From: TEX5HAD@CMS1.LEEDS.AC.UK (Haluk DEMIRBAG)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: TURKS DESPAIR OF A SYSTEM 'MADE FOR THE TWENTIES'
Date: 29 Sep 1992 21:49:20 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

TURKS DESPAIR OF A SYSTEM 'MADE FOR THE TWENTIES'

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Outmoded state institutions and a  tenuous hold on democracy have
brought rising tensions, Hugh Pope writes from Istanbul
-----------------------------------------------------------------

"The men of the Turkish armed forces are in love with democracy",
insisted  the  Commander-in-Chief,  Dogan  Gures,  this  weekend,
attempting to  dampen down one  of Turkey's most  frenzied recent
bouts of speculation about another military coup.

Classic army  intervention - as  in 1960,  1971 and 1980  - seems
most unlikely, and General Gures said he guaranteed it could only
happen "over my  dead body". But highly  charged statements about
coup  scenarios that  fill  newspaper front  pages speak  volumes
about Turks' unease.

This has been  fuelled by fierce fighting with  Kurdish rebels in
the country's  south-east, frightening levels of  urban terrorism
and  the gradual  break-up  of  the coalition  led  by the  Prime
Minister,  Suleyman  Demirel. Little  is  left  of the  surge  of
optimism that swept  Turkey when the centre-right  Mr Demirel was
elected 11  months ago. Mr  Demirel set  up a coalition  with his
Social  Democrat rivals  committed to  broad institutional  human
rights and democratic reforms. Virtually nothing has been done.

"There is  no need to  panic," said Mr  Demirel. "You are  on the
boat  of democracy.  Don't let  this boat  make you  seasick. You
cannot get off."

But, as  the former prime  minister, Bulent  Ecevit, put it  in a
speech, "There  is a much  more serious  crisis than that  in the
government:  that in  the  state. The  President, government  and
general staff have very  different approaches... while parliament
is left out of policy-making altogether."

Some take the debate much  further, saying rising tension results
from  gridlock in  the  institutions of  the centralised  Turkish
nationalist state founded by Kemal Ataturk in 1923. One school of
thought  advocates  wholesale renewal  and  the  foundation of  a
"Second Republic".

"The 1923 state  is finished. Kemalism is dead, but  we can't get
rid of the  body," said Mehmet Altan, an  economics professor and
newspaper columnist  who launched  the "Second  Republic" debate.
"The social class  dominating Turkey has remained  the same since
1923. The idea  is a complete change, and to  erase the influence
of the army."

The state, Mr Altan alleged, now existed for little more than the
pillage  of  state  funds.  The education  system  was  producing
robots. Taxes  were being paid by  just one person in  four and a
third of  the population was  not covered by social  security, he
said. "What we need is a revolution," he added.

President Turgut Ozal,  in his years as prime  minister from 1984
to  1987,  did start  a  decentralising  revolution. One  of  the
world's  most  inward-looking  countries  was opened  up  to  the
outside world,  economic barriers  were broken  down, US-educated
technocrats shook  up moribund  state agencies and  Turkey became
something of a presence in the world.

But Mr Ozal and his family became mired down in domestic politics
and intrigues,  leaving the  state machine largely  intact. Since
then, important  programmes, such  as privatisation,  have turned
into  a fiasco  - in  the  last attempted  sell-off, the  buyer's
cheque bounced.

The political process seems unable to produce solutions. Istanbul
grows  by  250,000  people  a year,  but  planning  is  virtually
non-existent, with  concrete spreading out on  state land divided
up by the "land mafia".

For more than two years quasi-legal television stations have been
broadcasting what  they like  into Turkey,  financially crippling
the state television station, whose shows are now watched by only
a quarter of the population.

Less than 10 deputies can be found in some debates in parliament,
reflecting what one deputy said was a feeling that "parliament is
a complete waste of time".  Some politicians are offering to take
up where Mr Ozal left  off, saying fundamental changes are needed
in a 60  million people, little changed since  Ataturk founded it
to govern 13 million people, 80 percent of whom were villagers.

"Turkey was made for the Twenties. That was good for then. Anyone
getting  off the  train  from Istanbul  with a  tie  was made  an
under-secretary,"  said  Deniz  Baykal,  the new  leader  of  the
rejuvenated Republican Populist Party.  "But Turkey can no longer
be governed  from Ankara. We  need a new  administrative system."
Few, however,  are ready to challenge  the role of the  army, the
historic  backbone  of  the  Kemalist state,  whose  profile  has
steadily risen  during the last  year of worsening  conflict with
Kurdish rebels in the south-east.

Cabinet meetings have recently  been overshadowed by the National
Security  Council,  technically  an   advisory  body  that  joins
civilian leaders with  the military chiefs. A  council meeting on
Friday called for unity in the fight against separatist Kurds and
made thinly veiled threats of  legal action against the one legal
Kurdish radical-party.

"In the south-east,  the military is calling  the shots already,"
wrote Yalcin  Dogan, an editor  of the Milliyet  daily newspaper.
"In other words, what need is there for a coup?"

THE INDEPENDENT, 29 September 1992
            _
|-| /-\ |_ |_| |< {"Ozal: Statesman who made Turkey a crucial
                   player." Jonathan Eyal, The Guardian}
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish