Brookings Institution
June 16 2011
Third One is the Charm: Will AKP’s Victory Finally Lead to a New
Constitution in Turkey?
Ã-mer TaÅ?pınar, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on
the United States and Europe
The Brookings Institution
June 16, 2011 ‘
As widely predicted, Turkey’s June 12 elections produced yet another
landslide victory for the incumbent Justice and Development Party
(AKP). Turkish voters once again voted for political continuity and
rewarded the AKP, and its leader Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
for growing prosperity and better socio-economic services,
particularly in areas such as healthcare and affordable housing. It is
only the second time in the history of modern Turkey that a political
party has won three consecutive elections, and the first time it did
so by increasing its vote after each election. The AKP received 34.28
percent in 2002; 46.58 percent in 2007; and 49.90 percent of the votes
this time. Despite such a steady upward trend, AKP seats in the
parliament went down after each electoral victory ‘ from 363 seats in
2002, to 341 in 2007, and 326 in 2011. This paradox is due to the 10
percent threshold for parliamentary representation ‘ a factor that
regularly alters the number of political parties gaining seats in the
parliament ‘ and the increasing ratio of candidates running as
independents in order to bypass this obstacle.
Since the last elections in 2007, Turkey’s domestic political agenda
has been primarily focused on the need for a new constitution. Most
political analysts and a great part of the political parties agree
that Turkey’s Kurdish question and other issues related to good
governance and democratization can no longer be addressed by the 1982
Constitution, which was drafted under military rule. Before the June
12 elections, an important part of the guessing game was about whether
the AKP could muster a two-thirds supermajority of 367+ out of 550
parliamentary seats. This was the required number to amend or rewrite
the constitution unilaterally, without the need for a referendum. With
only 326 seats, the AKP fell well short of such supermajority. Perhaps
more importantly, the party also fell four seats short of the critical
330+ that would have allowed it to unilaterally amend and rewrite the
constitution before presenting it to a referendum. Under the current
parliamentary arithmetic, AKP’s constitutional reforms will need some
modest level of support from the opposition or independent candidates.
This provides a small consolation for Erdogan’s critics concerned
about his authoritarian and illiberal proclivities.
To the disappointment of its supporters, the main opposition
Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) received only 25.9 percent of the
votes and 135 seats. Despite this result, the new and more charismatic
CHP leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, noted in a celebratory post-election
speech that his party significantly increased its votes, compared to
the 20.88 percent and 112 seats received in the 2007 elections. The
second largest opposition party, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP)
managed to get 13 percent of the votes with 53 seats. This was hardly
a victory for MHP compared to the 14.27 percent and 70 seats received
in 2007. Yet, the fact that the party managed to pass the 10 percent
threshold is, itself, a crucial accomplishment. It cost the AKP the
supermajority that Prime Minister Erdogan was actively seeking by
aggressively courting nationalist voters during his campaign. Finally,
perhaps the most telling result of the election is the number of seats
won by MPs from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) who ran as
independents in order to bypass the 10 percent threshold. The BDP is
widely seen by Turkish politicians as the political wing of the PKK.
The fact that the party managed to nearly double its seats to 36 MPs
shows that Turkey’s Kurdish challenge has now reached a crucial
turning point.
AKP’s Agenda: The Kurdish Question and a New Constitution
Now that elections are over a complex domestic and international
agenda awaits Ankara. Despite the dangerous turn the Arab Spring took
for Turkey with bloodshed in neighboring Syria and a growing refugee
problem on the southern border, the most urgent issue facing the AKP
is the Kurdish problem at home. The AKP has been promising a reformist
and inclusive brand new constitution since 2009. Yet, somewhat against
the spirit of democratic inclusivity, it was also widely known that
Prime Minister Erdogan wanted to change Turkey’s political system from
its current parliamentary form to a presidential one. Without a
supermajority of 376 seats, he now will be unable to pursue such a
polarizing agenda. Instead, the AKP will have to focus on
constitutional reforms in order to find viable solutions to Turkey’s
Kurdish dilemma.
Addressing domestic Kurdish discontent in the framework of a new
constitution will be a daunting challenge for the government. The
political aspirations of Turkey’s 15 to 20 million large Kurdish
minority (around 20 percent of the total population) reached
unprecedented levels in the last few years. To be sure, the PKK
insurgency is not as strong as it was in the 1990s. But Kurdish
nationalism, as a political force, is alive and well across Turkey.
Kurdish ethnic, cultural, and political demands are fueled by a young
and increasingly resentful generation of Kurds who are vocal and
frustrated not only in Eastern Anatolia but also in Turkey’s large
Western cities including Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin, and Adana. The
formative experience of this Kurdish generation has been the PKK
insurgency that began in the 1980s. Although most Turks and a large
part of the international community consider the PKK a terrorist
organization, most Turkish Kurds romanticize the PKK and its jailed
leader Abdullah Ocalan, who exerts considerable political influence
behind bars. To them, the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan are national symbols
that rejected forced assimilation and paid a heavy price for the
recognition of the `Kurdish reality.’
