Tansu Çiller: lusting for power and undermining democracy

Chapter Twelve

Tansu Çiller: Lusting for Power and

Undermining Democracy

Ümit Cizre

Tansu Çiller gained prominence in Turkish politics by becoming the country’s first female prime minister and the first woman to head a major political party. Her rapid rise to the chairmanship of the center-right True Path Party (JDo^u

Yol Partisl—^DYP) and the prime minister’s office surprised many since she had

no prior experience in politics. Moreover, although the DYP’s veteran leader, Suleyman Demirel, personally recruited her into the party, he was opposed to her assuming the leadership of the DYP. Initially, many in Turkey and in the West were pleased by Çiller’s meteoric rise in politics: she impressed them with her modem and Western outlook, her fluent English, and her background as an American-trained economics professor. However, this initial perception changed substantially over the course of the 1990s, especially in the aftermath of her decision in 1996 to form a coalition partnership with the Islamist Welfare Party

{Refah Partisi—RP). By the end of the decade, Çiller still retained her control

over the DYP, but her popularity as a leader, along with the DYP’s electoral support, had declined sharply.

Origins and Political Career

Tansu Çiller gained access to the leadership of the DYP as a political novice without rising through the party ranks. She was recruited as a “technocrat” in 1990 in time for the Third National congress of the party on November 23, 1990. In the 1991 general elections, she was elected as a deputy from Istanbul on the party ticket. Until being elected as the chairwoman of the party in 1993, she remained the minister of state responsible for the economy in the coalition

govemment that the DYP formed with the Social Democratic People’s Party

{Sosyal D em okrat H alkçı Parti—SHP) on November 21, 1991, under the premiership of Süleyman Demirel, the then chairman of the DYP.

On one level, the making of Çiller as a leader can be traced back to the amalgam of three influences in her early years. The first was familial: she was bom on May 24, 1943, in Istanbul to a middle-class family.* Her father was a modest bureaucrat with unfulfilled political ambitions, which he passed on to his daughter.^ She claims that she was politicized at an early age, wanting to put the economy in the right when she grew up. Her family sent her to Amavutkoy Girls’ College, a private American high school where well-to-do Istanbul fami­ lies sent their childrea There, she concealed from her friends her family’s mod­ est financial and social status.^ Having graduated from Robert College (today’s Boğaziçi University in Istanbul) with a degree in economics, she then went to the United States with her husband, Özer Çiller, to complete her graduate stud­ ies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut and returned to Turkey in 1974 to teach in the Economics Department of Boğaziçi University.

The second important influence on her was her Amavutkoy Girls’ College years, when she reportedly felt out of class in the presence of her wealthier friends, and later the financially tight days she and her husband spent in the United States. These monetary difllculties combined with the political ambitions she derived from her father must have socialized Çiller into believing in the “overriding” importance of wealth as a source of power and social status."*

The third major influence on the formation of Çiller’s essential qualities was her favorable view of American society and economy. When she first emerged on the political stage in Turkey, there were speculations that her pro- Americanism helped her win the sympathy and support of the U.S. govermnent.^

By the end of the 1980s, Çiller had gained frime less by her academic ac­ complishments as an economics professor, and more through the research proj­ ects and reports she prepared for such influential economic interest groups as the Istanbul Chamber of Industry {Istanbul Sanayi Odası) and Istanbul Chamber of Commerce {Istanbul Ticaret Odası). Her involvement in interest-group politics was instrumental in Çiller’s decision to abandon her academic career. The close relations that she formed with the politically influential members of the Turkish business world strongly influenced her decision to take up politics as a full-time activity.

With the exception of the case of the Nationalist Action Party {M illiyetçi H areket Partisi—^MHP) where the leadership position was vacated in 1997 by the natural death of Alparslan Türkeş, what led to leadership change in the Turkish political parties in the last decade was presidential successions: just as Turgut Özal’s succession to the presidency in 1991 opened the door for Mesut Yılmaz as a relatively unknown and inexperienced politician to take over the leadership of the Motherland Party {Anavatan Partisi— ANAP), it was Demirel’s succession to the presidency in 1993 upon the death of Özal that en­ abled a newcomer. Çiller, to replace him. When the DYP’s chairmanship was

