Turkey Loses Ozal at A Crucial Moment

By Michael Collins Dunn

The sudden death of Turkish President Turgut Ozal in April at the age of 66 created a political vacuum in a major country whose stability the world has taken for granted for too long. Just a few years ago, with the decline of the Soviet Union, Turkey was concerned that it had lost its strategic importance as NATO's southeastern flank. Western Europe had seemed to be marginalizing Turkey, and it was once again turned down for membership in the European Community. Turkey seemed doomed, like Pakistan and some other former confrontation states, to be forgotten by the West.

Then Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait. The Turkish government shut down the Iraqi oil pipelines passing through Turkey and made air bases in eastern Turkey available to aircraft of the U.S.-led international coalition for the war to liberate Kuwait, and for the protection of Kurds in northern Iraq after their uprising against the Saddam regime failed. President Ozal became a familiar face to Western television viewers.

After the Soviet Union disintegrated, suddenly instead of one sovereign country where the national language was Turkic, there were six. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan all looked to the Turkish Republic as a sort of cultural big brother.

A Cultural Big Brother

To the extent its economy permits, Turkey has been willing to play that role. Turkish television news is sent to Central Asia, Turkish books and publications are being distributed there, and efforts are being made to promote at least a cultural pan-Turkism.

The U.S. has seen this as salutary competition to what it fears could be Iran's efforts to export its religious extremism to Central Asia. Instead, "the Turkish model of development"—secular democracy with free-market elements—has become the shibboleth of most of the new states. While the U.S. welcomes a major Turkish role in the future of Central Asia, neither the Bush nor Clinton administrations have helped Turkey pay the bills for such an effort.

If the collapse of the Soviet Union gave Turkey its chance to play the new role of cultural big brother, it also sparked conflicts which threaten to engulf Turkey. Turkish sentiments are strongly with Bosnia's Muslims, heirs of the Ottoman Empire, against their Serb tormentors. If the arms embargo is lifted, Turkey may become a supplier of the Muslim side. An even greater danger lurks in the apparent intention of Serbia to extend its "ethnic cleansing" policies to Kosovo and to independent Macedonia. Such moves could draw Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey into a Third Balkan War.

While the dangers of Turkish involvement in the Balkans are real, they require a certain sequence of events to bring about intervention. In the Caucasus, there are calls by Turkish politicians and the press for intervention now.

The five-year-old war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has been intensifying. An Armenian offensive in April gave the Armenians and their Nagorno-Karabakh allies control of 10 percent of the land area of prewar Azerbaijan, a Turkish-speaking Muslim nation led today by Abulfaz Elchibey, a pan-Turkic nationalist. Extremists in the worldwide Armenian diaspora have for years been attacking Turkish targets in retaliation for the great Armenian deportations under the Ottoman Empire in 1915. For generations Turks and Armenians have argued about what Armenians consider genocide against their people. Turks sometimes deny it happened at all. In any event, it was the long-dead Ottoman Empire which carried out the deportations.

Armenian independence and the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan have stirred up mistrust on both sides of the Armenian-Turkish border. Turkish leaders have warned they cannot stand idly by and watch Azerbaijan lose more of its territory. Turkey also has sought to help the autonomous Azeri region of Nakhichevan, separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by Armenia, but bordering Turkey. Armenia claims Turkey is helping its enemies; Turkey claims that relief flights to Armenia often carry arms. The dangers of Turkish intervention could rise if Turkey goes through a period of political uncertainty.

Ozal's death could have been a disaster for hopes for peace, since he has recognized that Turkey cannot afford to embark on nationalist adventures which would alienate its Western allies. As the funerals of statesmen often do, however, Ozal's funeral provided an opportunity for Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian and Azeri President Elchibey to meet for the first time. Although the peace talks which started then face an uphill challenge, they offer some hope for finding a way out of the bloody impasse.

Ozal's Political Legacy

Although Ozal still personified Turkey for many Europeans and Americans, his political influence was on the wane at home. Since 1991 he had been governing in awkward cohabitation with Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel, his principal personal and political rival, while Ozal's own Motherland Party has been in opposition in Parliament. The Turkish presidency does retain many real powers, so the rivalry between president and prime minister has meant divided government during these crucial years, and sometimes a temptation on the part of each man to try to show that he is the more patriotic.

The recent awkwardness should not undercut Ozal's legacy. His election as prime minister during the military rule of the 1980s was unplanned by the military rulers of the time and helped speed the return to democracy,over which Ozal presided. During his years as prime minister and then as president, Turkey not only became a fully functioning democracy again, but experienced the beginnings of an economic boom and significant industrialization. Ozal sought to reduce the long-standing conflict with the Kurds in southeastern Turkey by permitting the use of the Kurdish language. (He is said to have been part Kurdish.) In recent months, Turkey has cracked down hard against PKK rebels in that region.

When Ozal died, he had just returned from a visit to Central Asia and Azerbaijan, again staking out Turkey's cultural sphere of influence and taking advantage of the president's relatively broad powers in foreign policy.

Ozal's Successor

A strong candidate to succeed Ozal is Prime Minister Demirel. Since his True Path Party and Ozal's Motherland Party are both parties of the center-right, the differences between the men were more a personal rivalry than an ideological rift. Since 1991, Demirel has been prime minister, ruling through a coalition of his True Path Party (DYP in its Turkish acronym) and Erdal Inonu's Social Democrat Populist Party (SHP). Since Parliament elects the president, Demirel's decision to throw his hat in the presidential ring makes him by far the strongest candidate to succeed Ozal.

The nomination and voting procedures take about a month, and as this was written nothing was absolutely certain. Mesut Yilmaz, current leader of Ozal's Motherland Party, has been critical from his post as leader of the opposition. Demirel's coalition partner, Inonu, himself is considered a strong candidate. He is the son of Ismet Inonu, one of the truly heroic names of modern Turkey. Some in Demirel's own party fear that once their leader goes to the presidency, power struggles could split the party and cause it to lose upcoming local elections.

In any event, there may well be major changes in Turkey's political scene as a result of Ozal's passing. Some suspect that the True Path and Motherland Parties eventually will form a coalition, since they share the same part of the political spectrum.

Whatever the immediate succession, Turgut Ozal played a major role in modem Turkey's transformation from military rule to democracy and in its economic transformation as well. He will be remembered, and he will be missed.

Michael Collins Dunn, Ph.D., is senior analyst of the International Estimate, Inc., a Washington-based consultancy, and editor of its biweekly newsletter, The Estimate.