ANKARA: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to nominate Abdullah Gul as candidate for the presidency of Turkey can only be labelled brave. Half of the country’s population, joined by the opposition and the General Staff of the armed forces (TSK), had expected that another, moderate personality would have been put forward for the post.
The election process begins from August 20 and will be completed by August 30.
Expectations of another candidate had grown stronger after the annulment last May 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 of the candidate designated by the Justice and Development (AK) Party. This pledge seemed to be confirmed when MPs appointed Koksal Toptan, a non-Islamist politician, as speaker of the parliament last week through consensus.
Erdogan has obviously acted against his own cautious views on the matter, most likely under severe pressure by hardcore members of his party. And this gives a chilly feeling in the spines of many citizens. Is he truly in control of his troops?
In a country where there are 72 million variations of solutions for every national issue, public opinion is increasingly split over the man who should lead the republic for the next seven years and, more critically, its army.
The office of the president is largely ceremonial, but it carries the high command of the TSK. And it is the latter that already four months ago rejected Gul’s candidature.
In fact, on April 27, right after cancellation of the first round of the election by the parliament because of lack of quorum, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, head of the General Staff, had 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 Feb 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 businessmen, 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 EU 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. AKP has in the past five years achieved spectacular results in economic growth, inflation containment, social stability, and in attracting record foreign direct investment.
In fact, neither friends nor opponents doubt Gul’s capability to perform as president of the republic and statesman of international stature.
His detractors confine their dislike for his candidature to his religion-inspired political philosophy. His heading the state will, they claim, further AKP’s allegedly veiled plans to move away from a secularist and towards an Islamist society.
The main external sign of this is that his wife, Hayrunisa, wears the 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 particularity 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.
A statement of this kind would have sparked rallies by feminist groups in the West, but Turkish women, although politically emancipated longer than their European counterparts, seem to understand the realities of a still male-dominated society.
Meanwhile, one cannot refrain from wondering whether Erdogan regrets walking 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 could Erdogan not be the next tenant of Cankaya palace?
The campaign for the legislative elections last month was clouded by the spectre of an Islamist holding the presidential sceptre. 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, government and the presidency, might abuse its unchecked power and go ahead with the revenge programme against the military, and the Islam-bound reforms that its more radical members have been pressing for since May.
This is partly justified by Gul’s attitude this week, when he personally announced his candidature, justifying his decision as a right stemming from the results of July 22 poll which gave AKP 46.7 per cent 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 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 latter reportedly include Fethullah Gulen, the controversial Islamic scholar who preaches a tolerant Muslim faith, but wants to see a return of religion into Turkish daily life and educational system.
Other groups that have been supportive of 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 alleged connections are used as justification by the military and the opposition parties 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 Quranic courses grew from 3,000 to 4,950, while the number of part-time students in such classes doubled to 130,000, following an easing of restrictions on religious education.
So the question that roams above both camps is whether the TSK will stop Gul’s march towards 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.
—Dawn/The IPS News Service