TOO MUCH SUCCESS; TURKEY
Ian Bremmer – The New York Times Media Group
The International Herald Tribune, France
October 20, 2007 Saturday
Just as Turkey seems to be emerging from a stretch of political
discontent, it finds itself drawn into a pair of potential
international conflicts.
In Washington, a resolution pending before the House of
Representatives, which would formally recognize the Armenian genocide,
has threatened to generate serious new tension between Washington
and Ankara.
And in Ankara, the Parliament voted Wednesday to authorize the
government to send troops into northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels
hiding there. Such an operation is fervently opposed by the Bush
administration.
Still, I was surprised to discover on a recent visit to Istanbul
that the real emerging risks in Turkey have more to do with domestic
politics than with all this foreign-policy turmoil.
Over the past three months, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
Justice and Development Party (AKP) secured a solid parliamentary
majority, got its man elected president and developed a good working
relationship with at least one of the major opposition parties. The
ruling party now also appears to be enjoying a truce with Turkey’s
military, still a key player in the country’s politics.
Markets responded to Erdogan’s resounding July victory with
jubilation. Prices on Turkey’s largest stock exchange rose, and the
value of Turkey’s currency reached its highest level against the
dollar in more than two years.
Since AKP first rose to power in 2002, Erdogan has helped deliver
7.4 percent annual growth, lower inflation and bring in unprecedented
levels of foreign investment. A series of reforms have kept Turkey’s
bid to join the EU limping forward. The party’s new parliamentary
majority, 341 of 550 seats, frees Erdogan to pursue his agenda without
having to compromise with rivals.
Therein lies the real danger. Erdogan looks set to overplay his hand
in ways that upset Turkey’s delicate political balance.
An uneasy co-existence has taken hold with a range of domestic
critics who fear that Erdogan’s moderate Islamic party will erode the
country’s secularist traditions, and that his new strength threatens
their political and economic interests.
If Erdogan moves too far too fast, trouble won’t be far behind.
First, Erdogan says he plans to rewrite the country’s constitution. The
scale of the AKP’s electoral triumph speaks for itself, but efforts
to use the constitution to promote greater religious freedom – by
striking down a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities, for
example – risk a strong backlash from those who see it as a symbol
of resistance to Turkey’s official secularism.
Erdogan’s political clumsiness has made matters worse. At a press
conference in September, he invited critics in the universities to
"mind their own business."
The greater danger could come from the military brass, who perceive of
themselves as guardians of Turkey’s secularist traditions. The current
constitution, the one Erdogan wants to rewrite, was drafted by the
generals in 1982. The new draft may well undermine the military’s
authority.
But if there’s an even better way to rile nationalists within the army,
it’s by using constitutional changes to win friends among minority
Kurds. One of the AKP’s biggest electoral boosts came from a surge
in support from southeast Anatolia, home to much of the country’s
restive Kurdish minority. The party won 53 percent of the vote there
this summer, up from just 27.7 percent in 2002.
An early version of Erdogan’s proposed constitutional changes, leaked
to the media, includes a proposal to amend the clause that establishes
Turkish as the country’s official language, a move that nationalist
critics say will encourage demands for education in Kurdish and other
minority languages.
Given the new tensions over Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq,
these proposed changes have become a major political issue.
But they also pose a more mundane problem for Turkey’s reform process:
They’re a distraction and a drain on time and political ca
An AKP official I spoke with told me the constitutional reform process
could take up to 18 months. That would force Erdogan to shelve other
reforms, many of them crucial for the EU accession process.
In particular, the measure the EU most forcefully insists must be
scrapped – the law that criminalizes public insults to "Turkishness"
– may not be addressed at all before Erdogan’s government puts the
new constitution to a parliamentary vote.
As Turkey debates these controversies, its economy shows early signs
of a slowdown.
The resolution in the U.S. Congress may yet be shelved, and the
Turkish military may limit its strikes in northern Iraq. But Turkey’s
domestic political problems are not going away. In fact, these new
opportunities to burnish his nationalist credentials may persuade
Erdogan to continue to press his advantage at home. That’s why the
real risks to Turkey’s delicate political balance come not from
Washington or Iraq, but from within.
* Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, a political risk
consultancy, and author of "The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why
Nations Rise and Fall."