Tansu Çiller: Lusting fo r Power and Undermining Democracy 201

vacated by Demirel’s move to the presidency, he had been the leader of the party for the last twenty-nine years. The tutelage of the natural leader was so strong that none of the three male contenders could muster the necessary re­ sources, skill, and support needed to compete effectively for Demirel’s seat, nor could any of them forge a consensus around themselves sufficient in numbers to win the leadership outright, a situation that helped Çiller’s chances.^

Furthermore, Çiller’s sudden rise to leadership in the extraordinary general congress on June 13, 1993, was a consequence of the identity crisis of the DYP, which its predominantly male delegates seemed to be made aware of. The ANAP’s economic liberalization policies between 1983 and 1991 had caused social ravages among the DYP’s core supporters of rural groups and small-to- medium-sized businesses. To deal with the negative effects of these policies, Demirel embraced redistributive social policies. However, despite falling living standards and increasing social polarization, the coalition government formed between the DYP and SHP failed to address social and economic problems. Meanwhile, the neoliberal discourse among Turkey’s sizable modem sectors, which were exposed to global effects, gained ideological predominance. Since the DYP’s rural image did not reflect the ideas and aspirations o f these sectors in the early 1990s, Demirel recruited several well-known individuals to provide a new image for the party.

At the DYP’s annual congress that was convened in Ankara in June 1993 to choose the party’s next leader following Demirel’s election to the presidency, the “male delegates” voted for the “female option” and endorsed Demirel’s strategy to inspire confidence in the urban sectors of the society, which tradi­ tionally had misgivings about the true liberal nature of the DYP. As Çiller her­ self was drawn from this sector, she seemed a perfect candidate capable of forming close ties with this stratum. In her election as the leader, she also rode on a wave of media support and exposure, which she strove to manipulate.^

In accounting for her election as the chairwoman of the DYP, what could be termed as the “Yalım Erez factor,” too, should not be overlooked. Until he re­ signed from his ministerial post in the DYP-SHP government on March 5, 1997, Erez was Çiller’s most tmsted confidant and advisor, actively engaged in pro­ moting her political career. Originally the leader of the powerful and state- friendly Union of Chambers of Commerce and Stock Exchanges o f Turkey

{Türkiye Odalar ve Borsalar Birliği—TOBB), he brought the muscle of organi­

zation behind the election of Çiller as the leader of the DYP. Erez convinced the DYP’s delegates about the propriety of choosing her. Yalım Erez himself ran on the DYP ticket in the 1995 elections and subsequently became the minister of industry and technology as a reward for his services to Çiller.

It is true that Demirel, whom she replaced, was favorably impressed by Çiller when a mutual acquaintance brought her to his summer home in Istanbul in 1984, along with three other economics professors as part of the strategy to open up the party to academia.* Indeed, Çiller was asked to join the party and was made minister of state responsible for the economy. However, before long,

Demirel regretted his decision of having invited Çiller to join the DYP. As min­ ister of state responsible for the economy. Çiller performed very poorly. Moreo­ ver, she turned out to be an overly ambitious person.^ Consequently, when Çiller declared her candidacy for the chairmanship of the parly, it was a well-known secret that Demirel did not approve.^® Çiller did not pay any attention to Demirel, became a candidate, and was elected.

Subsequent developments revealed that Demirel’s unwillingness to openly endorse any one person for the AP’s leadership actually played into Ciller’s hand. He discouraged the most serious contender, Hüsamettin Cindoruk, who had temporarily served as the caretaker leader in the early 1980s when Demirel was banned from politics by the military. Demirel’s reluctance to endorse Cin- donik and other potential candidates for party leadership stenuned largely from his concern of creating a strong rival to himself in the DYP. It also reflected his belief that none of them would be capable of maintaining party unity. Demirel’s reticence set in motion the process that eventually catapulted ÇiUer to power.

Çiller’s election to the DYP’s leadership also led her to assume the position of the prime minister as head of the coalition govenunent between the DYP and the Social Democratic Populist Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti— SHP). After she became prime minister, Çiller’s political discourse emphasized con­ servative-populism, Turgut Özal-style commitment to economic liberalism, and close cooperation with the armed forces to win a military victory in the Kurdish conflict. These characteristics represented a stark contrast to the discourse of her predecessor, Süleyman Demirel, who, prior to the 1991 elections, had placed emphasis on social welfare, civilianization, and democratization, with a particu­ lar emphasis on human rights.^*

