Tansu Ciller Ready to Face European Union and Turkish Voters

By James M. Dorsey

Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller insists that she will govern Turkey for as long as it takes her to transform it into a modern, prosperous European state. "Only then will my mission be complete," she vows.

Just how determined she is Mrs. Ciller demonstrated throughout October, as she struggled through a government crisis to emerge stronger by patching together a coalition that originally had collapsed under its own weight on Sept. 20.

Ironically, Turkey may be better off as a result. Ciller's revived coalition between her conservative True Path Party (DYP) and the left-wing Republican People's Party (CHP) has a more than reasonable chance of meeting requirements for ratification of a customs union with the European Union.

The new government also pledges to prepare for early elections on Dec. 24 of this year, rather than in October or November of next year as originally scheduled. If these elections produce a clear winner, they could return stability to Turkish politics.

If the customs union is secured prior to elections, Ciller will have a strong hand in the coming electoral battle. Never a politician to be underestimated, Ciller has spent most of her first 28 months as prime minister fighting to hold on to power rather than exercising it.

Often her mission to drag Turkey into the 21st century seemed to be lost, as she compromised with more traditional Turkish politicians in her bid to retain power. Crisis and confusion, rather than a sense of progress, have been the result.

In late October, she climbed out from under the ruins of two governments to form yet a third one. In the process, she not only forced President Suleiman Demirel, once an admirer and now a foe, to support her, but also considerably weakened his hold on the DYP.

This latest battle began on Sept. 20 when a dispute with her junior coalition partner, the left-wing CHP, escalated into a bitter confrontation that ultimately led to her government's collapse. For almost a month afterward, Ciller dedicated herself to cutting deals with politicians from across the spectrum in her attempt to form a new government.

On Oct. 5, she unveiled a cabinet that baffled even the most hardened observers of Turkey's convoluted politics. It was rooted in the hard-line fringe of her DYP and backed by two smaller parties which seldom were willing even to talk to one another: the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the left-wing Democratic Left Party (DSP).

"The prime minister did something that she thought was right for the country."

When, on Oct. 8, parliament rejected her proposed cabinet, forcing her to return her mandate to form a government to President Demirel, American-educated Ciller seemed to have come to the end of the road. Yet, barely 24 hours later, she had bounced back to center-stage, seemingly stronger that before. She announced an agreement to restore her coalition with the CHP and she expelled from her DYP party several traditionalist deputies who, backed by Mr. Demirel, had tried to block her path.

"This makes Ciller a clear winner. It allows her to get rid of the old-boy network which betrayed her," says political scientist Soli Ozel. "There was an operation to purge Ciller from politics. Demirel was behind it," says Fehmi Koru, a prominent columnist for the pro-Islamist Zaman newspaper. Political analysts say grassroots DYP deputies who see Ciller as the party's only hope of winning an electoral battle, particularly against the Islamist Refah Party, helped her win the battle within the party.

Coskun Kirca, a prominent DYP right-winger who served as Ciller's foreign minister in her short-lived minority government, played a key role in securing Ciller's control over the DYP.

"So what if Ciller did not get the vote of confidence," Kirca wrote in Turkey's prominent Yeni Yuzil newspaper a day after parliament defeated her minority government. "The prime minister did something that she thought was right for the country. That has earned the party a lot of goodwill at a time that all others have lost credibility."

To achieve European Parliament ratification of the customs union, which is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 1996, Turkey must change Article 8 of its tough anti-terror law by Dec. 14, the day the European Parliament intends to debate the agreement with Turkey.

Article 8

Article 8, which bans "separatist propaganda" in any form, has been used to jail scores of people for writings and speeches linked to an 11-year Kurdish insurgency in the southeast. It has plagued Turkey's relations with Europe for much of this year. European diplomats say Kirca already is working on a formula that would make Article 8 acceptable to Europe by borrowing language from Article 18 of the German constitution. This would replace the article's current catch-all ban of "all sorts of separatist propaganda" with more precise definitions of "terror" and "separatism."

It also would reduce or scrap jail sentences and replace them instead with temporary bans on political and social activities. Although Kirca is a leading right-winger within the DYP, European diplomats say he played a key role in getting democratic amendments to the country's constitution accepted by parliament last July at a moment at which they had all but given up hope that Ciller would succeed.

The analysts warn, however, that Ciller may not be the only winner to emerge from the most recent crisis. The Islamist Refah party, which last year won municipal elections in many major cities, including Istanbul and Ankara, also is likely to benefit from the political fallout of the most recent crisis.

Throughout the political turmoil of October, Refah remained curiously silent, with its leader initially not even bothering to return to Turkey from a trip abroad.

Explaining Refah's detachment, political scientist Ozel says: "They have proven that they are above the fray; that they have nothing to do with the disgusting disarray in Turkey's political scenery."

James M. Dorsey is an American free-lance writer based in Istanbul.