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The December 24, 1995 elections
brought to the fore the two faces of Turkey. The fatigue of the political system
became obvious. The inability of traditional actors to respond to or even to contain
the new values, priorities and demands of the electorate has been exposed. Yet, the
commitment of the majority of the population to the sustenance and continuation of
the regime has also been underscored. This commitment is accompanied by a strong
demand for substantive change as well. This essay will try to examine the underpinnings
of Turkey's Janus-faced politics in terms of its dynamism against her atrophy, its
hopes against its concerns, its strength against its fragility.
There are three basic
developments that generate hope for liberating Turkey's politics and its economy
from the oppressive constraints of Turkey's political past. The first is the "taming
of Turkey's center-right"; the second is the "metamorphosis" of civil society and;
the last is the external push for democratization. Needless to say, each of these
pressures contain within themselves dynamics both conducive and inimical to a new
democratic opening.
Conversion of the Center-Right To the Global "New Thinking"
As one pole of the
ideological divide, the Turkish Right historically incorporated three visible positions:
the religious right, the radical nationalist right and the center-right represented
by the Democrat Party (1950-1960) (Demokrat Parti - DP) and Justice Party (1961-1980)
(Adalet Partisi - AP) tradition which held power during most of the multi-party period
since 1946. In the polarized climate of the 1970s, the Turkish Right was foremost
a bulwark of anti-communism and conservatism committed to populist and bureaucratic
controls over society. Party politics was structured in relation to the state-administered
incentives created by the populist state. Political demands focused on what the state
had to offer and distribute. This state-friendly position also explains why conservative
elements historically overshadowed the tiny liberal factions in the center-right
tradition.
In the twilight of
the Cold War era, with socialism and nationalist developmental models in retreat
globally, Turkish Right gained a new potential to shape Turkey's future and challenge
the traditional forces in its midst. The most significant change in Turkey's right-wing
politics in the last 15 years was the way it combined its commitment to the free-market
economy with a democratic sounding agenda which "seemed" freed from its old authoritarian
conservative tone. "Our Right", as elsewhere in the world, became global and transnational
embracing the agenda of "popular capitalism, the minimal state, law and order as
the basis of a new international political consensus."
The political agent
that was responsible for Turkey's transition into the new era was the center-right
Motherland Party (ANAP)founded by Turgut Özal in 1983. Despite the contradictory
tendencies that it contained, the party set a new trend in Turkey's political tradition
in three major ways: First, it ended theTurkish center-right's historical suspicion
of liberalism. Until the conservative elements came to dominate the party in the
wake of the election of the leader, Turgut Özal, to the presidency in 1989,
the party emphasized liberalism as the primary component of its discourse. Özal's
commitment to an expanded political space for the new social actors set the course
for Islamic and Kurdish demands for a new consensus that recognized their differences.
Second, ANAP mobilized Turkey's traditionally conservative constituencies and some
Islamic platforms around the cause of economic liberalism without using the disguise
of official Kemalism and secularism.
Third, although the
party's com-mitment to economic liberalism has not created a neo-liberal nightwatchman
state, it still represented the first frontal assault against the policing and sentry
role of the bureaucracy. Privatization, monetary stability and austerity policies
all pointed in that direction. The unorthodox and personal decision-making style
of Özal, who bypassed democratic mechanisms, also started as a by-product an
antipolitical trend which was emulated most successfully by the present Prime Minister,
Tansu Çiller.
By the late 1980s,
the True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi - DYP) had emerged with the ambition
to recapture the lost leadership of Turkey's Right that once belonged to its predecessors,
the DP and AP. The DYP's ideological acceptance of the dominant paradigm of neo-liberalism
built around a free-market perspective was problematic because of its pro-state,
conservative ideological past. The DP-AP tradition was rooted in a contradiction:
it incorporated the popular resentment against the state into a basically state-oriented
discourse. Consequently, pragmatism substituted for clarity of thought.
