Turkey’s Political Crisis: The DSP Unravels

Two weeks ago, when The Estimate’s lead article was “The Ecevit Question”, the main issue in Turkish politics was whether Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit would step down because of questions about his health. That situation has transformed itself so rapidly that Turkish politics is now in major disarray, with a potential realignment of parties, including the entire center-left, possibly imminent, and new elections likely later this year. The reason is that Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party (DSP) has come apart, with several key figures moving to create a new center-left party or bloc which would force a realignment of Turkish politics. As this issue went to press Ecevit was still insisting that he opposed early elections, even though his party is no longer the largest in Parliament (and in fact dropped to third because of the defections); his former close aide and former Foreign Minister were leading the revolt, while his key economic figure, Kemal Dervis was aligned with the defectors, and his coalition partner, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) was calling for early elections. The whole mess threatened to throw Turkish efforts to join the European Union in jeopardy as the odds of new elections, perhaps by September, seemed to be growing daily. Whether Ecevit could survive as a caretaker until then, having lost his party’s dominant role, was also highly questionable.

What precipitated the unraveling of the DSP was a combination of the concerns about Ecevit’s health and speculation about who might succeed him in the DSP. His onetime heir apparent, Deputy Prime Minister Hüsamettin Ozkan, resigned on July 8 from both his Cabinet post and the DSP, in part at least because he had clearly been sidelined in speculation about the succession to Ecevit. It was widely believed that Ecevit’s powerful wife, Rahsan Ecevit, had turned against Özkan.

Özkan’s resignation provoked other Cabinet officials to quit, and by late in the week this included the respected Foreign Minister, Ismail Cem, who also had been seen as a potential successor to Ecevit, but is now joining with the Özkan forces to create a new leftist alignment. (For Özkan, Cem, and Dervis, see the Profiles on Page Nine; for Cem’s successor as Foreign Minister, see Page Ten.)

Coalition politics in Turkey is often byzantine in its complexity; though many of the major parties were calling for new elections, disagreements about the date and fears about the results may allow Ecevit time to hold on a bit longer. But the defection of key members of his own party, and the collapse of the Party’s parliamentary strength, virtually guarantees new elections or at a minimum a new Prime Minister in a new coalition soon.

Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit had two arguments going for him: new elections would jeopardize the reforms needed to gain membership in the EU, and would jeopardize the economic recovery program led by Kemal Dervis: in other words, apres moi, le deluge. But Ecevit’s DSP continued to disintegrate.

Since 1999, Ecevit has presided over a fragile coalition of his own, left-of-center DSP, Devlet Bahçeli’s right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP), and the centrist Motherland Party (ANAP) led by Mesut Yilmaz. The only major parties outside the coalition were Tansü Çiller’s True Path Party (DYP) and the Islamist bloc which, at the time of the elections, was the since-banned Virtue Party (FP) but the bulk of whose deputies now constitute the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the 1999 elections, Virtue and the right-wing MHP ran stronger than the traditional centrist parties, and while Virtue has since been dissolved, th Islamist bloc is still a strong one, if constantly in danger of being banned by the secularist parties under military pressure. Ecevit could never have formed a government without including the MHP, but they have been something of an awkward partner, because of their lukewarm attitude towards joining the EU and their opposition to the economic and other reforms necessary for the EU application to have a chance.

As Ecevit’s DSP numbers dwindled, however, the MHP became by far the strongest party in his coalition, and his ability to pressure the MHP collapsed; more to the point, MHP leader Bahçeli started calling for elections by September.

With the coalition divided over new elections, the DSP coming apart and a new center-left bloc apparently emerging, with party affiliations changing daily and the outcome of new elections uncertain, Turkey seemed to be faced with a dilemma: an electoral campaign likely to put economic recovery and EU membership on hold during a political season, or soldiering on with a wounded and perhaps seriously ill Ecevit government.

Where the Parties Stand
As this issue went to press at the weekend, the unraveling of the DSP had not brought down the government, and there was indeed a real possibility that Ecevit could limp on. The only way to force new elections is for the Prime Minister to resign or lose a vote of confidence; the latter would require winning 276 votes in the 550-seat Turkish Grand National Assembly. But despite the defections from Ecevit’s DSP, the three parties in the ruling coalition still held a firm majority at the end of the week. But the DSP had dropped from 128 seats to 83 after 45 defections; if the defections reached 70, the government would lose its majority.