The armed struggle against the separatist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (Partiya Karkaren Kiu-distan—^PKK) involved thirty thousand security forces and ab­ sorbed about 20 percent of the national budgeL It thus helped set the precedence of security forces collaborating with the state-supported crime syndicates to hunt down the PKK sympathizers. The illegal methods used in the fight against the PKK had become public first in 1996. In February 2000, it was claimed by the Turkish media that between 1994 and 1995 the Çiller government had commit­ ted serious irregularities and had been involved in corruption when it imported weapons for a “Special Combined Force” established in the southeast against the PKK. Another hallmark of Çiller’s Kurdish policy was her attempt to convert her hard-line stand into capturing the sympathy and votes of those voters who shared her uncompromising attitude in the fight against the PKK. The rough methods the police used to arrest the deputies of the pro-Kurdish Democracy Party (Demokrasi Partisi—^DEP) in March 1994 on the compounds of Parlia­ ment was also part of this same strategy.

The troubled DYP-SHP government came to an end in September 1995.'^ Çiller launched her 1995 election campaign with the unshakable confidence of a leader in her enhanced popularity in the country after the historic signing of the Customs Union (CU) on March 6, 1995, that formalized further economic inte­

Tansu Çiller: Lusting fo r Power and Undermining Democracy 203

gration between the European Union and Turkey. Mindful of her domestic fail­ ures on many issues. Çiller perceived the CU as the flagship achievement of her term in office and projected on it an image of “greater Turkey,” stretching from the Balkans to the Transcaucasus and acting as the locomotive for the Middle East

In her relations with the military. Çiller abandoned any pretense of reas­ serting civilian supremacy and instead began to lavish praise on the armed forces. She was reluctant to arouse the military’s antagonism by upsetting the status quo. She also hoped to score a political victory in the Kurdish issue through a decisive defeat of the PKK.^^ When the question of the appointment of the new chief of the general staff came up in 1994 and 1995, Çiller refrained from undertaking any initiative that would displease the High Command and went with the miliiary’s wishes. Doğan Güreş, the chief of the general staff she opted for—who was later elected to Parliament as a DYP deputy in 1995— later recalled the close ties between Çiller and the military conunand: “The prime minister acted like a tiger, and the Armed Forces liked i t I worked with ease with several prime ministers—Özal, Akbulut, Yılmaz, and Demirel. But with Çiller I worked with more ease.”^"* The result of ÇiUer’s policy was that the issue of formulating a political solution to the Kurdish question received little official attention, and the equilibrium in civil-military relations became more skewed in the military’s favor.

The 1995 elections may go down into Turkish history as the high point of the juggling act that Çiller was engaged in between status quo and change in a more liberal direction. The candidates she handpicked for Parliament contra­ dicted the image that she had inaugurated earlier in the year in the DYP’s local party congress in Istanbul. In her opening remarks at that congress Çiller stated that “the DYP is launching young, dynamic, and stonn-like cadres . . .[we] are leaving behind the archaic values.”’^ Her remarks were meant to create a new urban, modem, and young image for the DYP. The proclamation of this so- called new image involved an attack on and, in fact, the elimination of the old guard from the party. The names she placed at the top of the candidate lists for the 1995 national elections, however, consisted of former police chiefs, regional governors of the state from the emergency zone in the southeast, former bureau­ crats, and conservative-nationalist figures. They represented the status quo and were opposed to the changes that were emphasized by Çiller in the DYP’s Istan­ bul congress.

Çiller’s forging of a coalition government with the Welfare Party (Refah

Partisi—^RP) in June 1996, with Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of the RP, as the

prime minister and her as the deputy prime minister and foreign minister, marked the beginning of the DYP’s and Çiller’s political decline. On Februaiy 28, 1997, the military-dominated National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik

Konseyi—^MGK) handed a list of measures to the DYP-RP coalition govern­

ment to clamp down on Islamic activities. After several crises-ridden months, the government’s inability or unwillingness to comply with the MGK’s demands

led to its downfall in June.*’ It is true that even after the resignation of the gov­ ernment, Çiller continued to play a key role in the making or breaking of gov­ ernments through parliamentary arithmetic. However, it is also true that the MGK’s action in February 1977 changed Turkey’s political parameters radi­ cally. Çiller suffered defeat, decline, and humiliation.** Her power to galvanize the imagination of her countrymen and women with new hopes, visions, and enthusiasm faded as she seemed to join the ranks o f the “failed” generation of politicians.