Between the 1991 and
the 1995 general elections, the DYP became the senior party of a series of coalition
governments with the social democratic Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk
Partisi - CHP), first under the leadership of Süleyman Demirel and since 1993,
Tansu Çiller. Whereas Demirel continued the time-tested approaches and policies
of his party, Çiller set out to transform the DYP. In constructing a new identity
capable of competing with that of ANAP, Çiller aimed at completing the mission
of Özal to establish free-market capitalism. Ironically, in their contradictory
commitments, both leaders revived the DYP's historic suspicion of liberalism and
its old state-friendly posture. They brought back "pragmatism" and "conservatism"
as the most important ideological faultlines of this tradition. For this reason,
Çiller's experiment with liberalism deserves to be analysed as one major source
of Turkey's lethargy in the 1990s.
The Clamourous Civil Society: Salvation
or Protection?
The visibility of
civil society in Turkey in the last decade is basically attributable to two interrelated
but externally induced developments: the first is the democratizing impulse of the
post-Cold War climate in the world. The second, ironically, is the changing features
of Turkey's social structure which the new orthodoxy gave rise to. The new shift
to strategies of "wealth creation" instead of the decades-old strategy of "wealth
distribution" by the state has forced key social groups and strata to rely on their
own schemes and devices, with a limited degree of autonomy from the state.
On the surface, the
political space seems to be expanding to include political Islam, if not the Kurdish
political movement, which is widely perceived as a threat to the unity of the state.
Despite the political risks of dissent on some sensitive issues like the Kurdish
question and the military, a vigorous intellectual life gives voice to the emerging,
multi-dimensional civil society. A multitude of radio stations and TV- channels have
become forums of lively and pertinent debate. Liberal economic policies of the 1980's
and the globalization process have promoted Turkey's businessmen into the privileged
position of not only becoming partners in policy making but also of initiating new
thinking about Turkey's problems, most notably on the Kurdish question.
However, depending
on the perspective we take it, different images of civil society emerge. It is indeed
correct to observe that there is a great deal of enterprise, resilience and vitality
in many spheres of national life which are not controlled by the state. Yet it would
be a mistake to conclude from this vibrant image of civil society that the role,
power and strategies of the state have regressed so completely as to accomodate all
the demands of this diversified and differentiated entity. To begin with, the pragmatism
of the new right and the pressures of the Kurdish problem have led to the primacy
of the economic and security issues over the question of "deepening" Turkish democracy.
As a result, most critical decisions are made by the civilian and military security
apparatuses and the techno-bureaucratic aides of the Prime Minister. Politics is
reduced to the technomanagement of "immediate" issues without a clear and coherent
long-term perspective on pressing socio-political concerns. Ironically enough, this
technically-oriented focus is in tune wih the perception of politics by the masses
as a search for "solutions" to everyday problems.
The compelling historical
evidence from the Western experience suggests that "civil society offers... no salvations,
but only protection" (Ignatief, p. 131) from the arbitrary power of the state. The
efforts of Turkey's awakening civil society, however, seem to be channeled towards
a discourse of salvation from everyday hardship rather than resistance to subordination
to the state. This problem is obviously related to the existence of a political culture
that prioritizes state-building over the preservation of fundamental individual rights:
Turkish citizens have historically retained an abstract belief in the legitimacy
of the state, although they consider the democratic procedures through which this
legitimacy is maintained as doubtful. The same ambivalence is also observed in attitudes
towards the military: There is a large consensus for a non-military solution to Turkey's
ills, although the military is regarded as the most confidence-inspiring institution
in the country.
In line with this understanding
of state and democracy, the major vehicle for the clamour of civil society has become
political Islam(s) whose main platform has been built around greater social justice
and a better life for the masses who are by oppesed rampant inflation, high unemployment
and endemic corruption in public life.
External Push for Democracy: From Liberal
Parody to Genuine Democracy?
The historic decision
reached by the European Parliament on 13 December, 1995 to approve the Customs Union
(CU) between Turkey and the EU is a significant turning point in Turkey's struggle
to integrate with the West. There are three critical reasons for considering this
event as a radical opportunity for transforming the country's face. In the first
place, the ‘prospect" that the CU opens up for full integration wih the EU, at an
unknown future date, makes it more than a simple agreement on synchronizing customs
duties. It provides an instance of "symbolic politics" which testifies to the durability
of Turkey's two hundred-year-old commitment to Westernization as a goal and the model
for change and reform. With the recent pendulum swing to ideals of democracy, human
rights and the rule of law as canons of Western liberal tradition, the CU epitomizes
a shift in the Turkish elite's commitment from "keeping up with Europe" to "being
in Europe". The price tag for this is, of course, full democratization and nothing
less than full democratization.