Already, the DSP was no longer the largest party in Parliament; in fact it had dropped to third, after the MHP with 127 seats and Çiller’s DYP, with 85.

So long as Ecevit refused to resign, however, the situation remained unresolved. The defections appeared to have leveled off, especially after one of the rebels, Economy Minister Kemal Dervis (See Page Nine) decided to stay in the government.

The DSP defectors have announced their intention of forming a new party, centered around the “troika” of Özkan, Cem, and Dervis, though the latter has said he will stay in the government to oversee the economic reform policies. At one point it was reported that Ecevit had asked for Dervis’ resignation, but that sent such shock waves through Turkish markets, already in disarray, that it was quickly announced he was staying on.

By the end of the week:
The MHP, now the largest party, but also the one least supportive of the reforms required to join the EU, and therefore the party which might face the biggest challenge building a coalition around itself, wants to recall Parliament for September 1 and aim at new elections on November 3.

The rebel DSP members want Ecevit to resign or the government to fall, and either new elections promptly or a new coalition to be formed around them.

Ecevit’s DSP still opposes early elections.

ANAP, the other member of the present ruling coalition, has publicly called for elections by September 29, in order to allow the new government time to push through the reforms required by the EU. But ANAP also fears that it will not meet the 10% requirement in new elections: any party not winning 10% of the vote receives no seats in Parliament. ANAP’s popularity has declined through the years.

It should be noted, however, that while the MHP and ANAP are both calling for early elections (at different dates), they are not calling for an end to the coalition, but support Ecevit continuing in power, at least nominally.

Çiller’s DYP initially supported the MHP date of November 3, but subsequently came out in favor of elections earlier, preferably some time in October. This would require a quicker recall of Parliament from its summer break. The DYP, being out of the present coalition, sees new elections as an opportunity, but it could also find a way into a new coalition without elections if events transpire in certain ways.

The new AKP, the Justice and Development Party, is Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to create a new Islamist party based around many of the former Virtue Party members of Parliament, and currently holds about 110 seats. Erdogan is known to be popular, the Party has done better than its predecessors at portraying itself as independent of the former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who is barred from politics, and naturally the AKP would like early elections to test its strength. A military move to ban it on the eve of elections would seem less likely at a moment when Europe is watching events in Turkey closely. The AKP has called for an early recall of Parliament and elections by about October 6. But a case against Erdogan as well as efforts to block the AKP are making their way through the courts, and it is far from clear what effect early elections would have on those cases. The legality of the AKP, or at least of Erdogan’s candidacy, could be challenged at any moment, adding to the embarrassment in European circles.

The other heir of the Virtue Party, the Sa’adet (Happiness, or Contentment) Party, which remained closer to Erbakan, was hoping to hold off elections until 2003 in the belief that Erbakan’s ban from politics may end at that time and that he might be alowed to return to political life.

Possible New Coalitions
Whether, and when, new elections take place, there are several other questions in play. If the government does not lose its majority but does agree to elections, it would of course remain as the caretaker until the fall. But since the DSP is now the third-largest party, if the government loses its majority, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer might very well call for a new coalition until the new elections.

Several possibilities have been in play. Clearly, the DSP rebels’ new party (unnamed at presstime) would like to form a new Turkish left around itself. It might combine the rebel elements of the DSP with defectors from other parties and perhaps with Deniz Baykal’s Republican People’s Party (CHP). The CHP, the namesake heir to Kemal Atatürk’s longtime sole party, failed to make the 10% limit in the 1999 elections and has therefore remained out of Parliament. But it might play a role in a reorganized left, and find a way to get back into parliament in new elections.

Of the three participants in the current coalition, the MHP is the most eager for elections, but supporters of joining Europe face problems in cooperating with the MHP: during the past several years it has been opposed to most of the reforms demanded by the EU, and has used stalling tactics to slow down the reform efforts. ANAP is the weakest of the three in the current coalition; there has been some talk that if ANAP were to bolt the coalition, Ecevit could still put together a stronger coalition by combining his loyalists, the MHP and Çiller’s DYP. The DYP and ANAP occupy virtually the same centrist ground ideologically, but have never been able to cooperate because of the personal animosities and rivalries between Yilmaz and Çiller.

