So aggressive, so pugnacious was he in defending what he thought to be Turkey’s honor, that he soon found himself about as welcome among newspaper editors and social gatherings as a debt collector at the race track. However, he was the appointee, and there seemed no chance of the government ordering his recall. Then, one fine day, a bunch of MPs from the governing party descended on London for a parliamentary meeting and a bit of shopping. They demanded that the ambassador meet them at the airport in his car. He, quite correctly, pointed out that these sorts of errands were not part of his job description and suggested there was a perfectly good cab service that could bring them into town. Alas, it was only a matter of time before he himself was packing his bags to take a cab in the opposite direction.I mention this incident as a way of illustrating a point which the current Turkish government knows all too well. In public life you are all too often punished not for what you do wrong but for the momentary lapses when you do the right thing. Indeed, the very decision to turn over a new leaf can be more than enough to stir up troubled waters. The reform lobby in Turkey was beginning to lose patience with the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) commitments to reform. Promises to rewrite or radically amend the Constitution, to press on with European Union-motivated reforms gathered dust on the shelf. So there were great expectations when the prime minister announced earlier this year that the time was ripe to address the democratic demands of Turkey’s Kurdish citizens. The “Kurdish overture” he proclaimed may have been vague on content, but it was clear there was a commitment from which his government could not easily retreat. For the last few months, the nation waited for the AK Party to put its cards on the table. The government slowly tested the waters and the actors in the Kurdish drama slowly tested the government’s nerves.
No one can expect gratitude for engaging in a process of reform and the real question became how big would be the swarm that would emerge from the hornets’ nest. The conventional wisdom is that the government found itself squeezed between the nationalist right, who opposed any concession, and Kurdish nationalists, who did not want to see the AK Party take credit for any improvement. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), or a faction of it, seemed to revel in justifying the Turkish nationalists’ worse fears with a deadly assault that killed seven soldiers. Then the Constitutional Court shut down the Kurdish nationalist party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), on the grounds that it had organic links to the militants. The decision came on a Friday evening like a blow to the solar plexus and left Turkey gasping for breath. Trying to solve the Kurdish question by shutting down the party which enjoys the lion’s share of the vote in the Southeast of Turkey is counterintuitive, to say the least.
“Turkey has become a graveyard for political parties,” the prime minister said in criticism of the court, and pledged that Turkey should take into account the recommendations of the Venice Commission (an advisory body to the Council of Europe). It is an apercu long overdue according to the 2009 EU progress report published this October. I quote: “On 14 March 2009 the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe published its opinion on the Turkish legislation governing the closure of political parties. It concluded that Articles 68 and 69 of the Constitution and the relevant provisions of the Law on Political Parties form a system which, as a whole, is incompatible with Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights [right to freedom of assembly and association]. The Turkish authorities have not yet amended the legislation accordingly.” The blame is not the court’s alone.
It is not just the government which needs to take stock. The press, particularly that portion of it which supports the government, was very much alive to the dangers in 2008 when the Constitutional Court threatened to shut down the AK Party itself. Yet it has been relatively complacent about the DTP closure, even though the case was first opened two years ago. So instead of a “Kurdish overture” we have witnessed a Kurdish train crash with who knows how much damage to come.