In a newspaper interview,
the French ambassador to Turkey, François Dopffer summarized succintly the
uncompromising nature of conditions for Turkey's admission to the EU: "The Politics
of the EU is based on democracy. Those countries wishing to be part of the EU must
share the democratic ideals of Europe".
Secondly, the economic benefits of CU in terms of promoting foreign investment, free
market conditions and exports for certain key sectors and regions are expected to
gain a momentum of their own. Lastly and more importantly, the protagonists of integration
with Europe see this as a solution to coping with the rising appeal of political
Islam. But the issue of integration with Europe has already intensified the polarization
between secular forces of all political shades and the Islamic camp more than ever.
The DYP and its social democratic coalition partner, CHP, hailed the agreement on
CU as a victory and capitalized on it in their election platform. The rival parties
on the right and the left, ANAP, and the Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti
- DSP), together with the pro-religious Welfare Party (Refah Partisi - RP) have used
the "unfavorable conditions" of the CU to attack their opponents. Thus they also
fermented anti-Western sentiment among the masses, which is aggravated by the vagueness
of the Western stand towards the Kurdish problem and the Bosnian fiasco.
A more nuanced analysis
would show that this almost violent anti-Western reaction of the statist ecole to
the CU provides the best testimony to the attraction of the West for the Turkish
"mind-set". The determination to be part of Europe can help ease Turkey's identity
crisis in a simple way: it can bring into the open the fragile synthesis between
statism and democracy as well as between Islam and democracy. If the expected move
towards political and economic liberalism comes -and this is an important "if"-,
it would position the masses not only against secular authoritarianism of the statist
forces, but also against the authoritarian Islamic platforms. When the paradigm of
"liberalism" reaches its demise, the paradigm of an all-prescribing Islamic salvation
will also come to an end.
The Politics of Anti-Politics
On a global level,
in the absence of a left-wing ideology, the politics of anti-politics became the
organizing principle of the new right as the only platform embracing reform, change
and renovation against the social and political status quo. This new style is being
promoted by weak governments that float over organized interests since corporatist
and populist networks of representation and integration have partially been replaced
by free market orthodoxy. Thus, as a woman politician epitomizing both Turkey's energy
and lethargy, Çiller has run on a strong antipolitical platform emphasizing
her identity as a political outsider untarnished by association with past statist
and populist practices. She addresses people directly, carrying the image of a non-politician,
bypassing organizational channels (including her own party), telling her audiences
how they were shortchanged by past politics of clientalism and populism. Her line,
"the state's money is people's money" aims at creating a people/state dichotomy characteristic
of authoritarian populist practices historically encountered in many parts of the
non-Western world.
Today, the politics
of anti-politics or "politics of the heart" represent perhaps the most serious danger
in Turkey to the establishment of democratic legitimacy which is, after all, what
"democratization" efforts are all about. This leadership cult, expresses the power
strategy of a non-confident elite whose representativeness and support is highly
doubtful. Without effective channels of mediation between the state and civil society,
this style becomes a cover for concentration of power in the hands of a few nonelected
officials who link the government's legitimacy to the efficiency of a managerial
state, rather than to the expansion of democracy, concern for the rule of law and
human rights.
The New Nationalism against "the Other'
One important dynamic
that undermines civil society as an arena where politics of difference takes shape
is the emerging nationalism of the 1990's which limits the political imagination
by the constraints of its priorities. Just when the threat of "international communism"
disappeared, the rising Kurdish "problem" replaced it as a more potent threat to
national unity. The perception of such a threat created the excuse for reproducing
a monopolistic power strategy. The aim of this strategy was once more to posit the
homogeneity of the nation.
What is new about the
post-1990 nationalism is the way it claims to transcend the tension between being
part of a global/Western order and the authenticity of the nation. Kurdish nationalism
acts as the catalyst in promoting the cultural and ethnic authenticity of Turkishness
within the parameters of the most global reality of all, "neo-liberalism".
