Once again I am exercising my power as this blog’s macdaddy
to go off topic and discuss some pressing matters in Turkish politics. To say that Turkish politics is going through
an interesting time is clearly an understatement. Not only has Turkey recently embarked on a
disturbing reversion from solidly illiberal to near authoritarian governance,
they are wrestling with fundamental constitutional changes of selecting their president and the authority of the office. The most charitable
characterization of the care in which these changes have taken would be
reckless abandon. But we need to back up
for one moment to contextualize the changes in post-1980 environment.
The republic president is an office that carries mostly
ceremonial powers. While he is
technically the commander in chief of the armed forces and carries a veto power
over the parliament, military autonomy ensures that he exercises no real power
over military affairs and parliament can override a veto with procedures no
more difficult than a majority vote or two.
Formerly, the president of the Republic was chosen in a series of votes
taken in parliament. Generally, the high
numbers of parties in parliament and the deference (read sycophantic
capitulation) MPs would show to the military, ensured that the president would
have relatively broad support amongst MPs and be properly vetted by the TSK
(central military command). Until 2007,
this worked swimmingly for the TSK, as you’d expect it would given that they
wrote the constitution themselves. That
is until the rise of the AKP. As a
result of the 2002 election, the AKP had a solid majority in the parliament,
the first government in a generation that didn’t require a crazy quilt of
coalition for a confidence vote.
In 2007, Turkey stepped as close as it had to a military
coup as it had since 1997’s “post modern coup” where PM Erbakan resigned just
as tanks began to roll out of the barracks in Ankara’s suburb of Sincan. Just to give you sense of the military
posture in Ankara, it’s a surrounded by military bases, with tens of thousands
of troops (not just TSK bureaucrats) permanently stationed therein. A very visible reminder close to my old home
near Umitkoy, was a tank on permanent display next to the freeway with it’s
barrel pointed directly at the parliament building, a symbolic cue proudly
displayed with the subtlety of a sledgehammer (and yes, I checked the line on
Google Earth). But I digress. The constitutional crisis centered around PM
Erdogan’s nomination of then foreign minister Abdulah Gul. Erdogan had the audacity to appoint Gul
without vetting him through the military or the political opposition, as his
majority in parliament was sufficient to carry the vote without any other
support in the later rounds of balloting.
Despite following the military’s constitution to the letter, the
Kemalist establishment was furious, demanding that a new election be called
before the president be chosen. Rumor
has it, that a meeting of the national security council had been held
discussing the possibility of a coup (a right they reserved for themselves in
the constitution, ain’t that peachy) and that every force commander wanted to
pull the trigger, save the chairman Yasar Buyukanit, who ordered a “wait an
see” posture. Long story short, the coup
was avoided, a parliamentary election was held with the AKP taking a larger
share of the vote, and Abdullah Gul became president with as clear of a mandate
from electorate as possible and the tacit ascent of the MHP.
To avoid this sort of nonsense in the future, the AKP
forwarded a national referendum to amend the presidential selection system by
throwing the decision to popular vote.
Well the geniuses in the AKP elite didn’t really think out a few obvious
contingencies that even foreigners like me were asking. Along with the popular vote, the single 7
year term of president was shortened to 5 years, with the possibility of a
single reelection. But how would this
apply to President Gul? Must he abide by
the old term? Was he eligible to seek reelection? No one had answers until the constitutional
court chimed in, basically pulling a ruling out of the air. In fairness, they had to this time, as they had no
guidance whatsoever in the constitution, the amendment, or the law.
Another lingering question is the partisan
nature of the office. Formally, the
office is non-partisan. Though the nominations are made with the support
of a given number of MPs and then a series of parliamentary votes chose the
winner, once the person took office, they would eschew their former political ties, rise above petty squabbling, and focus on being a figure of unity in a highly fragmented political system. With a half dozen or so parties in any given parliament, a multi-party consensus (albeit militarily facilitated) had to be reached. Not so anymore with the decision made by the electorate and MPs free to nominate whomever they wish. While Gul has done this far better than most
had predicted in that he's not been as overtly partisan ad some had feared, the question remains for future holders of the office: Can a future president rise above the fray
now that they’re popularly elected in a ridiculously polarized system? Smart money would suggest no.
With Gul’s term coming to an end, and an election looming,
Turkey is again at a crossroads. Who
will be the candidates? What role are
the parties going to play? What other
changes are in store for the office?
