by the state or the DTP. Yet, the risk of violence at these demonstrations may have forced the police to increase security measures. Since pressures increased on the PKK to seek a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem, the PKK has disavowed the use of violence during these celebrations (ANF News Agency, March 20). Some feared that splinter groups within the PKK not wanting to end the armed struggle might seek to incite violence (Bugun, March 19). Indeed, Turkish police in Istanbul caught a group of PKK militants with plastic explosives, allegedly plotting attacks aimed at igniting social unrest (Cihan Haber Ajansi, March 31). In many celebrations, the authorities did not interfere with either speeches or songs in Kurdish. Security forces arrested some people for carrying emblems of Ocalan and the PKK, but overall the festivities were relatively peaceful.

    Turkey’s handling of Novruz with relative calm marks an improvement on previous years. But this also conceals two underlying political tensions. First, despite the Turkish state’s attempts to make Novruz a national festivity, two parallel sets of celebrations in fact reflected continued divisions within Turkish society. Second, the calm revealed ongoing uncertainty about the future of the Kurdish problem. Turkey is currently debating how a peaceful solution to this question might be achieved (EDM, March 17). Novruz demonstrations showed once again that Kurdish nationalists avoid accepting any solution to the Kurdish problem which excludes the PKK and Ocalan. Nor is it clear to what extent Turkey can accommodate these demands. For now, these issues are in abeyance, but such tensions could resurface after the local elections on March 29.

    https://jamestown.org/program/one-festival-two-celebrations-novruz-highlights-political-tensions-in-turkey/

  • Another Crossroads for Turkey

    Another Crossroads for Turkey

    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

  • Good News From Mozambique

    Good News From Mozambique

    The balance and imbalance experiences that affected the world in the last century, seems to maintain its effect in the future as it is doing at the moment. The impressions and the observations we obtained reveal that after a time, the impressions carried on in the “Black Continent” had exploded and the native people wanted to present a way out and to do something about this.

    Mozambique is a mistreated country which had his share of the colonialism like the other African countries. We know that Portugal is also active in that geography of which Europe profit every inch. Portugal kept his effect up for a long time until the Mozambicans drove them away from this region 30 years ago.

    In the county governed with capitalist economic system, all the balances that would be useful for Portugal were ready. But all the development plans disappeared when the native people drove them away. The communist system which tried hard to rule the country after the capitalism managed to continue ruling even by force. Occident who didn’t have his profits lost, caused to the civil war in the country. The conflicts between the government and the people came to an end with efforts of Anglican Church to bring together the representatives of the people and the governments. The country obtained nothing more than harm at the end of the civil war. At the end of that agreement the campaign, “collecting weapons from people”, was started and until that time 600.000 weapons has been able to collected. When we look at the weapons collected it surprises us that they come from Russia, England, and USA. Shortly, it can be called a civil war supported outwardly. A tableau of the people who doesn’t know for what they fight and who obtained the greatest harm.

    The development of the country becomes slowly. Having harm more than a profit of the communism is also a factor to this. This system wasn’t accepted in this area because of the fact that the people have a mentality that consists of a leader and forming group. And the government is being effected by the collapse lived in 1991. After that the commerce of the country has been brought to a moderate atmosphere. One of the biggest postwar problems of Mozambique in which a person working in an average job earns 40 $, is the sweeping of the mines in the north region. Mine Research Commission states that the mine maps belonging to that time are lost and extensive mine researches are stopped because the attention of worldly public opinion is attracted to Iraq and Afghanistan. Henceforth, there, the mortal weapons are used to make a work of art. Messages on the useless of these weapons are being given to the people. The authorities, who say that even for the children imitation weapons shouldn’t be bought, state that people can go forward if they take their lesson from the history. Today, even in British Museum the work of art called “the Life Tree” that the people made from the weapons takes part. In the country in which ideological fixed ideas will disappear in time, in some of the streets the names of the ex-communist-leaders take part. But people’s longing to democracy and endeavoring for realizing this makes us happy.

    Fishing has the greatest part for people’s making their life. In Mozambique which is a port country, a small Turkish educator group takes part. We don’t have any economical activity there yet. We want to keep our expansionist policy up there too and we thank to Sezai Kara and the other Turks who represent us there after Ottoman. The main after all is the conflict between people and systems has continued during centuries. The thing that changes the movement of happenings: exterior forces, methods that the people applied, geographical features and events lived. Today Africa is changing and becoming conscious. It is enough that it is set free. External effects having lasted too many years wore them out but they believe that they will have the required strength for rising. It is enough at least. These people lived under slavery for centuries but the ones who have lived under slavery for too many years, haven’t wanted to rise and who misses the times under slavery astonish us.

    These are the situations rooting from unconsciousness. The ones who have gained the consciousness are being assimilated to the other ways. The only thing to do is to remind the past and to supply national consciousness. To state that the dialogue is more important than the conflict.

