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بقلم: جرينفيل بيفورد

نيوزويك  - 3/5/2007

إذا كان الجيش التركي غبياً فانه سيتدخل في موضوع الرئاسة وهذا سيؤدي إلى إحداث خلل في التوازن, وسيذرف مؤسس الدولة العلمانية الدموع من قبره.

Ataturk's Long Shadow

By Grenville Byford

Special to Newsweek

Updated: 1:24 p.m. ET May 3, 2007

May 3, 2007 - It was always going to be tense, but now it’s a high wire act. The Turkish National Assembly’s first vote on Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’s nomination as president triggered a crisis which left politicians, generals and judges looking for a safety net. They have found one by calling an early general election for July 22, but it may not solve everything. A few more steps on the high wire will likely be necessary before Turkey can enjoy the crowd’s applause.

At first blush, this is about a Muslim nation trying to come to terms with its secular-religious divide. Opposition secularists have long warned Turkey ’s governing AK Party (AKP) against electing one of its leaders as president, saying they are “Islamists” and unfit for the Palace. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan simply said he would continue following the rules--like any good democrat. Finally, he nominated his longtime friend, colleague and political rival, Abdullah Gul. Both men are proud to be Muslims, but deny this personal choice relates to their public life. They say too, it is their wives’ choice to wear a headscarf, and this should be respected.

As the rules have been read until now, Gul’s election should have been a shoe-in. With 356 Assembly members, Erdogan’s AKP may have lacked the 367 votes for the two-thirds majority required in the first two rounds, but it does have the 276 votes required for a simple majority victory on ballot three. But then the military stepped in. “The Turkish Armed Forces are a party to these arguments and the absolute defender of secularism,” said the generals. The message: No AKP president, or … well, what exactly?

The government’s response was to remind the soldiers they “report to the prime ministry.” Maybe though, the military was sending a message to the Constitutional Court . The CHP opposition party had petitioned it to invalidate the presidential election because a parliamentary quorum of 367 was not present during Friday’s vote. As the constitution envisages presidents being elected by simple majority, the argument that a one-third minority can block the process by absenting itself seems bizarre. Especially since the simple majority provision aims to prevent a recurrence of the 1980 situation. Then, a minority prevented the election of any president and helped trigger a coup.  Notwithstanding, the Court ruled 9-2 in CHP’s favor, resulting in early elections.

Legal merits aside, the court’s decision has one good effect. Military intervention is unthinkable pre-election. Turkey is still up on the wire, but it has something to hold onto. Longer term, the court has created problems, but step first behind the curtain, and ask what is going on.

In the West, Friday’s military statement would result in Chief of Staff Yasar Buyukanit being fired if not arrested. Turkey however, is different, thanks to the schizophrenic legacy of its founding father. Kemal Ataturk made his dream for the republic quite clear 80 years ago:  “We will,” he said, “advance our country to the level of the most civilized and prosperous countries.” In modern parlance, Turkey would join the West. Moreover, he recognized this required democracy. “Unconditional, unrestricted sovereignty belongs to the nation,” he said.  He did not however trust the Turkish people of 1923 to pursue modernity, and appointed the army guardians of the republic. In particular, Ataturk never developed a consensus on the relationship between state and religion. He imposed one to permit reform. Nor has one developed since. Hence the current brouhaha between the “secularists” who reject reconsidering Ataturk’s settlement, and the “Islamists,” who are better described as Muslims and fed up with being looked down on by the secular elite.

After their third coup in 1980, the guardians developed a methodology of power without troops and tanks. Its best-known fruit is the soft coup of 1997, but it is more than that. The generals are accustomed to having the last word on many issues such as Cyprus , Northern Iraq , and the separatist Kurds in the PKK, and a compliant president is central to this. Do not therefore imagine that the current row is merely a high-minded one about secularism. It is also about which person calls the shots: the prime minister or the chief of staff?

As democracy (and the European Union membership that Turkey wants) is incompatible with military tutelage, how long then should the guardianship continue? One chief of staff said “a thousand years,” and Turkey ’s middle-class elite, including the permanent bureaucracy and the courts, largely agree. Also in agreement is a shadowy, officially nonexistent group, drawn partly from the military, that Turks call the ‘ Deep State .’ Think ‘death squad’ for a two-word description. The generals deny they control it, but do not seek its eradication either.

Many, however, and not just AKP supporters, think the guardians should go. At last week’s anti-AKP, pro-secular demonstrations, some chanted “No Sharia! No military coup!” Sadly, these protesters have no political home. While the AKP is a race-tuned, electoral machine, its competitors are burnt-out jalopies. Turkey lacks a plausible opposition.

Hence, the election results will put Turkey back on the high wire. Assembly seats are allocated to parties passing the 10 percent threshold in proportion to their percentage of the vote. AKP will likely come first with 30-45 percent, and three others may pass the threshold with 8-15 percent. These are the current opposition CHP, the ultranationalist MHP, and the right-wing DYP. The most likely outcome is that AKP will retain its majority but still fall short of the 367 seats that the Constitutional Court ’s decision requires to elect a president. Erdogan sees this and proposes a constitutional amendment mandating direct presidential elections. A characteristically shrewd move, as the opposition must choose between thwarting this widely popular idea, and allowing a presidential election they will likely lose.

And the soldiers? If they are Ataturk’s true heirs they will see his dream at the end of the wire. They should tell the opposition parties they must take responsibility and reinvent themselves to challenge AKP’s hegemony. Just like defeated parties everywhere. They have the time because, even if the AKP does have the “secret Islamist agenda” they allege, an AKP president will have less influence than alarmists claim. He does not, for example “nominate” judges as some say, he picks most of them from a short list provided by other judges.

If the military is foolish, however, it will intervene. Turkey will fall off the high wire, and the nation’s founder will weep in his grave.

Grenville Byford researches and writes about Turkey and the Muslim world. He is a former affiliate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and currently lives in Paris .

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18471693/site/newsweek/page/2/

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نشرنا لهذه المقالات لا يعني أنها تعبر عن وجهة نظر المركز كلياً أو جزئياً

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من حق الزائر الكريم أن ينقل وأن ينشر كل ما يعجبه من موقعنا . معزواً إلينا ، أو غير معزو .ـ