On the question of who, this is still an open question. Erdogan is clearly in the running. Despite the office not carrying much power at
the moment, it still is an office of high prestige, and this schnook’s all
about showiness and prestige (the tackier and cheaper, the better). Also, he’s got designs on transforming the
constitutional powers of the office. Given his personality and nihilistic political ethic, he might not
wait for the formalities of constitutional amendment. While he and his supporters would tell you
he’s aiming for a French style semi-presidential system, the reality’s
certainly far darker. He’s already got
more relative power than the French President does. At best, we’d see a Russian model of weak institution with the locus of power being where the boss wants it, or possibly the Hugo Chavez model of hard
fisted, slash and burn kleptocracy. This
rightly sends shivers up and down the spines of everyone in the various
opposition parties, or those with any liberal democratic sensibilities. This puts the opposition parties in a
conundrum and the structural incentives of the new presidential selection
system is pushing them towards (wait for it…) a non-partisan invisible
primary! Well shit fire, who’d a thunk
that?
Normally the main parties of the opposition are farcical,
and I don’t think this is contained to the AKP era. Their irresponsibility is probably due in
large part to both the crazy
assed coalitions of the 90s and the absolute majoritarian nature of governance. Apologies
for the language, but that is the only way I can describe it. What else would you label a government
composed of conservative, fascist, and socialist parties (well, socialist for
Turkey) as they had in the wake of the 1999 elections? Other coalitions weren’t much prettier. How does an opposition even begin to oppose
such governments? Near as I can tell,
throw rocks at whatever it does, and hope you hit a soft spot on occasion
forcing a confidence vote or early election.
Not a particularly strong model for electorally responsible parties.
As to the absolute majoritarian bit, this is another curse
of Turkish illiberal democracy. In days
past, when coalitions were necessary for confidence votes, coalition partners
were hardly partners in any sense.
They’d simply divi up the ministries as per negotiated terms and
exercise exclusively within their domains, each party using the ministries’
budgets like ATMs and dolling out the positions to their peeps. Even communication was difficult between
ministries of different parties, as several foreign NGOs discovered in the relief
efforts of the 1999 earthquake. What
kept graft somewhat in check was the fact that not a single party controlled
the whole pie, and that there was a constant churning of governments preventing
any one party from controlling too much, for too long. The advantage of that natural check on
corruption came at the cost of good governance and stability. When politics is simply a zero-sum game to
control patronage, neither those in government or opposition are particularly
incented to create viable, programmatic platforms to present to the
voters. But again I digress.
In the current AKP era, opposition has been limited to two
parties: the CHP and the MHP (yes, there is a Kurdish party, though my heart is
with them, their marginalization is so severe that they can hardly be
considered a “normal” opposition party as they stand alone in this). Both parties are caught in a trap of trying
desperately to maintain their bases, which by necessity limits their
programmatic appeals to the broader electorate.
The CHP is a nationalist party that waves the Ataturk flag
most briskly of the lot. Despite the fact that it
quite literally isn’t the party
Ataturk founded (that party was closed with all the others in 1980), the “new CHP”
founder Deniz Baykal successfully claimed their label and substantial financial
assets in the early 1990s. An old expat
friend of mine from my Ankara days, referred to them as “sad old
Kemalists.” Though a bit of
generalization as there are some young folks in the party, it’s not that far
off psychologically. The base of the
party is largely the same today as it was throughout the first six or so
decades of the Republican era: people who are part of the military-bureaucratic
elite or the primary beneficiaries thereof.
Though Baykal is now out, brought down in a sex scandal a few years ago,
the current leadership follows the standard Turkish model of cadre parties
where power is highly centralized, intraparty democracy is non-existent, and
order is maintained through highly personalized networks within the party. The closest the CHP comes to a political
platform these days is a collective mourning of their lost privileges of old
and rather nondescript appeals to secularism that generally comes out as
rather course anti-religious rhetoric.
