Özal was a president closer to the nation than to the state bureaucracy, which earned him love and sympathy among the people, cutting across a wide coalition comprising the rich and the poor, Turks and Kurds, urban and rural. But the Kemalist bureaucracy with its ideological extensions in the media never liked him. The reason was very simple: Özal was a person who was determined to transform the state-society relationship in Turkey. His motto was very simple and truly liberal: The state is for the people, not vice versa. This liberal conviction on the priority of the people vis-à-vis the state was a revolutionary stance in Turkey, where the state (bureaucracy) was supposed to be sacred and untouchable, above the people. He emerged first as the architect of an economic reform program in the early 1980s that transformed Turkey’s development strategy and laid the groundwork for opening up the Turkish economy to global competition, with an enormous impact on social and political conduct in the coming years. With his emphasis on market forces and entrepreneurship, Özal unleashed the civilian dynamics of change in Turkey, relying on social capital instead of state enterprises.
In 1983 he took central stage as the leader of a newly formed political party, the Motherland Party (ANAP), which won two consecutive elections in 1983 and 1987. As the prime minister from 1983 to 1989 and as president until his death in 1993, Özal was the single political figure who, with his ideas, programs, projects and “vision,” dominated Turkish politics and initiated a process of liberalization in economic, political and social affairs.
His reformist mind, novel ideas and style prepared the groundwork for Turkey’s transformation in his times and initiated many grand debates shaking conventional wisdom in many areas, including the Kurdish question, civil-military relations, secularism, etc.
Özal led Turkey’s transition to a civilian government following the military regime (1980-1983) during which the military’s influence in the political process had been reduced as Özal consolidated its power over the years. When he applied for full membership in the European Community (EC) in 1987, his motive was crystal clear: “If we want to prevent another military coup from taking place in Turkey in the future, we must be a member of the EC.”
It was Özal who forcefully introduced ideas of “scaling down” the state, global competition, a market economy and privatization when the wave of the “new right” was also high in the rest of the world. He was also effective in popularizing political liberalism with his ideas of “three liberties” (freedom of expression, freedom of religion and conscience, and freedom of entrepreneurship) and a “service state,” challenging the traditional state and its raison d’être. His understanding of Islam and secularism differed both from pro-Islamic groups and the secularists. He was conservative or even religious yet modern, pro-Western and liberal. Özal held unconventional views about the Kurdish question that made for him enemies and new friends; he was immensely popular among the Kurds in Turkey.
It was Özal who led Turkey through the challenging times of the end of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union, the Gulf war and the Bosnian war. His leadership was recognized during this period of crisis in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia during which his influence expanded beyond Turkey and left a mark on the wider Eurasian geography.
In short, Özal was an exceptional political leader, a rarity in Turkish politics. This Saturday (April 14) the Turgut Özal Thought Association is commemorating Özal in a conference at the TOBB Economy and Technology University, where the first Özal Democracy Award and the Özal Economics Award will also be announced.
It is time to remember Turkey’s ninth president, who was the architect of the second wave of the “liberal revolution” in this country as we currently face a futile counter attack of reactionary forces under the guise of protecting the republic. It was Özal’s liberal revolution that, by unleashing the social dynamics of change for democratic governance, made sociologically impossible a reversal to be attempted by a bureaucratic/authoritarian reactionaryism.
