The Sick Man of Europe Revisited
ROBBINS, GERALD
The Sick Man of Europe Revisited Don't panic about the Islamic victory in Turkey. BY GERALD ROBBINS Ankara WHEN THE VOTE TALLIES started trickling in from Yozgat, my Turkish colleagues knew that...
...AKP leader Tayyip Erdogan, who would be the next logical prime minister, is currently banned from political office for expressing pro-Islamic sentiments as mayor of Istanbul in the mid-1990s...
...The study also notes that another 25 percent of Turkish society, although drawing a regular paycheck, still live at the poverty level...
...that it's desperately seeking...
...Throughout the past decade, the former group has been represented by the Motherland party (ANAP) and the True Path party (DYP...
...Unlike the American version, which calls to mind Scarsdale and Silver Spring, varos signifies a shan-tytown that has grown up in recent decades on the outskirts of Ankara, Istanbul, or one of Turkey's other metropolitan areas...
...The economic collapse of the 1990s doomed such hopes...
...Such at least is the postelection sentiment in Ankara...
...Throughout the 1990s, Yilmaz and Ciller accused each other of being corrupt, leading to tit for tat investigations...
...The Turkish vote was nothing short of a political rebel-lion—and could be seen as a challenge to the anti-religious tenets of Kemal Ataturk's republic, founded on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire nearly 80 years ago...
...Throughout a recent stay in Turkey, I constantly heard the word varos, which means suburb, and which has taken on a special meaning in Turkey these days...
...Over the last decade, ANAP and DYP's combined vote in general elections decreased from 51 percent in the 1991 campaign to just under 14 percent in the recently concluded race...
...Instead, with more than a third of the popular vote, it won nearly twoGerald Robbins is a writer living in New York City...
...Arguably, the message voters delivered was more populist outrage than fundamentalist yearning...
...Turkish voters are a moderately conservative bunch...
...Considering the dynamics behind the AKP's rise, it's probably fair to say that this is a reformist work in progress, rather than a blueprint for the imposition of sharia on secular Turkey...
...In neighboring Greece, the average personal income is $12,000...
...We must not set out on a headhunting trip from day one...
...And while there are other party officials who are capable of taking the governmental helm, they lack their chief's stature...
...BY GERALD ROBBINS Ankara WHEN THE VOTE TALLIES started trickling in from Yozgat, my Turkish colleagues knew that an electoral rout was under way...
...What everyone underestimated was the level of popular discontent with a tanking economy and malgov-ernance...
...You have treated me in a condescending manner.'" Three factors help explain AKP's overwhelming victory...
...The economy shrank 6.5 percent last year, with 70 percent inflation and unemployment officially listed at 11 percent but estimated to be twice that amount...
...The individuals who migrated from the countryside to the varos during this period found a very different environment than their predecessors...
...The loss of faith in center-right secularism made AKP the only option...
...The essential difference between these two bodies was more personal than political...
...Even its leadership is up in the air...
...In other words, ANAP's Mesut Yilmaz and DYP's Tansu Ciller can't stand each other...
...A mid-sized Anatolian city, Yozgat is Turkey's version of Peoria...
...What surprised pundits and pollsters wasn't the AKP victory but the extent of it...
...While a merger might have made sense politically, cooperation between the two leaders was unthinkable...
...Some of these folks even became landlords, cutting deals with contractors for new structures...
...Yilmaz and Ciller should have figured out the consequences of their Punch and Judy show...
...A decade ago, these settlements could be interpreted hopefully, as a jumping-off point for the ambitious poor, full of the promise of upward mobility...
...That would probably be an overreaction...
...In Istanbul's far reaches there are reputedly varos that the authorities don't even know about, that don't even appear on a map...
...thirds of the seats in Turkey's parliament...
...The arrogance of this agreement led to a widespread belief that the whole political system was guided by cronyism...
...Erdogan's status is under review by Turkey's Supreme Court...
...Almost half of Yozgat's ballots were marked for the Islamic party in a multiparty race...
...Formed just a year ago, it's essentially a grass-roots movement for the disgruntled...
...The collapse of the political center...
...An estimated 80 percent of the deputies in the incoming parliament will be newcomers...
...It's ordinarily an ultra-nationalist stronghold, but this year, the Justice and Development party (AKP) was wowing Yozgat with its anti-corruption, reformist brand of Islamic politics...
...The AKP, however, knows these neighborhoods well...
...The "varoslar...
...Getting the vote out is one thing, managing disparate groups another...
...The AKP was expected to win 20 to 25 percent of the vote (the high-water mark for earlier Islamic parties), and then form a coalition with one or more of the secular parties...
...If Yilmaz and Ciller had stepped down prior to this election, the political picture would have been different since ANAP and DYP would have restored confidence with new leaders...
...If we start wearing out AKP from day one, we would be making a big mistake," notes Birand...
...The typical resident is underemployed, deprived of basic services, dependent on others, and certain his life won't get better...
...He lives surrounded by non-descript, concrete sprawl...
...It used to be that the center right safeguarded political stability within Turkey by accommodating Islamic and nationalist surges either by merger or coalition," observed Sedat Ergin, Ankara bureau chief for Hurriyet, one of Turkey's leading newspapers...
...And so went the November 3 elections in officially secular Turkey— America's closest friend among majority-Muslim countries and a NATO ally since 1952, whose bases and assistance will be critically important to any substantial military operation in Iraq...
...You have impoverished me...
...The closest challengers barely made double digits...
...The Islamic flavor of the AKP (its officials quote the Koran and pray at mosques) makes the party seem morally upright, in striking contrast to the ANAP, DYP, and the other "establishment" parties, who are derided for not being candan ("honest...
...The AKP's well-orchestrated campaign doesn't mean that it's an orderly structure, though...
...Back in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, many varoslar would receive government amnesties for building on illegal property," Hur-riyet's Ergin noted...
...whoever does well there usually does well throughout the country...
...Approximately 50 to 60 percent usually opt for center-right parties, while the center-left habitually attracts 25 to 30 percent...
...After several years of such wrangling, a compromise was reached in 1999, in which the two parties granted each other immunity from prosecution...
...Such figures underscore why—besides atavistic hostility to their majority-Muslim neighbor—the European Union is reluctant to offer Turkey the full membership in the E.U...
...Now the varos mentality is bleak...
...We must give it time, wait and see what they want to do, what kind of rhetoric they use, and then we must decide accordingly...
...The sick man of Europe revisited...
...Thanks to the worst economic crisis since World War II, this infamous 19th-century description of Ottoman stagnation is suddenly apt again...
...Turkey's is $1,500...
...You have failed to govern me well...
...The party is presently an amorphous mass of factions united under the banner of throwing the bums out...
...Should this be cause for alarm in Washington...
...Only one other group, the Republican People's party (which Ataturk himself founded), attained any legislative presence...
...According to a survey conducted by Ankara's Middle East Technical University, approximately 10 percent of Turkey's population don't have a regular income...
...This is the response given by millions who are saying 'You have failed to listen to me...
...In the meantime, Turkey is the promised land for people who dislike American-style incumbent-protection politics...
...Neither party reached the 10 percent threshold for parliamentary representation...
...This outlook has vanished...
...These results amount to a civilian coup," wrote Mehmet Ali Birand, a well-regarded Turkish columnist...
Vol. 8 • December 2002 • No. 12