The coalition between the RP and DYP was based on the pragmatic con­ cerns of both parties and their leaders. Çiller needed the HP’s support against the corruption inquiries against her.*^ Erbakan wanted the practical benefit o f being in office in terms of rewarding his party’s supporters by government patronage and proving to them the RP’s credibility as a party trusted by “the establish­ ment” to occupy the seat of power. But the political consequences o f the coali­ tion government on Çiller’s career proved devastating. The deal between the two parties was based on an unethical premise: the RP promised not to let Parliament investigate Çiller’s finances and political dealings in exchange for joining the government. Forming a coalition government with an Islamist political party that was deeply disliked by Turkey’s secular establishment and body politic de­ livered a deadly blow to the secular. Western, modem, and contemporary image Çiller and the DYP had been trying to build since 1991. The secular media launched a massive attack on Çiller’s wealth, family, character, leadership style, and political dealings, seriously undermining her political popularity.

It is true that it was Çiller who sought to act as a check on Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan so that the latter did not violate Turkey’s secular tradition. However, Erbakan’s controversial moves, such as his official visits to Libya and Iran, made Çiller’s task especially difficult, and ultimately she became the target of the military’s criticisms. Thus the modus vivendi that she had established with the military came to an end. Moreover, due to her partnership with the RP during 1996-97, Çiller came to be seen by many secularists, and particularly by the military, as someone who had engineered the transfer of political power into antisecular hands.

Following the downfall of the RP-DYP coalition, there were frequent po­ lemical exchanges between Çiller and military commanders. For instance, Çiller would claim, “Turkish people love and trust their army. But this trust is be­ stowed upon them not as politicians and as soldiers. . . . In democracies, final authority rests with Parliament. It is not in the hands of those who do not repre­ sent the national will.”’® The same day a spokesman for the military would re­ spond: “Çiller is like a sinking ship. . . . It was Çiller who empowered the reac­ tionary forces. . . . The Turkish Armed Forces perform a constitutional duty to protect the secular democratic Republic. It is always above politics and favors democracy.”’ *

The greatest damage that the DYP-RP coalition government inflicted on Çiller’s image and career prospects was to bring out the most unprincipled and

Tansu Çiller: Lusting fo r Power and Undermining Democracy 205

unreliable aspects of her politics into the limelight. Where she suffered most was her “credibility” as a person and a political leader. This stemmed from the dis­ crepancy between her 1995 election campaign when she strongly criticized Er­ bakan and his party, and her subsequent decision to form a coalition government with the Islamists. It is true that by 1997, Çiller had already become known as a person who often made unsubstantiated statements to promote herself. However, her growing feelings of insecurity in the face o f mounting pressures on the RP- DYP coalition drove her into resorting to a more than usual series of promises, which she could not fulfil, and statements she could not substantiate. For exam­ ple, she alleged that the military supported her mainly because the United States was behind her and that the real target of the military was not her but the RP. While she tried to convince Erbakan to transfer the prime ministry to her, si­ multaneously, she sought the active support of the military. The commanders responded by saying that she must seek the support of Parliament, not theirs. In effect, the commanders had long decided not to interact with her. One ranking officer’s explanation of the reasons why they refrained from talking to Çiller succinctly summarized the extent to which her fabricated public announcements went. He observed: “The reason we don’t answer her phone calls is that she may put us in a difficult situation by distorting what we told her.

Perhaps the worst political/ethical defects o f Çiller emerged into the spot­ light with her reaction to a road accident on November 6, 1996, in Susurluk, a small township in northwestern Turkey. The identity of the dead and injured passengers revealed the existence of a criminal triangle of politicians, mafia bosses, and security forces engaged in the war against the PKK.^^ Against the specter of an intense public furor over the contamination of the government, Çiller dismissed state-mafia liaison as a “doctrine of hatred” fabricated by Mesut Yılmaz as a strategy to undermine her position. She even accused Yılmaz of being a spokesman for the PKK, ASALA (the Armenian terrorist organization responsible for the assassinations of scores of Turkish diplomats), and drug smugglers.^"* Moreover, when civil societal groups put up an unprecedented campaign demanding the sordid web of relations at the heart of the state fully uncovered. Çiller made the historic statement that in effect placed her within this web. She stated that “both those who shoot bullets or those who were the targets of bullets in the name of the state are honorable persons. They all are heroes.”^^