Today, Kurdish political aspirations are thwarted by legal obstacles
which are largely the remnants of Turkey’s 1982 Constitution written
under military rule. The current situation of increased Kurdish
expectations and limited political space for ethnic recognition does
not bode well for Turkey. Raised expectations facing strict political
restrictions often create a combustible mix. In 2009, in an attempt to
address the root causes of the problem, the AKP launched a `democratic
opening’ process which involved a partial amnesty for PKK fighters.
This was a step in the right direction. Yet, soon after the Habur
border incident, where former PKK fighters were given a hero’s welcome
by the Kurdish population, the opening turned into an impasse. The AKP
faced the worst scenario: an angry Turkish majority greatly alarmed by
Kurdish audacity.
The Nationalist Action Party (MHP) seemed the main beneficiary of the
whole process. Under these circumstances, Prime Minister Erdogan’s
democratic instincts reached their natural pragmatic limits. His
political discourse took an unmistakably nationalist and intolerant
turn vis a vis growing Kurdish demands. Since early 2010 and
throughout the election campaign, the Prime Minister tried to woo
nationalist voters in an attempt to keep the MHP under 10 percent on
June 12th. This strategy has clearly not worked since the MHP received
13 percent of the votes and the AKP lost ground in the Kurdish
southeast. Now that elections are over, the most important question is
whether the AKP will be able to change course and once again try to
address Kurdish demands with the new constitution. Two crucial steps
in the drafting of the document will go a long way in diffusing
tension: (1) removing ethnic attributes from Turkish citizenship (2)
making Turkish `the official’ and not `the only recognized’ language
of Turkey. These constitutional changes can pave the way to other
crucial legal reforms such as the right to bilingual education.
A more self-confident AKP could also broaden and deepen its former
democratic opening by offering permission to Kurdish towns and
villages to revert to their original names and allowing more room for
local government and administrative decentralization. The party should
know that only a more multicultural and less centralized Turkey will
satisfy Kurdish demands. In taking these crucial steps, two factors
should help the AKP government to find the necessary courage and
vision. First, the majority of Turkish Kurds no longer supports an
ambition for a separate state, nor the use of force by the PKK.
According to a poll from January 2011, conducted by Wise Men Center
for Strategic Studies, a Turkish research center based in Istanbul:
90,1% of Turkish Kurds do not believe an independent Kurdish state is
a solution and 96,5% do not believe acquiring `Federal Rights’ will
provide a permanent resolution. [1] Second, the idea of increased
powers for local government, a main demand of many ethnic Kurds, is
now supported by Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s CHP. Under such circumstances
the AKP should face no major problems in forging a parliamentary
coalition with either the CHP or the BDP to support a new
democratization initiative backed by a brand new constitution.
Foreign Policy Challenges
Foreign policy was conspicuously absent during the election campaign.
Neither the AKP nor the CHP bothered to talk about the European Union
or the revolutions in the Middle East. This is probably because
Turkish public opinion is overall satisfied with the more independent
and self-confident route pursued by the AKP government. Yet, Turkey’s
approaches to both the Middle East and the European Union urgently
need fine tuning. The Arab Spring is rapidly changing the balance of
power in the Middle East and causing problems for Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu’s `zero-problems with neighbors’ policy. After the
emergence of new regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, the turmoil in Yemen
and Bahrain, and civil war in Libya, now Syria is the latest Arab
nation facing the rise of a peoples’ movement.
Until recently, the Syrian-Turkish bilateral relationship was a
remarkable story of a journey from enmity to friendship. It was also
the corner stone of Turkey’s zero-problems strategy. At a time when a
brutal crackdown is taking place in Syria and thousands of Syrian
refugees are crossing the border with Turkey, this situation is
putting a lot of pressure on Turkey’s shoulders. The events in Syria
provide a crucial litmus test for Prime Minister Erdogan in terms of
testing his proclaimed commitment to democratization in the region.
This is not a matter of idealism versus realpolitik for Turkish
foreign policy. Turkey needs to change its `zero problems’ policy with
Syria not because of its ideals of freedom and democracy in the
region. Logic, realism and self-interest should guide Turkey’s changed
strategy toward Damascus.
Simply put, the destabilization of Syria is not in Turkey’s national
interest. Yet, the path that the Assad regime has taken will achieve
just that. It will destabilize Syria and potentially pave the road
toward a sectarian civil war in the country. As Syria’s only
democratic ally, Turkey has a moral and political responsibility to
severely condemn the killing of hundreds of protesters by this brutal
regime. At the same time, Turkey seems uniquely placed to lend some
friendly advice to Syria. Prime Minister Erdogan has, in fact,
significantly raised the tone of his criticism against Bashar Assad.
The obvious issue is that Damascus is in no mood to listen. It should
not be particularly surprising that when a dictator is faced with
regime survival, outside pressure seldom works. As a result, Turkey is
slowly discovering the limits of it regional influence and
zero-problems policy. In case the refugee crisis with Syria gets out
of hand and a much larger influx takes place, Turkey is likely to
consider establishing a buffer zone at the border, which may turn into
a safe haven for the Syrian opposition. The Syrian official news
agency is already blaming Turkey for supporting the Muslim
Brotherhood. These reports are fabricated but since Turkey is a
predominantly Sunni country Turkish public opinion would not look
favorably on a minority Alawite regime massacring Sunnis.
