Turkey revives presidential
row By Jacques N Couvas
ANKARA - Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan's decision to nominate Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul as president can only be
labeled "brave". Half of the country's population,
joined by the opposition and the General Staff of
the armed forces (TSK), had expected another, more
moderate personality to be tipped for the post.
The election process begins on Monday and
will be completed by
August 30.
Expectations for another candidate had
grown stronger after the May annulment of the
presidential election, the subsequent withdrawal
of Gul's candidacy, and repeated promises during
the past several weeks by Erdogan that
"compromise" would guide his choice designated by
the Justice and Development Party (AKP). This
pledge seemed to be confirmed when members of
Parliament appointed Koksal Toptan, a non-Islamist
politician, as parliamentary Speaker last week
through consensus.
Erdogan has obviously
acted against his own cautious views on the
matter, and most likely was under severe pressure
by hardcore members of his party. This gives many
citizens a chilly feeling. Is he truly in control
of his troops?
In a country where there
are seemingly 72 million solutions for every
national issue, public opinion is increasingly
split over who should lead Turkey for the next
seven years and, more critically, its army.
The office of the president is largely
ceremonial, but it carries with it the command of
the TSK. And it is the latter that four months ago
already rejected Gul's candidacy.
In fact,
on April 27, right after the first round of the
election was canceled by the Parliament because of
the lack of a quorum, General Yasar Buyukanit,
head of the General Staff, warned that the
president should be a secularist "not only in
words but also in deeds", and implied that the
military reserved the option to intervene if the
secular values of the state were threatened.
The armed forces have intervened four
times since the 1950s. On February 28, 1997, they
ousted a government formed by Necmettin Erbakan,
an Islamist leader. Gul was a minister in that
government.
It is not surprising that
senior military officers resent the idea of being
under the authority of either one of the two AKP
politicians. Until recently, most Turks would have
agreed with this attitude. But the climate appears
to have changed since the controversial attempt to
elect a president last spring.
Gul's
appointment supporters include not only AKP
members, but also business people, journalists and
academics among secularists. The rationale for
their choice is that he discharged to absolute
satisfaction his duties as prime minister and
foreign minister in the previous government, and
has played a significant part in Turkey's economic
success and the respect it has gained in
international affairs.
Furthermore, Gul, a
pro-European, has worked hard to keep negotiations
with the European Union on track, while opening up
the country to new relationships with the East,
particularly Iran, China, Malaysia and South
Korea, as well as Saudi Arabia. The AKP in the
past five years has also achieved spectacular
results in economic growth, inflation containment,
social stability, and attracting record foreign
direct investments.
In fact, neither
friends nor opponents doubt Gul's capability to
perform as president and as an international
statesman.
His detractors confine their
dislike for his candidacy to his religion-inspired
political philosophy. His heading the state will,
they claim, further the AKP's allegedly veiled
plans to move away from a secularist toward an
Islamist society.
The main external sign
of this is that his wife Hayrunisa wears a
headscarf, an Islamist symbol. This week, during a
tour aiming to gain support from leaders of
opposition parties and unions, Gul played down the
possible effect of this on his presidential
duties.
Hayrunisa "won't join all the
[official] events, in the end", Gul reportedly
told the leader of the far-right Nationalist
Movement Party (MHP) on Tuesday in a private
meeting.
Meanwhile, one cannot refrain
from wondering whether Erdogan regrets bowing out
of the race for the top job last April. If Gul,
whose wife wears a headscarf as much as his own
spouse does, has a chance to be elected, why
couldn't Erdogan be the next tenant of the
presidential Cankaya Palace?
The campaign
for the legislative elections last month was
clouded by the specter of an Islamist holding the
presidential scepter. Although half of the voters
regarded this propaganda as paranoid in the end
and voted accordingly, many now are nervous with
the idea that the AKP, were it to control the
Parliament, the government and the presidency,
might abuse its unchecked power. There are fears
that it might exact revenge on the military and
enact the Islamic reforms that its more radical
members have been pressing for since May.
This view was partly justified by Gul's
attitude this week, when he announced his
candidacy and defended his decision as a "right"
stemming from the results of July 22 poll that
gave the AKP 46.7% of the vote and increased its
electoral base by one-third in comparison with
2002. "People gave a clear message that they want
me to be a candidate," he said at a press
conference on Tuesday.
He also said that
he made his choice after consulting with his
family, colleagues and friends. The last group
reportedly includes Fethullah Gulen, a
controversial Islamic scholar who preaches a
tolerant Muslim faith but wants to see the return
of religion into Turkish daily life and education.
Other groups that have been supportive of
the AKP's action include the Sunni Hizb ut-Tahrir
al-Islami and Khilafah, which promote worldwide
restoration of the Caliphate to unite all Muslims
under one socio-political system. The Caliphate
was abolished in 1924 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
founder of the secular Turkish republic. These
connections are used by the military and the
opposition parties a justification to fight Gul's
candidacy.
Some facts corroborate these
fears. Between 2003, when Erdogan became prime
minister, and last year, the number of students
enrolled in full-time Koranic courses grew from
3,000 to 4,950, while the number of part-time
students in such classes doubled to 130,000, after
an easing of restrictions on religious education.
The AKP also pushed for Koranic diplomas
to be equivalent to state-high-school diplomas for
college and university entrance requirements. The
move failed after former president Ahmet Necdet
Sezer vetoed the law presented to the National
Assembly. But the issue is reportedly on the new
legislature's agenda.
So the question that
roams above both camps is whether the TSK will
stop Gul's march toward the presidential palace.
Even strong supporters of such a move think it is
unlikely.
It is more reasonable to believe
that the military will accept the decision of the
Parliament resulting from a democratic process.
The generals will, however, be on their guard to
catch the president doing something out of line
with his secularist oath.
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