In February 2000, a second major scandal in the Çiller administration’s fight against the PKK was discovered: it became clear that a rural version of the Susurluk gang had been set up by the governor of Batman province in the south­ east in 1994 under the name of “Special Combined Force.” It comprised one thousand village guards. They were Kurdish civilians who were armed by the state to fight against the PKK with the approval of Prime Minister Çiller. About a quarter of the $2.8 million worth o f arms imported from Bulgaria and China was never reported to the customs. These arms were later feared to have landed in the hands of Hizbullah, the Islamic terrorist organization whose violent kill­ ings and tortures came to the fore in January 2000.^^

Çiller’s Personality

Çiller’s reputation as a “survivor” is generally linked with the Machiavellian personal traits she is claimed to possess. TTiey were mentioned by Meral Akşener, Çiller’s closest colleague and aide/confidante at one time, in somewhat strong terms. Akşener pointed out that “we have problems with (her) leadership. The only adjectives we may use to describe our leader are ‘liar,’ ‘unfaithfiil,’ and ‘u n r e l i a b l e . Q u i t e in line with Akşener’s characterization o f her former leader as someone who habitually denies her previous statements, the Turkish media has been engaged in keeping track of Çiller’s unkept promises.^* It has been noted that it was this moral void that enabled Çiller to strike political deals at any price and make use of every political opportunity that came her way. This diagnosis points to a highly instrumental outlook on life. For Çiller, it was not the force of genuine convictions but winning at all costs that mattered. A local notable who is a disciple o f the Nakshibendi tarikat (religious brotherhood) in the Black Sea province o f Trabzon confirmed this when he said, “It is not important if . . .[Çiller] is sincere or not. It seems, she will, like Benazir Bhutto, serve the interests o f the Islamic community despite being a non-believer.”^’

Another observation often made about Çiller was her failure to retain the loyalty of her friends, advisors, bureaucrats, ministers, deputies, and party offi­ cials for a reasonably long time. It is widely assumed that her authoritarian per­ sonality, coupled with lack o f self-confidence, has made her a bad team player and a person difficult to get along with. Even those who liked, supported, ap­ proved of, and stayed around her for some time either left her after a while by their own volition or were removed by Çiller.

Çiller’s drive for political power was also wrapped up in an awareness on her part of her gender difference from the bulk of Turkish politicians and in her determination to use it to her political advantage. A student of Turkish politics has argued that Çiller used her gender unabashedly in pursuit of power, chal­ lenging the image of a dependent female politician whose political career is con­ fined by men.^°

It can be argued that Çiller’s personality traits, which she liked to publicize at every opportunity, were borrowed from the male domain: her “decisiveness,” “toughness, ” and “steely determination,” which commonly embody the cult of men. Çiller aimed at outshining her male rivals, especially the ANAP leader Yılmaz, whom she repeatedly accused o f being a coward. In feminizing a mas­ culine cult, she aimed to avoid identification with the conventional image of women as feeble, unable to think big, indecisive, and timid.

Her forging ahead usually with nationalist/chauvinistic themes in especially foreign policy areas without fear of failure was set in contrast against the cau­ tious approach of Demirel, To match Demirel’s popular image as a father figure

(Jbaba\ she expediently adopted the figure of ana (mother), which is the most

Tansu Çiller: Lusting fo r Power and Undermining Democracy 207

in identifying herself with the mothers of the soldiers who died in the armed struggle against the PKK. Since the ana image carried within itself the implied positive qualities commonly linked with motherhood, she could portray herself and her politics as self-sacrificial, modest, altruistic, and having the purest mo­ tives, including an unselfish concern for the nation. Through this, she sought to distinguish herself from the partisan, aggressive, self-centered, self-interested, fractious, unscrupulous, and constantly wrangling imagery of male politicians prevalent in the society. She also ascribed to herself a bacı (sister) symbol, which is a culture-specific term used in the more traditional sectors of the soci­ ety to indicate an “honorable” and “untouchable” category of women, who are not even allowed to be the objects of male fantasies. These two images of ana and bacı must have played some role in winning over the votes of the conserva­ tive masses.

In using her gender as an instrument to gain advantage over her male rivals. Çiller also wished to give the impression that she had such man-like attributes as courage, endurance, determination, and militarism. She used this tactic as a de­ fense mechanism in a man’s world where she was under pressure to prove her­ self The paradox was that she also proved that women politicians were as inter­ ested as male politicians in partaking in the spoils that in present-day Turkey come with access to political power. Similarly, she has also shown that women were equally motivated by power, egotistical interests, aggression, clientelism, and political intrigues. In this sense, the experience of Tansu Çiller in office has probably caused a shift in the public’s conventional positive imagery about women in politics.

