Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 31 2007

The old Erdogan and the new Erdogan

by SELCUK GULTASLI

What Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has been saying for the last
several days about the deep state and the need to fight against it
struck me as an honest confession. The style he has recently been
using reminds me of the Erdogan of 2002-2004 when he was dubbed
the greatest Turkish reformer since President Turgut Özal, possibly
since Mustafa Kemal.
Now he argues that we have paid dearly as a nation for not doing
enough to destroy the basis of the deep state. By `we’ he, of course,
means politicians. On his way to Ethiopia, Erdogan admitted that
as the executive branch, they were only able to dig to a certain
depth, implying that the judiciary and the legislative were not
always helpful with the excavation.
What should also be noted carefully are his remarks dating the
creation of the deep state back to the Ottoman Empire. I assume he
means the last 10 years of the Ottoman Empire, when the Committee of
Union and Progress toppled the government of Kamil Paşa on
January 1913 by a bloody coup and then ruled the huge empire, not
with laws but with lawlessness. This is why most of the cabinet did
not even know the Ottomans had sided with the Germans and entered
World War I, which marked the end of the empire. That is why the
Armenian deportation led to a disaster. That is why Istanbul learned
about the 90,000 troops who froze to death in 1915 at
Sarıkamış only after the end of the war, three years
after the calamity.
Turkey has had four military coups in the last 47 years and there has
not been one single general who organized and carried out the coups
brought to justice. The only reason many people support the EU bid is
the assumption that the process will let Turkey be a more transparent
state in which the government decides everything, from Cyprus to the
promotion of its generals.
However, I admittedly have some doubts whether the prime minister
will follow up to what he said on the deep state. That is why I am
talking about the Erdogan of 2002-2004 when he was the leader of
a party, which dared to fight against all the remnants of the deep
state.
I miss the Erdogan who he said he would support the Annan Plan
for Cyprus reunification despite enormous opposition at home, not the
Erdogan who calls on NGOs to agree among themselves to get rid
of Article 301.
I miss the Erdogan who went to Diyarbakır and publicly
declared that Turkey had made mistakes in its policies vis-à-vis its
Kurdish people, not the Erdogan who acquiesced to the sacking
Van prosecutor Ferhat Sarıkaya, who prepared the Şemdinli
indictment.
I saw glimpses of that Erdogan when he invited members of the
Armenian diaspora to Hrant Dink’s funeral, not when he though
carrying placards that read `We are all Armenians’ was not
appropriate.
We miss this Erdogan as a statesman but not as a politician,
particularly when we are heading toward two elections!