The core constituency
of the new nationalism is expanding fast among both the modern and the provincial
sectors and especially among the youth. This latter is the first generation of Turkey's
15-year old process of depoliticization. Fascinated by the pragmatic and moderate
tone of the new right; reacting to the disintegrative potential for the state of
Kurdish claims for acceptance of their distinct identity; quite content to live within
the existing power configuration which has embraced reform and change and introduced
Western consumption patterns to the country; averse to different modes of thought
and life, Turkey's nationalist youth illustrate the fragility of the recent liberalization
process in the country.
Up until the eve of
the December 24, 1995 general elections, when the contending People's Democracy Party
(Halkin Demokrasi Partisi - HADEP) adopted a distinctly left- wing platform, the
spokesmen for the Kurdish identity struggle adopted a weak political discourse devoid
of any sensitivity to any political issues confronting the country and the region.
Lack of a "political" stand by a series of Kurdish political parties has been one
of the reasons – admittedly a weak one as compared with the state's oppression –responsible
for narrowing the political space for the expression of Kurdish popular demands.
Political Parties
If one historic weakness
of Turkey's political parties has been their lack of ideological principles, the
others are leadership tutelage and patronage-centered politics which prevent them
from appealing across "differences" to achieve representation. As Turkey enters into
the age of identity politics, the process of coopting different identities into the
ethno- and male-centered nature of representation continues and the parties suppress
diverse ideas and different identities based on gender, class, ethnicity within their
organizational set-up. While political parties fail to cut across differences and
wash their hands of identity politics, they bring about a deep crisis of representation.
On another level, the
fascination of almost all political parties with centrism, pragmatism and market
capitalism has made it very difficult for them to distinguish their ideologies and
policies from the others. Since democracy cannot function where political parties
cannot define their ideologies and platforms clearly, Turkey's parties, which were
once the fulcrum of politics, have been reduced to empty shells fighting over the
spoils of office. The drastic decline in their strength exacerbates a larger problem:
the deterioriation of public confidence in the fundamental institutions of democracy.
It is the personalized political style of "the politics of anti politics" which gains.
One typical feature
of all Turkish political parties has been the unquestionable authority of the leader
unconstrained by party structures. The locus of power and initiative within the parties
has always been in leadership. In the nomination process of the candidates before
the December 24, 1995 elections, leaders picked the candidates almost single-handedly
without the local party machine having any say. This attests to the obvious: There
is very little internal democracy inside Turkey's political parties. So much so that
it is practically impossible for those who criticise the leader to be reelected.
More significantly, the almost God-like position of the leader helps to reproduce
the existing relations of hierarchy and the status-quo within the parties and the
polity.
December 24,1995 Twilight Zone Elections
Elections are supposed
to do two things: To reflect major political differences in society, and to pass
a popular judgment on the performance of the incumbent government.
In this sense, the
December 24, 1995 elections have proven to be dys-functional for two reasons: First,
"ideological" and "plebiscitary" or "issue-based" voting behaviour appeared to have
been critically weakened. Secondly, the pervasiveness of the "failure of choice"has
been confirmed. The solutions to critical issues like the Kurdish question; the reduction
of unemployment and inflation; the elimination of corruption; improvements in the
drastically substandard educational and health services; distribution of justice
and income were not integrated to alternative views and values in line with new societal
goals. There was basically no choice to make and no reason to give any party a commanding
majority.
Without waiting for
the dust to settle, how can the election results be interpreted? Let us begin with
the center-right. Although it has suffered a 12.4 per cent loss in 4 years, since
the total votes ANAP and DYP have scored is still 38.8 per cent, this makes it the
largest pole of power within the political spectrum. In terms of tilting the political
balance in favour of the radical right, the 12.4 per cent loss is not as disastrous
as some journalists claim. There are, however, two important qualifications to be
made with regard to the power of the center-right. The first is that neither ANAP
nor the DYP can be considered as winners of these elections. While the ANAP suffered
a 4.4 percent decline between 1991 and 1995 general elections and scored 19.6 per
cent on December 24, the DYP's loss for the same period is 8 points and its respective
share of votes in the last elections is 19.2 per cent. It seems, at first sight,
that despite the 50:50 split of votes between them, ANAP has managed to lose less
support than the DYP.