When one looks at the larger picture, the Arab spring is a mixed
blessing for Turkey. On the one hand, most Turks enjoy the fact that
their country is seen as a democratic model and source of inspiration
in the region. On the other hand, it is also important to recognize
that Turkey, until recently, used to fill a vacuum of strategic
leadership in the Arab world. It was the dismal failure of Egyptian
leadership in the region that was at the heart of the Arab predicament
and the deep admiration of Turkey’s growing soft power. With the Arab
Spring and particularly Egypt’s revolution, Cairo is now slowly
re-emerging as the most likely candidate to fill the vacuum of
strategic leadership in the Arab world. As it slowly finds its footing
as a more democratic regime, Egypt, rather than Turkey, will emerge as
a more relevant model for the Middle East. Let’s not forget that
Turkey is not an Arab country and that Turkey’s political evolution
and history is unique. Thanks to the people movements sweeping the
region, the vacuum of strategic leadership is likely to disappear in
the near future. The fact that it was Cairo and not Ankara that
brokered the deal for Palestinian reconciliation between Hamas and
Fatah is a case in point.
The challenge for AKP will be to realize that it now needs to fine
tune its role in the Middle East and find areas where it has
advantages for strategic leadership. Turkey’s comparative advantage
vis a vis Egypt is twofold. First of all, it is the only Muslim
country represented in Western institutions such as NATO and the
Council of Europe. It is also the only Muslim candidate to the
European Union. As such Ankara has a unique advantage as a `Western’
country that can speak on behalf of the Islamic world. Yet, to do so
effectively the AKP will have to boost its `Western credentials’ as a
transatlantic partner and a serious candidate for EU membership.
Despite the French and German leaderships’ lack of strategic vision,
the AKP should realize Turkey still needs to enthusiastically pursue
European Union membership for the sake of its own democratic and
foreign policy ambitions. As the AKP embarks on its constitutional
agenda to solve the Kurdish problem it should remember that Turkey’s
EU candidacy has been the engine of past reforms. Moreover, as
recently argued by Hugh Pope, if there is one thing that makes Turkey
stand out in the troubled Middle East, it is the country’s convergence
with Europe.
Turkey’s second comparative advantage stems from its secular and
democratic identity. Turkey should try harder to find creative ways to
transcend the sectarian and religious divides in the Middle East. The
two most polarizing divides in the Middle East are the Arab-Israeli
conflict and the Sunni-Shiite sectarian tension. On the Sunni-Shiite
divide Ankara is already playing a crucial role that transcends this
deeply rooted and polarizing issue. Prime Minister Erdogan’s visit to
the Shiite holy sites in Najaf and his two hour visit with Iraq’s most
important Shiite religious leader Ayatollah Sistani was a first for
the leader of a Sunni country. As the prime minister of a secular
country and thanks to his own religious credential as a pious Muslim,
Erdogan is better placed than any other leader in the Muslim world to
speak about the dangers of sectarianism in the region.
Turkey should find a similar strategic vision in transcending its
current problems with Israel. A more self-confident and strategically
minded Turkey should be part of solutions on the Arab-Israeli front
and not exacerbate an already very tense situation. The normalization
of Turkish-Israeli relations is in the national interest of both
countries. Given the stakes involved, Washington should play a much
more active role in brokering a face-saving deal between the two
estranged allies. For its part, Ankara should do its best to
discourage a new international flotilla at the end of June by taking
into account the risk of a repeat of Israeli overreaction and the
positive trends in Gaza, such as Israel’s partial lifting of its
blockade and the opening of the border with Egypt. The fact that
Davutoglu recently spoke against the flotilla was a step in the right
direction. There are also some signs that Israel may soften its
position vis a vis Ankara after AKP’s landslide electoral victory.
As far as Turkish-American relations are concerned, the result of the
elections is not likely to have a major impact. Washington is likely
to continue its pressure on Ankara for the normalization of relations
with Armenia and Israel. Some positive momentum in the Azeri-Armenian
dispute over Nagorno-Karabagh may provide Ankara an excuse to open the
border with Armenia. Finally, the Obama administration wants Turkey to
give its official approval for NATO missile-defense related radars.
Ankara, in return, is likely to demand command and control over the
radar system.
In short, a very challenging domestic and international agenda awaits
the AKP. The Kurdish question, a new constitution, challenges with
Syria and Israel, and the new balance of power in the Middle East
after the Arab spring will require a new level of strategic vision and
democratic maturity from the AKP leadership. Where and how Prime
Minister Erdogan will spend his new political capital remains to be
seen. One can only hope that the third one will be the charm and that
AKP’s impressive third electoral victory will pave the road for a less
polarized country ruled by a first class democratic constitution.
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[1]. Akyürek, Dr. Salih. Pages 37-38.What Do Kurds and Zazas Think? A
Look at Common Values and Symbols. Publication no. 26. Ä°stanbul: Wise
Men Center for Strategic Studies – Bilgesam Publications, January
2011.