Leadership Style, Skills, and Strategies

Like Other political parties in Turkey, the tradition of strong control over the party organization by its leader, along with the poorly institutionalized structure of the DYP, have enabled Çiller to maintain her domination over the parly. There were several mechanisms that helped her to put a lid on dissidence within the party. First, she closely monitored the patronage-based intraparty support networks, thanks to the personalized and centralized nature of internal party decision making. As Çiller disregarded the results of the election primaries for candidate selection and personally dictated her own choices, some of the party activists who were not included in the party’s lists of candidates opposed Çiller’s leadership and formed factional groups within the party. However, the majority of the party’s rank-and-file party members were primarily interested in advancing their own political careers, and they realized that this was dependent on being on good terms with the leader. Thus, the groups opposing Çiller were unable to shake Çiller’s dominant position in the party.

A second reason why Çiller did not meet serious intraparty opposition was the absence of objective conditions for collective action by the disaffected members of the party. Their demands were poorly articulated, ambiguous, and timid. There was neither a unifying purpose nor effective leadership. Therefore, discontent with Çiller’s leadership by itself was not sufficient to create a critical mass within the party to compel change. One of the recent attempts to overthrow Çiller was made in the National congress on November 20, 1999. This congress was regarded as critical for Çiller, as her leadership seemed to turn into an issue after the party suffered its worst electoral results in the April elections of the same year. To eliminate the threat of a takeover by opponents. Çiller embarked on a relentless and massive campaign to dismiss all the provincial-level party officials who opposed her and who would be the likely delegates. But it is also true that her opponents were split into several groups, unable to agree on a common name, and continuing to bicker among themselves even when the “Çiller factor” turned into a key ingredient of the crisis of the party.^^

A proper understanding of the increased domination of the party by Çiller would be incomplete without reference to the tradition of leader worshipping in political parties in Turkey, which has been particularly strong in the DYP. In the eyes of the DYP old guard, any consistent and principled critique of the leader was not proper, if not illegitimate. The members of this old guard became Çil- ler’s closest associates and were on her side during the final years of the D Y P- RP coalition, during which time the downward trend of the party started. They kept quiet and refrained from drawing the leader into an effective and articulate public debate on the key issues, for the most part for fear of invoking her re­ venge and losing their electable places in the candidate lists.^^

Under the circumstances, ÇiUer’s leadership was based upon co-optation, divide-and-rule, and expulsion strategies. In the minority government she formed on October 6, 1995, which failed to receive a vote o f confidence, she gave eight ministerial posts to her ardent critics in the party. With regard to the effectiveness of this co-optive move, Hüsamettin Cindoruk, the former chairman of the party and speaker of the Parliament made the following comment: “It be­ comes clear that there is no organized opposition to Mrs. Çiller because the col­ leagues who claim to oppose her rush to accept the cabinet posts offered to them.”^"* Equally effective was her strategy of divide-and-rule. During the DYP- RP government in 1996-97 she faced the most difficult period of her leadership. To quell the disquiet in the party. Çiller co-opted to the top policy-making body of the party the members of an opposing faction but left outside the leader of the group.^^ \№en it came, however, to coping with those detractors who were also “potential challengers” for her seat, such as Erez and Cindoruk, Çiller opted for their expulsion. Mass expulsions were also made at the provincial levels to in­ sure that only Çiller sympathizers were elected as delegates to the national con­ vention.^^

After falling out with Çiller in the aftermath of the 1999 elections over the issue of the leader’s responsibility given the dwindled electoral support, former

Tansu Çiller: Lusting fo r Power and Undermining Democracy 209

Interior Minister Akşener explained the reasons for the lack of criticisms in the DYP about Çiller’s leadership despite the widespread disaffection with her. Ak­ şener stated: “Frequently, decisions were imposed on us. Nobody could risk being the black sheep. If you didn’t agree with a decision, you would keep si­ lent. The biggest problem of the DYP was this insecurity and fear.”^^ While Ak­ şener characterized this state of affairs in the party as “crony democracy,” Ünal Erkan, a former regional governor of the southeast and a one-time favorite of the leader, described Çiller’s leadership style as “sultan-like,” referring to its per­ sonal and anti-democratic nature.^*

In the 1990s, while the notions of liberal democracy and individual respon­ sibility for wealth creation continued to gain momentum in Turkey, the state was still considered by many Turkish citizens to have an almost metaphysical es­ sence. On the one hand, some sizable sectors were bubbling with enthusiasm for a new integration with the global information society and democracy. On the other hand, a powerful constellation of business interests coalesced around a statist economy. Democratic ideals coexisted with political chaos and with the call for authoritarianism to protect the polity from the dislocations caused by the processes of “opening up,” “changing,” and “globalizing.”