However, ANAP has consistently
wasted away the liberal and centrist legacy of Turgut Özal which had attracted
the support of 45.1 per cent of the electorate in 1983. Furthermore, to stem the
tide of the RP, it put up ultra-conservative candidates in its party lists and established
a superficial anti-Western front on the central issue of CU to capture the conservative
votes that remained cool towards the RP. The DYP, on the other hand, used Çiller's
female identity as the symbol of the secular Republican tradition for the same purpose
of undermining the power base of the RP. Leaving aside the difficult question of
establishing "pro" or "anti" Western dispositions of any party in Turkey, this electoral
machination highlighted the opportunistic creation of a new voting axis, aimed braking
the rise of the RP.
The percentage share
Çiller's DYP obtained "deserves appreciation" as Korkut Özal, a seasoned
politician and the brother of the late president, ironically stated. Indeed, considering
the fact that since her to power two years ago Prime Minister Çiller has not
been able to solve many of the pressing issues facing the country, the chief factor
that must have prevented a more precipitous decline of the DYP vote must be her record
on the security issue, i.e. her fight against terrorism along with her popularity
among women. These motives are consistent with regional election results which show
that Çiller's DYP has scored the highest increases in its votes in the more
affluent and therefore more security-conscious Western region.
There is a second reservation
that must be made about the present strength and configuration of the center-right.
The media, the business world and Turkey's political elite are united in demanding
an ANAP -DYP coalition government in the short run and the two parties unification
as ANAYOL in the long-run. This is a wishful formula based on a wishful reading of
the election results. It aims at bringing stability into politics by uniting the
center-right. However, the truth of the matter is that the two parties do not take
an identical stand on key issues, the agreement on CU being the most notable example.
One could even uphold the opposite thesis that the closeness of the votes given to
each party shows that their electoral bases do not wish to see a "party system realignment".
In that sense, the "savage" TV debate between ANAP's and DYP's leaders before the
elections was based on the correct insight by Yilmaz and Çiller concerning
the relentless nature of the competition between their support bases.
All this, however,
is not to say that a "parliamentary realignment" between ANAP and DYP, backed by
DSP, cannot and should not take place to sustain a coalition government with a parliamentary
majority. All that needs to be done is to reach a compromise over the name of the
new prime minister.
Is There A Significant Shift in the
Fortunes of "Radical' Parties?
The RP has managed
to raise its votes from 19 per cent in the 1994 Provincial Council Elections to 21.3
per cent in 1995. As a party which has become the epicenter of Turkey's protest politics
voiced in half -religious, half mundane voice, this is a modest gain. In fact, it
is important to remember that today, in the absence of significant leftist politics,
the critique of the status quo finds expression in two dominant trends: Islamic politics
of RP and the politics of anti-politics of DYP. The 2.1 per cent advantage of RP
over DYP indicates a "limited" realignment of the voter around this half-Islamic,
half-pragmatic pole. The center-right and the RP have once more proven to be alternatives
capable of cutting the ground from under each anothers feet and forming a catastrophic
balance between themselves.
The problem with the
first-place showing of the RP is that this result has increased polarization in society.
It also exacerbated the distrust felt by the political elite, the media and those
secular segments who are intent on stemming the advance of the RP. It is easy to
understand the fears caused by the authoritarian and exploitative tendencies of the
RP both as a movement and an organization. But, the fine point to remember is that
despite its more efficient internal lay-out and superior activism, this party shares
the malady of other political parties in the system: it lacks internal democracy;
its messages are pragmatic, eclectic and confusing -varying from one region to another-;
it is beset by corruption; it is permeated with a pro-state mentality; it is populist.
In short, it plays by the rules of the game. RP's presentation of politics in a strict
"us" vs. "them" context goes a long way to eplain the aversion felt against it. The
secular elements in society do not want to be the "guinea pigs" for the experiment
of "Islamic thought" being put "in action", or of "the affairs of faith" turning
into "the affairs of state".
HADEP's exclusion from
parliament because of its inability to pass the national electoral threshold of 10%
is likely to antagonize and alienate its Kurdish constituencies. Although the Nationalist
Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi-MHP) met the same fate, many of its
cadres were carried into parliament in the DYP and ANAP tickets. It might be difficult
to explain why HADEP could not make inroads into the totality of the Kurdish population
of which it strives to be the legal representative. HADEP obtained well over half
the votes in Southeastern Provinces of the country where the Kurds constitute a majority.
