Turkey’s Anti-Islamist Coalition Government Off to Slow Start

by James M. Dorsey

Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz formed his conservative coalition government in March amid high hopes that he would be able to put Turkey squarely on the road toward political and economic reform.

Yet, two months after Mr. Yilmaz took office, heavy fighting between Turkish security forces and rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has called into question the government’s ability to drive a wedge between the guerrillas and the local population.

At the same time, relations between Turkey and two of its Middle Eastern neighbors—Syria and Iran—are rapidly deteriorating, raising the spectre of a significant increase in tension in the already war-torn border region between the three countries.

And Mr. Yilmaz is discovering that left-wing parties, on whom his minority government is dependent for support in parliament, are unlikely to back painful measures to restructure the economy, narrow budget deficits, and reduce double digit inflation.

In addition, cooperation between Mr. Yilmaz’s conservative Motherland Party (ANAP) and the center-right True Path Party (DYP) headed by former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller is proving to be more difficult than expected. Deep-seated differences between the two leaders marked last year’s election campaign and are scaring off investors initially confident that the new government would be able to put Turkey back on its feet.

“We have difficulties with our partner,” Mr. Yilmaz says, conceding that haggling over senior government posts had recently almost led to a break-up of his newly formed government.

Although after weeks of negotiating Mr. Yilmaz and Ms. Ciller succeeded in naming a central bank governor and the head of the government privatization agency, the two coalition leaders have yet to agree on appointments for some 300 other senior government jobs.

“This government will not be able to do any reform. Its task is to determine who will control the center-right in Turkey,” quips Soli Ozel, a prominent political scientist.

Together Mr. Yimaz’s ANAP and Ms. Ciller’s DYP have the single largest block in parliament. Yet, their total of 261 seats won in last December’s inconclusive general election falls short of the 276 needed for a majority. Their coalition was hailed by business and the press as a way of keeping out of government the pro-Islamic Refah Party that won 158 seats to emerge as Turkey’s single largest political party.

The left-wing Democratic Left Party (DSP) and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) account for the remaining seats in parliament. The two parties have warned that despite their support of the formation of a coalition government as an anti-Islamic bulwark, they would not act as the government’s rubber stamp.

“We don’t owe the government anything,” veteran CHPleader Bulent Ecevit says, demanding a halt to further price hikes and an increase in public sector wages that would go far toward compensating for annual inflation of approximately 80 percent.

A Heavy Price

Already, Mr. Yilmaz has paid a heavy price for DSP support, which forced him at least temporarily to surrender his goal of privatizing the nearly collapsed social security system.

On the Kurdish front, a Turkish military failure in mid-April complicates the government’s ability to make concessions. Some 300 guerrillas escaped after thousands of government troops had surrounded them in the mountains of eastern Turkey. In response, Interior Minister Ulku Guney insisted that the military “operation will continue until there are no terrorists left.”

Meanwhile, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, in a bid not to close the door on a non-military solution, has vowed, according to a pro-Kurdish news agency in Germany, to maintain his four-month-old unilateral cease-fire designed to give Mr. Yilmaz a chance to redirect government policy. Under Mr. Ocalan’s cease-fire, the guerrillas are under orders to fight only if attacked. The rebel leader has threatened to unleash suicide bombers in major Turkish cities if the government ultimately fails to respond to the cease-fire.

“Unless concessions are made in line with Kurds’ aspirations, cities in the west [of Turkey] might witness violent disturbances,” says Cengiz Candar, a prominent columnist for Turkey’s mass-circulation Sabah newspaper. He points to signs of radicalism displayed by young Kurdish emigrants during recent demonstrations in Istanbul and southern Adana.

The radicalization is in part the result of the evacuation by security forces of villages and hamlets in the southeast of the country in a bid to drive a wedge between the rebels and the local population.

The government’s counterinsurgency methods have created “a huge underclass.”

More than 2,500 villages where guerrillas had a strong presence in the first eight years of the war have been evacuated, forcing the migration, according to Turkish officials, of more than two million people to cities in western Turkey and on the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts.

A report by a major Turkish trade union confederation warned last year that mounting social tensions among Kurdish migrants to the city was likely to explode into violence if the government failed peacefully to resolve the war and address Kurdish grievances.

The Washington-based Human Rights Watch group says that the government’s counterinsurgency methods have created “a huge underclass of embittered and impoverished internal refugees...who have moved to squatter settlements throughout Turkey’s cities providing the PKK with a potential base for future organizing and presenting Turkey with a difficult social and economic crisis.”

While Mr. Yilmaz has so far ignored the cease-fire, he has hinted at creating an atmosphere in which a shift in Turkish attitudes toward the cultural demands of the Kurds would be possible.

As a result, some analysts say Turkey needs a military success against the rebels as a face-saving way of seeking some form of negotiated solution to its Kurdish problem.

“The draconian attitude by the German government toward PKK supporters is a sign of preparations for a solution in Turkey,” says Eyup Burc, a Brussels-based Kurdish journalist. “They are seeking to tame the PKK, showing them that unless they yield to Western powers, they cannot have a part in the new period.”

Ironically, Germany, which has recently launched a crackdown on PKK front organizations following violent pro-Kurdish demonstrations, could mediate future Turkish-Kurdish talks. Already, contacts with the PKK are being publicly debated in Germany after Mr. Ocalan warned that he would launch a wave of bomb attacks in Germany if the government in Bonn refused to enter into a dialogue with the rebels.

German parliamentarian Heinrich Lummer, who last year relayed a message from Mr. Ocalan to the Turkish government, was quoted by the weekly Die Zeit as saying Germany should consider talking to the PKK if this would help to reduce violence. Officially, Germany insists that it sees no point in a dialogue with the PKK. However, a senior German security official is known to have met with Mr. Ocalan late last year.

Fears of stepped-up fighting in southeastern Turkey were further fueled by growing strains in Turkey’s relations with both Syria and Iran over a host of issues ranging from the two countries’ support of the PKK, allegations of Iranian involvement in political assassinations in Turkey, a military cooperation agreement between Turkey and Israel, and water rights regarding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which originate in Turkey.

Both Syria and Iran have charged that the cooperation agreement under which Israeli planes would be allowed to train in Turkish airspace threatened regional stability. Syria has, moreover, for months been campaigning to stop Turkish plans to build a new 672-megawatt dam on the Euphrates, charging it would starve Syria of badly needed water from the waterway.

Iran in April suddenly expelled four Turkish diplomats on charges of spying. The move followed Turkish accusations in February that Iran and Syria were dodging questions about their possible role in sending arms Ankara said were destined for Kurdish rebels in Turkey. A week later Tehran protested to Ankara over allowing an Iranian opposition group to hold a demonstration in Turkey, and hundreds took part in an anti-Turkish rally in Tehran.

Relations were further damaged in March when Turkish police said that a Turkish Islamist hitman, who confessed to killing two Iranian dissidents in Turkey in 1992, had received training in Iran. Iran denied the accusation.