When we add to this conjunction the decline in the ideological functions of the parties and the changes in their social bases, these gross contradictions can be seen as having created an opportunity for Çiller to employ previously un­ heard of strategies to enhance and consolidate her power and intimidate her critics. Since the situational constraints were paradoxical and pushed for both change and continuity, she could move between diametrically opposite posi­ tions. She was able to praise globalization and democracy within a discourse that was heavily nationalistic, religious, and state-friendly. She was dedicated to the accession of Turkey to the European Union, while simultaneously defying European norms and standards in the name of protecting nationalistic-religious attitudes and values.

The best example of Çiller’s vacillating and shifting strategies was her stand with regard to the military. Çiller turned from a position of regarding the armed forces as the best guarantor of democracy, to the opposite discourse of fierce antimilitarism, underpinning the principle of popular sovereignty. As part of this new discourse and against the advice of the party veterans. Çiller tried to bring the National Security Council’s demands on the government in February 1997 to the floor of Parliament when, according to the Turkish constitution, the Council of Ministers had to deliberate upon them.^^

If, following political crises, leadership strategy assumes special signifi­ cance for highlighting the leader’s political capabilities o f invoking public con­ fidence in the handling of a crisis, Çiller’s management of the post-1994 eco­ nomic crisis proved to be a total disaster by falling foul of almost all the meas­ ures adopted by the April 5 austerity package. This was due to her concern about the electoral costs of economic reforms. Basically, her strategy was to deny any responsibility for the crisis and to blame the previous governments for the

coun-tty’s economic woes/° To cope with the corrosive effects of the distributional deterioration whereby the real earnings of wage labor fell by about 30 percent within a year and the informal economy exploded, Çiller turned to an even more conservative discourse.

The December 1995 elections represented a critical juncture for Çiller’s po­ litical career: for one thing, the campaign she led clearly reflected Çiller’s ca­ reerist streak and the premium she put on “winning” at all costs. Six months before she formed the coalition with the RP, her attacks on that party had gone beyond the extremities of an election campaign and took the form of accusing the RP of collaborating with the PKK. On one occasion she even asked, “What is the nature and the goal of the infidel PKK gangs that have been attacking our glorious religion and innocent religious personages, and pressurizing the voters in the last few elections to vote for those [RP] politicians who abused reli- gion?”"*^ And then, as noted earlier, she formed a coalition with that party.

However, by 1996, Çiller confronted the most pervasive and persistent di­ lemma of all politicians: act in accordance with mass demands for gamering votes or risk popular rejection and follow rational policies in expectation that such a policy will pay off in the long term? Faced with an immobile and atro­ phied political ^stem with no parliamentary majority capable of enforcing eco­ nomic reform and fearing to lose political support if she attempted a real change, Çiller quickly abandoned her interest in free-market economic policies. By 1996, however, there was no coherent economic policy to speak of. From then on, all that Çiller tried to do was to stay in power by whatever means available.

Political Beliefs and Ideology

Çiller began her political career with a four-thronged political program that emphasized market economics, a multiclass electoral strategy to broaden the DYP’s strength, forging a Customs Union (CU) agreement with the European Union, and defeating the RKK."*^ She was particularly interested in using the last two policies to increase the DYP’s popular appeal. Çiller initially had a strong commitment to free-market orthodoxy that had more resemblance to the stance of Turgut Özal, the former leader of the rival Motherland Party, than to the views of the DYP’s veteran leader, Süleyman Demirel. By her rhetorical return to the Özalist priority of establishing a competitive market economy through the instruments of privatization, liberalization, and stabilization, she seemed to end the historic eclecticism of the DYP’s dominant ideological discourse that stood between the social state and free market. However, her conservative and populist position with regard to the issues pertaining to the individual, civil society, women’s rights, and the role of the military in politics had very little to do with political liberalism.

