Deciphering Turkey's elections the making of a revolution

World Policy Journal

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 63-73

  Barkey, Henri J ^a   Çongar, Yasemin ^b  

^a LEHIGH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 38949162200     PISSN: 07402775     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/wopj.2007.24.3.63     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Radikal, "Büyükanit' in 'Kösk' sorusuna yaniti: Görüsüm geçerligini koruyor," July 31, 2007.
2. Hitherto all presidential elections since the adoption of the 1982 Constitution followed the same pattern: for the future president to be elected in the first two rounds, the candidate had to meet a two-thirds requirement. If Parliament failed to elect someone in these two rounds, then the president was elected on a simple majority rule.
3. Alevis are a heterodox offshoot of Shiites particular to Turkey who have been shunned by the Sunni establishment. They represent roughly 12 percent of the population.
4. Etyen Mahçupyan, "Seçim degil referendum," Zaman, July 19, 2007. Mahçupyan argued in this pre-election column that ideological leanings of voters would prevail over their preference for particular policies at the ballot box, thereby turning the vote into a referendum between democracy and authoritarianism. While we think that AKP's success in stabilizing the economy and providing affordable healthcare contributed to the election outcome, we agree with Mahçupyan in that ideology had become the centerpiece of the campaign and voters were left with a choice between statism and politics rather than specific alternative policies promoted by respective parties. In fact, CHP presented almost no concrete policy proposals, but simply asked the voters to cast a ballot to protect Ataturk's legacy and the Republic.
5. DTP, while legal, has close ties to the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has mounted an insurgency against the Turkish state since the mid 1980s. After a hiatus of five years following the capture of its leader in 1999, the PKK resumed military action in 2004. As a result, Turkey's other parties and elites regard DTP with great mistrust.
6. Of a maximum of 550 seats, the AKP won 341 seats compared to 363 in 2002 despite its higher share of the vote; the 10 percent threshold that the electoral laws mandate a party has to win in order to enter parliament can explain this anomaly. In 2002, MHP (or DTP's predecessors) did not manage to cross this threshold.
7. AKP deserves credit for sticking to an existing economic plan and not introducing one. The previous government's economic minister, Kemal Dervis, a World Bank official, who was called back as part of a desperate effort to save the economy, originally conceived the plan.
8. Bekir Agirdir, "Sandigin içindekini ne belirledi?" Radikal, July 25-28, 2007.
9. Even the Socialist International has been considering expelling CHP from its ranks.
10. Özbudun outlined some of the general principles of the draft in an interview with Nese Düzel in Radikal, August 6, 2007.
11. Ibid.
12. In addition, a last minute change to the electoral law made it much harder for DTP voters to vote for their candidates who were running as independents. This opportunistic measure was introduced by AKP and supported by the opposition and the president, Sezer, who saw a chance to reduce the number of DTP potential parliamentarians.
13. Erdogan first said this on June 19, 2007, in an interview on Kanal A television. He reiterated and expanded his commitment to an Italy-style "clean hands" operation in an interview with Fehmi Koru and Ali Bayramoglu in Yeni Safak on July 5, 2007.
14. In the weeks leading to the July 22 elections, operations intensified, and Ankara Police took 19 members of the Patriotic Forces Union (VKGB) into custody on July 3. Large quantities of ammunition and weapons were found in lodgings that belonged to retired military officers with alleged ties to gang members.
15. Ismet Berkan, '"Düsman kim?'" Radikal, August 8, 2007. Berkan discusses a recent message sent by the president of Ataturkist Thought Associations, General (ret.) Sener Eruygur, where he not only accuses the winners of treason and being the enemy but also calls for a mobilization of all forces against them.
16. Richard Holbrooke told Yasemin Çongar in an interview, published in Milliyet on March 17, 1996, that he, in his capacity as the assistant secretary of state, had developed the concept that "Turkey was the new front state for the West, and in that sense, she had taken up the role of Germany during the Cold War."
17. Some generals were so incensed at the "concessions" offered on Cyprus that they seriously deliberated the possibility of a military coup. The political weekly Nokta published extensive documents in March 2007, including excerpts from one general's diary that revealed the coup plans. Soon after, security forces raided Nokta's offices and its publisher decided to stop publishing the magazine.
18. Henri J. Barkey, "Kurdistanoff," National Interest (summer 2007).
19. See also Murat Yetkin, "Süleymaniye'de gerçekte neler oldu?" Radikal, February 20, 2007.
20. The 47-Nation Survey released by Pew Research Center on June 27, 2007. See http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=256.
21. Ahmet Davutoglu, who has served as the foreign policy advisor to both the prime and foreign ministers has articulated much of this thinking in his book, Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye'nin Uluslararasi Konumu (Istanbul: Küre Yayinlari, 2001).
22. Personal communication, n.d.
23. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, in an interview with Reuters on April 28, 2007, was the first to say that the United States did not take sides. Later, one of his assistants was quoted in Milliyet on May 13, 2007, saying that constitutionally the Turkish military had a duty to intervene. In fact, there is no constitutional mandate for such a posture. In August, the same assistant in a statement published in the Greek press suggested that Gül would not make a good candidate for the presidency and implied that there were others who were more suitable. After his words caused a fury in the Turkish media, the diplomat said he had been misquoted.