Yet, it was singularly unsuccesful in attracting the support of large pockets of
Kurdish communities in the metropolitan areas of Turkey. The main cause for the poor
showing of the party should be sought in the failure of the leadership to project
its platform as that of a proper political party capable of acting as an effective
and moderate political tool for obtaining tangible results and a political solution
to the everyday pain and suffering of the Kurds.
The problem boils down
to the hard facts of political life which made HADEP a "goal unto itself". As a proto-party,
wobbling on its feet in terms of everything that a political party is expected to
embody, HADEP acted like a single-issue based interest group, trying to recruit promoters
for the Kurdish cause. Thus it, mostly spoke to the international gallery about the
inextricable problem in the region. It is via international pressure that HADEP and
its predecessor parties managed to bring an element of realism to the Kurdish tragedy.
When it was finally brought home to the "sight" and "mind" of Turkey, HADEP became
the symbol and focus of Turkey's deeply rooted fear of disintegration. As a result,
the party, just like its predecessors, found itself under impossible and irreconcilable
pressures: there was, on the one hand, state repression. Other pressure must obviously
have come from the PKK(The Kurdistan Workers Party) which wanted to be the real power
behind the scenes. Still another constraint came from intellectuals who asked the
party to take up a coherent political programme capable of appealing to broader sections
of the political community. Being equipped with a rather crude ideology, structure
and cadres and operating in a non-existent political space, the party was overwhelmed
by the unrealistic demands made on it. It would not be wrong to say that it went
into a self-destructive course out of despair.
All this, is not to
say that the dismal performance of HADEP at the polls points to the termination of
its role and its importance for the political system. Given the representation crisis
of the other political parties, whether it transforms itself into a new structure
or is superseded by another formation, a HADEP-like spokesman for Kurdish interests
seems to be a must in sustaining the grassroots representation in the political spectrum.
This way, the successor platform will not suffer the despair that being an "outsider"
brings. This will also contribute to the promotion of the democratic legitimacy of
system.
Center-Left
One definite loser
of these elections is the center-left as a whole. There has been a major defection
from the center-left in the past few years. It came down from a total share of 38
per cent in 1989 to today's 25.3 per cent. Even Ecevit's 14.6 per cent which shows
a 5.9 point rise, since the 1994 Provincial Council Elections, is not dazzling enough
to justify his radical shift to the right in the course of the last ten years.
The decline of CHP,
on the other hand, suffered considerable since it received its peak vote the last
15 years in the 1989 municipal elections (29 per cent). In the last elections, it
passed the national threshold by 0.7 per cent. The main factor responsible for this
situation is the subordination by the party of its agenda of distributive politics
and democratization to the neo-liberal orthodoxy since it became a junior coalition
partner in 1991. This economic philosophy caused a precipitous decline in the living
conditions of the urban constituencies where the CHP had its largest bloc of voters
in the past.
Anything Positive to Conclude?
The widespread disillusionment
of Turkey's electorate with the "idea" that everyday life will be made easier if
the government were put into the right hands is, in itself, an expression of Turkey's
energy and lethargy. On the positive side, there is now a deeply rooted belief that
structural reform, entry into the CU, dazzling new leaders or honest old ones and
new election laws cannot by themselves carry out for the much needed transformation.
There is a common feeling that what is needed is a change in the political culture
"invisible" to the naked eye but which forms the genuine basis for a new democratic
and nature Turkey.
Furthermore, there
is a positive paradox: on the eve of the elections, the most critical problem for
a large part of the electorate was to make a meaningful choice between what most
considered to be equally inefficient, corrupt and functionless political platforms.
Some even missed the old days when the left-right dimension provided a relatively
useful guideline for forming preferences towards issues, political parties and life
in general. However, insofar as practical politics is concerned, a decision had to
be made between good and bad sides, if not through the simplifying lenses of left
and right, through something very much like it: between those seeking change in the
direction of integration with the West, and those opposing it. As the turnout of
85 per cent clearly showed, the decline of faith in the political parties has not
translated into a loss of faith in the political system itself.
Dr. Ümit Cizre Sakallıoğlu
Department of Political Science, Bilkent University
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