    Mehmet Fatih ÖZTARSU

  • Turkey’s Party Closure Laws

    Turkey’s Party Closure Laws

    European Criticism of Turkey’s Party Closure Laws Reignites Debate on Constitutional Reforms

    Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 52
    March 18, 2009
    By: Saban Kardas

    Two recent reports by European institutions reignited the debate over political reforms that Turkey needs to undertake to bring its democratic practices up to European standards. The European Parliament (EP) and the Venice Commission criticized Turkey’s reluctance to continue with constitutional reforms, in particular its failure to amend the law on political party closures. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, in response, signaled that it would introduce a new constitutional reform package following the local elections.

    On March 12 the EP adopted a resolution on Turkey’s progress toward EU accession. After acknowledging Turkey’s efforts to reform the political system, the EP members expressed their concern about the “continuing slowdown of the reform process” since 2005. The report noted various areas in which further political reforms were needed, especially stressing the laws on closing down political parties. It called on the government to resume efforts to write a new civilian constitution (www.europarl.europa.eu, March 12).

    On March 13 the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe held a plenary session, during which it reviewed whether Turkish laws on the dissolution of political parties complied with European democratic standards. The commission concluded that “the general threshold is too low, both for initiating procedures and for prohibiting or dissolving parties. This is in itself in abstracto deviating from common European democratic standards.” The Commission praised the 2001 constitutional revisions, yet found them inadequate for protecting political parties. It too advised Turkey to seek a new constitutional reform that would amend legal provisions on regulating party closures (www.venice.coe.int; March 13).

    Both reports expressed concern about the fact that the Turkish judiciary frequently filed lawsuits for the closure of political parties, in some cases even against parties represented in parliament. Two major cases are significant. Last year, the AKP faced dissolution on the grounds that it had become the center of anti-secular activities. By a narrow vote the Constitutional Court decided not to shut down the party but nevertheless punished it by cutting in half the aid it received from the treasury. Since the fate of the incumbent party was at stake, the entire case posed a major threat to the stability of the Turkish political system. Similarly, the Constitutional Court is reviewing whether to shut down the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) on charges of separatism. The DTP’s predecessors were closed down by the court, which heightened tension in the country and posed major setbacks to a democratic resolution of the Kurdish issue. If the court rules in favor of closure in the case against the DTP, the exclusion of the party from the parliamentary processes is likely to avert a democratic presentation of Kurdish demands and undermine Turkey’s achievements in solving the Kurdish question.

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose party suffered from closure threats and has been considering changing the constitution, capitalized on these reports during the local election campaign. He announced that the AKP would return to the issue of constitutional reform after the elections. Rather than proposing a new constitution, he said, the government would introduce a package of partial amendments in four areas. If the amendments are accepted, individuals will be granted the right to apply to the Constitutional Court to challenge the constitutionality of laws, a post of ombudsman will be created to monitor state activities, and laws on political parties and elections will be changed (ANKA, March 13; Hurriyet Daily News, March 17). With regard to party closures, Erdogan later explained that the government would seek to bring Turkish regulations in line with the criteria established by the Venice Commission. He specifically stressed that parties not engaged in violence should function freely and not be punished for crimes committed by individual members (Sabah, March 15; Zaman, March 17).

    This was not the first time Erdogan had raised the issue of constitutional changes. Earlier, he had said that the government would start talks with the opposition parties to discuss a new civilian constitution following local elections. Representatives of the opposition did not, however, find Erdogan’s proposal sincere and refused to cooperate with the AKP (www.haber3.com, February 14).

    Herein lies the main obstacle to constitutional amendments: how to build the necessary political coalition for reforms. Not only European institutions but also most Turkish political observers agree that both the 1982 constitution, a leftover of the 1980 coup, and party closure practices are in need of revision; but without the support of the opposition, particularly the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the government is not in a position to go ahead with political reform and be sure that any changes will not be revoked by the Constitutional Court. The real question, therefore, is whether political parties can find consensus on a process for introducing new constitutional changes.

    Following the AKP’s landslide victory in the 2007 parliamentary elections, Erdogan promised that it would embrace all of Turkey and change the constitution in order to reduce growing polarization in the country. The AKP has failed, however, to generate trust among different segments of society. Nor could it find common ground with the opposition parties to introduce a new constitution. An attempt by the AKP to revise the constitution ended up in a dispute over the headscarf issue and sparked the closure case against the party. Since then, the chances for reforming the constitution have diminished even further. Democratic reforms have been given a lower priority on the AKP’s agenda, while polarization in society and among political parties has continued. The aggressive campaigns of the party leaders in the run-up to the local elections have increasingly pitted them against each other and undermined mutual trust.

    Delivering on constitutional reforms might indeed help Erdogan revitalize the EU membership process and gain him political support at home; but he appears to have lost credibility in the eyes of the opposition for embarking on such a move and will have a hard time building bridges. At this juncture, a “reconciliation commission” proposed by the parliamentary speaker, Koksal Toptan, could provide a possible strategy (www.cnnturk.com, March 13). The success of a new constitutional amendment package might hinge on Toptan’s ability to convince party leaders to put aside their differences and continue work on the necessary reforms.

    https://jamestown.org/program/european-criticism-of-turkeys-party-closure-laws-reignites-debate-on-constitutional-reforms/