The MHP is in no better shape. The MHP is a neo-fascist party that picked up
on a thread of racial identity politics that emerged, gee wiz, in the 1930s and 40s. Turkish identity has always been rather
nebulous, but I think it’s safe to say that
most Turks take a rather benign definition of it, framed in Ataturk’s often
cited “Ne mutlu Türküm diyene.” Roughly translated: How happy is one who
calls oneself a Turk. As Ersin
Kalaygioglu puts it, if you say you’re a Turk, you’re a Turk! I can dig that. Not so the MHP. They’ve long exhibited the key traits of a
true fascist party: ultra-nationalism, wrapped up in a biologically determined
identity, a rejection of liberal individuality, voracious xenophobia, proclivity towards violence, glorification of
an imagined history, ideally reinforced by a heavy handed state. While their current leader Devlet Bahceli says reasonable sounding things from time to time
regarding the abuses of power by the AKP, never forget Bahceli came to power in
the party and maintains his power in the party by the naked use of force. Thankfully the electoral base of this party is
a bit smaller than the CHP’s, but it usually wins enough votes to break the ten
percent threshold making it a persistent player. Their politics are what you’d expect from a
fascist party – repugnant. While they’ve
gone through some window dressing in attempts to mainstream themselves for
broader appeal (with a degree of success), their core fascistic values remain intact. Straying too far from them has proved
risky in the past, and they’re unlikely to stray too much in the future
(they’ve made some consensus to Islamist elements in years past, which pushed
out some hard core identifiers, but that’s another story).
So, what now? Both of
these parties are undoubtedly going through an internal invisible primary right now to
forward some names to the Turkish people.
I don’t rightly care about that, since they’ll lose. As the invisible primary is all about
triangulating on viable candidates, which often means going with a number two
choice, here’s my advice to both the CHP and MHP: Go with Gul.
That’s right, I said it.
Go with Gul.
I say that not for their sakes, but the sake of Turkish democracy. Here’s why…
In the current political landscape both the opposition
parties are sure losers. I don’t care
who they nominate, the Turkish electorate will not go for another CHP hack moaning
about how hard it is to be a White Turk these days, or an MHP blowhard doing his
fascist thing, nor should they. Should both these parties nominate their
stereotypical selves, hello President Erdogan.
Gul has a genuine shot here. His
presidency has been unremarkable, which a
Turkish presidency ought to be.
While he’s taken heat for giving ascent to some repugnant AKP
legislation, his veto would have been
superfluous in the end as the parliament would just override it on majority
vote. Is he in my ideological camp? Of course not, none of these people are. But in democratic, electoral politics you play the cards you’re dealt.
Is such a marriage easy?
No. Hell no! Despite inhabiting a lot of similar
ideological space (statism, nationalism, xenophobia), it goes against the
virtual DNA of both the MHP and CHP to work together given their history. They are nearly as harsh of one another as
they are of the AKP. But if Bulent
Ecevit could hammer out a coalition deal with his DSP and the MHP, there’s
always that possibility (the DSP inhabited identical ideological
space as the CHP does, just with a different leader, did I mention parties were personalized in
Turkey?). Though the result of that government was
clear disaster, negotiating and governing with that coalition was a far taller
order than agreeing on a candidate for a largely ceremonial position. All of which is nothing to say of the
difficult pill to be swallowed by the CHP and MHP agreeing to endorse Gul individually. He’s the most prominent face of the AKP save
Erdogan himself, and his very nomination to president was the cause of the 2007
crisis. But recall, that it was the MHP that facilitated Gul's election in 2007, by attending a quorum call (a quorum that the constitutional court pulled out it's ass in its absurd annulment of the first attempt at Gul's election).
Though I hate false dichotomies for the sake of rhetorical
leverage, the way I see it, the opposition in Turkey has two options: nominate you own candidates to face Tayyip, get your ass handed to you in the election, and hold on for
whatever grand, looney, and destructive ideas he’s got in store for the office
and the nation. Or, go with Gul. You have a known quantity who’s probably
not going to recklessly blow holes in the constitutional order to immortalize
himself as the greatest statesman that ever ruled, anywhere, anytime. Are these good options? Not really, but again, play the cards you are dealt. Gul might be an ace in the hole.
Make no mistake, I’ve got clear baggage in this. I think the current constitution is rotten to
the core. Militaries suck at
constitution writing; period. Additionally, my disdain for all the main political parties ranges from strong to
absolute, as liberal democratic values aren’t embraced by any of them. But we must grasp at whatever shreds of
democracy we can to prevent Turkish democracy from backsliding into genuine
authoritarianism. For all its faults,
the present constitution is probably better than whatever Erdogan has in mind. And though Gul and I share little in
political values, he clearly doesn’t have the messianic hubris that Erdogan
displays. Should an Erdogan-Gul contest
be held, it’s anyone’s guess as to the result as I’ve seen no polling on it;
but I like those odds far better than an assured Erdogan win which the CHP and
MHP will hand deliver if they insist on nominating their own candidates for the
presidency.
Who knows, perhaps Erdogan getting spanked by Gul would signal the end of his career. If only we could be so lucky.
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