Trying to put a coalition together before elections would be difficult: for that matter, it will be hard enough after elections. One needs to remember that it took weeks in 1999 before Ecevit was able to cobble together the center-right coalition he has led since then, and that throughout the late 1990s Turkey seemed to move from elections to coalition building to crisis to elections again with disturbing regularity. Another result like the 1999 vote — with the MHP on the right and the Islamists drawing more and more vote away from the center parties — will not make building a coalition any easier.

The other problem is that Turkey’s EU hopes depend on pushing through a number of reforms, including several involving Kurdish rights and other democratization moves demanded by Europe, and it will be difficult for any government which is 1) lame duck, as Ecevit’s increasingly appears to be, 2) riven by disagreements about Europe, as any government with the MHP in it is likely to be, or 3) still trying to put together a coalition weeks after an election, which could mean that, with fall elections, Turkey would still have no stable coalition well into 2003.

The DSP and its rebel offshoot, ANAP and the DYP all support Europe and the reforms needed to some degree or another; it is the MHP and AKP which are less enthusiastic. But if they hold the largest or among the largest blocs in a new Parliament, as they have in the past one, how does one build a pro-Europe coalition? Ecevit did it by including the MHP, but that led to much delay in implementing reform. It is not a very bright prospect.

Despite (for the moment) the fact that Dervis is remaining in his key economic post, the country’s economic recovery could be endangered by the sort of political promises and pressures which accompany an election campaign. Elections could also increase tensions over the reforms demanded for joining Europe, and make that long-held hope recede again.

All of this has seemingly emerged from nowhere. True, there had been a growing sense of frustration that the coalition was not making adequate progress on reforms because of the MHP; true, rumors about Ecevit’s health have been around for a long time (See the Last Issue for the background). But the sudden loss of seven minsters from the DSP, including the crucial Özkan and Cem (Dervis, as a technocrat, was not a formal DSP member), means that the whole Turkish poltiical picture, always complicated, is muddier than might have been predicted.

The DSP rebels’ new party was already trying to draw more DSP defectors, as well as find new alignments for a political front with various left- and right-wing minor parties outside the present coalition. It could also seek to align with the CHP in a new electoral bloc if the CHP is able to return to Parliament in new elections.

The Problem of Personalized Parties
Often, Turkish political parties have been less about ideology than about the political personality who leads them: they are vehicles for individuals, rather than for ideas. The DSP was always a vehicle for Ecevit, who has been a major figure in Turkish politics for decades. But as his health began to fail and issues of succession began to loom, it appears (at least in one interpretation) that Rahsan Ecevit, his powerful wife and political advisor, was simply unable to accept the idea of the emergence of figures such as Özkan or Cem. The former suddenly found himself sidelined, whispered about, and accused of maneuvering against Ecevit. (The other side, of course, sees these accusations as true and Özkan as the guilty party.)

Personalized party politics have also kept what should be a logical alliance between Motherland and True Path (ANAP and DYP) from emerging because of the bad blood between Yilmaz and Çiller: as a result, coalition builders usually have to choose one or the other of these two otherwise center-of-the-road, moderate, pro-Europe parties.

Coalition building is always difficult in Turkey. But the last several elections, really since 1995, have been throws of the dice, with unpredictable or surprising results. The emergence of the Welfare Party (predecessor of Virtue) as the largest single party in the mid-1990s gave nightmares to the military and secularists; the brief Prime Ministry of Necmettin Erbakan was aborted by military diktat, the sort of thing which does not sit well in Europe. The emergence of the MHP, long a radical right party with a fringe following, as the biggest vote-getter in 1999 sent analysts reeling again. Was the Turkish center disappearing, with voters fleeing either to Islamists or right-wing secularists?

One thing all three major parties had sought to avoid until recently was new elections before they are required in 2004. No one is quite sure what a new throw of the dice will produce.One thing, though, seems increasingly likely: they will not have to wait until 2004 to find out. If Ecevit is able to hold on for now, a sudden setback to the economy, or more defections from the DSP, will bring this coalition down sooner or later. Oddly, much of the Turkish press was simultaneously guessing last week both when the vote would be held, and how long Ecevit might hold on without dissolution. The calls for a new poll are loud, but many of the parties are far from certain how they will do in a new vote. It is one thing to join the chorus calling for new elections, another to actually come together and agree on how to call them.

In two weeks’ time, Turkish politics has been turned on its head. In another two weeks, it may start to be possible to discern where it is going.