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Turkish elections

Massive win for Islamist right wing

Sarah Parker

The election results on July 22 in Turkey were a sweeping victory for the right.

The Islamist AK Partisi thoroughly beat its main rivals, securing 341 out of the 550 seats in the Parliament. This was not the first Islamist electoral victory in Turkey , as AK also won the last election in 2002, but it was the biggest. AK gained 47% of the vote (compared with 34% in 2002) as the party successfully adjusted its programme to capture the centre ground, getting votes from many sectors who traditionally would have voted for the left: social democrats, Alevis, Kurds, erstwhile far-left supporters.

The basis of the AK victory seems to have been that many voters felt at least AK has so far offered some stability for the economy, and were pleased that it has sometimes appeared to disobey the wishes of the power behind the scenes in Turkey , the military.

None the less the ascendancy of the AK will mean that Islamist ideas will continue to flourish in Turkey , at present without adequate challenge from secular or socialist parties.

Of the opposition, the main bourgeois opposition since 2002, the CHP (Ataturk’s old party) in an alliance with DSP (the Democratic Left Party, Ecevit’s old social democrats,) got 21% and 112 seats.

The other old ruling parties, the old right wing parties ANAP and DYP seem to have passed into oblivion. A big worry is that the far right Far right National Action Party (MHP) got 71 seats. They have been growing steadily for many years but this was the first time they passed the 10% barrier and got seats.

As for the left and the Kurdish national movement, the results were in a way encouraging. The Kurdish nationalists and some figures from the Turkish left, such as Akin Birdal and Ufuk Urasand, stood as independents, in order to get round the obstacle of the 10% barrier.

These independents, mostly Kurdish nationalists, got 21 seats. According to the BBC, independents got 6% of the vote in Istanbul , the metropolis, and 47% in Amed ( Diyarbakir ), informally the Kurdish capital - beating AK there (41%). It is interesting that these joint platforms had in a way more success than with their constituents standing separately.

Is the relationship with America fundamentally changing? This has been the key question since Turkey refused to allow US troops to come through Turkey to open a northern front in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It is hard to imagine that the US would forgive or forget such defiance, but so far, other than trivial temporary financial sanctions at the time, there have been no obvious reprisals yet.

Probably the reason is that US policy-makers are determined to keep their military bases in Iraq at almost whatever cost, and cannot risk completely alienating a country which is one of the lynchpins of their control of the whole Middle East . The answer to this question is still not clear.

Although the Turkish state is very dependent on the US financially, given the rocky nature of the economy, a look at current Turkish foreign policy shows that the country is very active on many fronts, and that its rulers are trying to play its allies and enemies off against each other for the benefit of the Turkish state (and of themselves no doubt).

Turkey has just signed a gas co-operation deal with Iran , which has attracted adverse comment in the Western press. This probably has several aims: to make themselves more valuable to the EU, as a conduit for energy supplies that does not pass through Russia , perhaps to put pressure on the US , and no doubt to gain leverage over Iran .

How far Turkey will go in playing a double game with its supposed key ally the US is not yet clear to the outside world, but certainly they are trying to put pressure in various ways on the US .

For example, a recent article by a representative of the Reut Institute, a think tank close to the Israeli government, calls on the US to take more note of Turkey as a partner in its planning for the Middle East .

In recent months there have been repeated threats from top Turkish generals and politicians against any strengthening or extension of the Kurdish entity in South Kurdistan ( Northern Iraq ).

This has got to the point where an article on the website of the KDP, party of the Kurdish Regional President, Masoud Barzani, suggested that the Turkish state may be behind the multiple petrol-tanker bombing of a Yezidi (Kurdish group with ancient partly pre-Islamic religious practices) area in Northern Iraq in August in which upwards of 500 poor villagers were killed. The US have predictably blamed Al-Qaida - though of course using the name raises more questions than it answers.

The threats from Turkey have been accompanied by repeated calls on the US to deal with PKK forces in Northern Iraq, so far with little result, and repeated threats to invade Northern Iraq . Meanwhile various types of economic and intelligence warfare at least are pursued against South Kurdistan .

The Turkish state remains concerned at the idea of any independence by the Kurdish nation, wishes in particular to stop the Kurds from controlling Kirkuk , which was once part of the Ottoman Empire and has huge oil reserves.

Given that the US is currently known to be negotiating with some Baathist and Sunni organisations in Iraq , and that Turkey apparently pursues its own independent diplomacy with political figures from across the spectrum in Iraq , it would be interesting to know how far Turkish diplomats see their interests coinciding or reconcilable with those of the US, and how far not - in dealings with Sunni, Shia, Kurd, or Iranian state.

On the question of the EU, realistically speaking, Turkey ’s EU application appears to be on ice for the next few years, arms purchases from France have dropped, no doubt as a form of pressure, and Turkey is clearly looking at the EU and other foreign policy matters from a longer term perspective.

As far as domestic policy and the Kurds and other oppositionists are concerned, the methods of the Turkish state have not fundamentally changed.

It is true that for the last few years the Kurds have been allowed to celebrate Newroz relatively unhindered in some places in Turkey : Amed ( Diyarbakir ) is clearly meant to be a show-case, for example, in that a big gathering out of town is now permitted on March 21.

But activists are routinely persecuted all over Turkey , including Diyarbakir , and state-sponsored assassination of oppositional voices continues, as was shown by the gunning down of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink outside his office earlier this year.

The Kurdish Human Rights Project in London has just issued a report detailing the continuing use of torture in Turkey .

The left continues to be very weak and essentially, as in many other places, needs to rethink its methods and rebuild itself almost entirely.

The Kurdish movement seems to be in an impasse - the guerrilla war seems unable to move forward or to be ended. Various struggles for democratic rights continue, but in terms of achieving their aims, little progress seems to be made.

Still, the new DTP deputies, mainly Kurdish nationalists elected as independents, have said they will raise Kurdish cultural rights (lack of), Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan’s prison conditions, and interestingly, the question of Hasankeyf (see below).

And importantly, many Kurdish people do stubbornly continue to use and extend their language, music and literature, in spite of the penalties. In recent years in particular there has been a flowering of Kurdish film, albeit mainly made in the diaspora, much of it not surprisingly dealing with the problems of exile and borders.

Environmental crisis hits Turkey

One area where both the Turkish state and international capital have shown they have not changed is on the environment. Deals with Swiss, Austrian and German companies, covered with government export credit guarantees, seem to be going ahead to finance the first stage of the notorious Ilisu Dam which will displace 70,000 or so Kurdish people and drown the beautiful and historic city of Hasankeyf , an ancient city in the Kurdish area of Turkey .

Hasankeyf is imminently threatened with flooding and destruction because of the determination of the Turkish state to destroy non-Turkish heritage and the determination of certain greedy European governments and businesses to make money out of environmental destruction.

The first villagers are being turned off their land with trivial compensation.

Local people have been in the forefront of opposition to the dams, and will continue to resist, as will those living in the area of similarly threatened Munzur.

At present the main European campaign is in Germany and Austria .

For further information go to www.weed-online.org/ilisu and www.hasankeyfgirisimi.com

Turkey meanwhile has such a drought this summer that it cannot even fill the hydro-electric dams it already has.

People in Ankara , the capital of Turkey , have just spent 10 days almost entirely without running water because of drought and mismanagement.