CHP: Quo Vadis?
Here is a quick X-ray of the Turkish "left" in the Turkish Parliament:
According to various Turkish press accounts, Turkey`s oldest Party CHP (People`s Republican Party), founded by Ataturk himself, has failed to come up with a candidate in almost 1,000 (province-, sub-province- and municipal level) electoral districts for the upcoming March 28 local elections.
In at least 30 of the 81 Turkish provinces CHP seems to be unable to register a mayoral candidate.
CHP, the secular and social-democrat (and the only) opposition party in the Turkish Parliament which rightfully has criticized the ruling “conservative-democrat” AKP in the past for not giving any chance to female politicians (AKP does not have a single female mayoral candidate in the March 28 elections), has itself proposed only 1 (one-bir-uno) female candidate so far.
In Eskisehir, CHP lost the right to participate in the local elections because (believe it or not) the party organization failed to file the necessary application forms in time.
That`s why I could not help myself smiling when I`ve read in the Turkish press a speech that CHP Chairman Deniz Baykal has delivered on Jan 13, 2004 during CHP`s Party General Assembly meeting. On that day Mr. Baykal has said: “Turkey needs serious solutions; serious economic approaches. Turkey needs a serious political stability that can be provided by a social democrat party who knows what it is doing.”
How can a social-democrat party that cannot even file electoral paperwork on time expect to be taken seriously? Can such a party be called a political organization that “knows what it is doing”?
Late Ismet Inonu, a genuine hero of the Turkish war of national liberation and the second President of the Republic who served as CHP`s larger-than-life Chairman between 1938-72, was known for his dismissive retort for things that were either unbelievable or did not make sense: “Hadi canim sen de!” -- which could perhaps be translated as “Forget about it!”
I have no idea why all of a sudden I`ve remembered Ismet Pasha.
3 Views on GME
The Greater Middle East (or “Greater Mideast” as sometimes also referred to) (GME) project, which carries the “Made in U.S.A .” stamp all over it, continues to draw the attention of Turkish commentators due to the impression that Turkey will be the “model country” at the center of a new geopolitical formation covering not only the traditional Middle East but other countries as well ranging from Morocco to the three Caucasus Republics, Iran, Afghanistan and even Pakistan. PM Erdogan has been quoted as saying that Diyarbakir would loom large in this new arrangement as the “capital of GME.”
The veteran foreign-affairs columnist Semih Idiz of Aksam has suggested that GME is perhaps fueled by the American version of the “white men`s burden (WMB)” concept that served as an ideological cover for the expansion of British colonialism in India and the Far East. If that is the case, Idiz recommended American policy makers to read not only Rudyard Kipling (regarded by many as an apologist for the WMB thesis) but E.M. Foster (of A Passage to India fame) as well who pointed out to the difficulties of maintaining such a project.
Cuneyt Ulsever of Hurriyet pointed out a more immediate concern driving the GME “project” (which is not a “plan” yet):
America`s decision to battle international terrorism all across the globe and thus to create GME as a buffer zone in this war against new sources of threat emanating from “that region” of the world. He also suggested that GME is a good election investment for President Bush. He is correct on both points.
Ali H. Aslan of Zaman provided even a more nuanced and complete (if conspiratorial) picture of GME by making a distinction between the agendas of U.S. Department of State, on the one hand, and U.S. Department of Defense, FBI, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security on the other. Using the metaphor of “good cop vs. bad cop,” Aslan suggested that the latter group carries out a “merciless war” against international terrorism while the former is trying to dry out the “swamp” that breeds terrorism by pushing for expanded democracy, human rights and a “softer Islam” in the Greater Middle East. Both agendas and approaches are integral to the GME project, Aslan argues.
To support his reasoning, Aslan mentions the recent visits U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of State Alan Larson (who is responsible from economic development issues) has made to Ramallah, Jerusalem, Amman, Riyadh and Cairo. The warm welcome with which Turkish Director General of Religious Affairs Ali Bardakoglu was received last week at the White House is another pointer to the Turkey`s new proposed role in the GME as an “exemplary Muslim democracy” in the region.
I am not ready to call the GME an “Expanded February 28 Project” like Aslan did (referring to the “silent coup” that forced pro-Islamist PM Erbakan to resign in 1997). However I think Aslan is correct in emphasizing Washington`s nuanced carrots-and-sticks approach to the GME project.
As to my own reflections on the GME idea:
- I am not aware of a single Arab country who is ready to accept Turkey as “a model.”
For the last twenty years Turkey, for example, has proposed in various occasions to mediate in the “Middle East Conflict,” that is, the increasingly bloody and ruthless struggle between the Palestinian Authority, Government of Israel, and a variety of Islamic resistance and terror organizations in the region. I do not believe that the Turkish offer received any serious consideration beyond the usual diplomatic exchanges.
Perhaps the Arabs still remember that Turkey was one of the first countries in the world, after the United States, that recognized the new State of Israel back in 1948. Plus, especially in countries like Syria, Lebanon and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , the legacy of the Ottoman rule is still alive among the public and the intelligentsia. We also know full well that there is no love lost between the Shiite Iran, Shiite/Arab/Kurdish Iraq, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and Turkey. After the First Gulf War, Turkey was the only country conspicuously missing in the full-page ads that Kuwait government bought in The New York Times and The Washington Post to thank all the allied countries. Egypt has never showed any interest in taking the back seat to Turkey`s lead in the region.
So for whom exactly a secular and parliamentarian Turkey is supposed serve as a model in GME, is something that is not very clear to me. Not for Armenia for sure. Then for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Afghanistan, perhaps?
And is that enough to render Turkey “a hub” [a term that Amb. Richard Holbrooke was very fond of using for Turkey] in the new GME map?
- Turkey is not a brand new democracy. Turkey has been the “only Muslim democracy” in the region way since 1923.
So the fact that the United States has warmed up to Turkey now not mainly as a military-strategic partner as in the past but also as an “exemplary democratic” country rubbed some anti-AKP commentators the wrong way.
Such commentators argue that this proposed “new role” for Turkey is more a political boost for the AKP government`s "agenda" than a genuine appreciation of Turkey`s well-established secular parliamentary democracy. They are wondering aloud what took Washington this long to appreciate the Turkish democracy despite its deficiencies and shortcomings."September 11” is a reply that does not strike such commentators as genuine given the odd fact that there are many people in Turkey today who actually believe that "CIA has planned and executed the September 11 attacks."
I expect to see more GME fireworks as the United States gets closer to the November 2004 Presidential Election and Turkey approaches the December 2004 deadline for the EU to announce (perhaps) a reasonably proximate date to kick off the full-membership talks.