Tansu Çiller: Lusting fo r Power and Undermining Democracy 211

The dynamics that are critical for appraising Çiller’s conservative, populist discourse derived from her concern for containing the contradictory forces un­ leashed by the process of liberalization, which was started by Özaİ, Turkey in 1993 was not only marked by social disparities and uprooting but also by ethnic and religious divisions. Inside the DYP, there was, first of all, the need to bal­ ance the tension between liberal and conservative elements. The other basic problem she faced was to distance herself from Demirel’s ruial-oriented con­ cerns to attract the urban, intellectual, young, and female elements without al­ ienating Demirel diehards in the party. As all this proved difficult she felt that her position in the party was vulnerable. Her recourse to a conservative ideology and strategy can thus be interpreted as an attempt to bolster her rule in the party.

In the process Çiller’s political orientation shifted from the center to the right as she focused on the themes of Turkish nationalism, culture, and religioa The xenophobic elements of “patriotism,” “flag,” “blood,” and “sacrifice for the state” were blended with religious items such as ezan (call to prayer), Allah (Muslim’s God), and “being a Muslim.”"*^ In her own words, “We are discover­ ing the Turkish flag. There is sorhethmg new in this. It would be more correct to call this Turkey’s nationalism. It is not sufficient to look at this only from the perspective of nationalism. There is also the dimension of ezan. . . . I want a Turkey which is both secular and Muslim.”'*'*

There was nothing new in Çiller’s synthesis of Turkish nationalism and Is­ lam. The original source of this synthesis was a state-friendly conservative group called the Hearth of Intellectuals {Aydınlar Ocağı) that had started to dis­ seminate its views in the 1970s and gained stature among the state elite in the 1980s. Its main objective was to protect the country against coiimiunism With communism removed from the agenda, Tansu Çiller’s articulation of the same ideology in the 1990s was directly related to her sense of insecurity as well as to the continuing armed struggle against the PKK.

Çiller’s conservative populism was also an attempt to recapture the votes llie Turkish center-right lost to the RP, the new epicenter of Turkish politics in the 1980s. As part of an attempt to stem the tide of the RP’s rising appeal, she is reported to liave opened a record-breaking number of Prayer Leader and Preacher Schools (Im am H atip O kulları) within a span of one and a half years.^^

Concerning the economy, Çiller initially adopted a rhetoric that emphasized downsizing the state. By promising to demystify the state and constantly refer­ ring to “the state’s money being in fact the people’s money,”'*^ she launched an assault against the inefficiency of the populist state. She told the poor that the social improvements would come by the cash flow from tax reform and privati- zatioa'*^ Indeed, the economic package she launched on January 18, 1992, when she was minister of state was entitled, “Program for Balancing, Production, and Upsurge in the Economy” (Ekonom ide Dengelem e, Üretim ve A tılım Program ı).

İt bore the imprint of an orthodox approach to marketization, and it was hailed by some as a “revolutionary” program.^^

In reality, however, her opposition to the overintervention o f the state in the economy and her pro-market stance were negated by her populist policies. Those policies included high agricultural prices for farmers, generous employ­ ment opportunities for the DYP supporters, and equally generous salary adjust­ ments for the public-sector employees, all on the eve of elections. Other populist features of Çiller’s economy were the substitution o f internal borrowing for an increased share of tax revenues in the GNP; commitment to high interest rates; the maintenance of the policy of cheap foreign currency; and an overvalued Turkish lira (against the threat o f capital flight).

At two different times, with a long interval between them. Çiller presented herself as a champion of democracy. In May 1994, the DYP-SHP coalition gov­ ernment announced a new political reform initiative under the name of Democ­ racy Package. It included sixty-two constitutional and legal amendments, ex­ panding political participation and reforming the political parties and the judici­ ary, industrial relations, local governments, and universities. In the press confer­ ence she held to introduce the package. Çiller emphatically promised that her government would start discussing a new draft constitution within three months. Similarly, at around that time, she expressed her determination for the liberali­ zation of politics that included the opening of private Kurdish schools and tele­ vision statioπs.‘^^

However, a month after she had spoken to the press about her intentions to open a public space for Kurdish cultural expressions. Çiller made another of her U-tums and reneged on her own words.^° By the end of 1994, she had turned to Turkish-Islamic synthesis, state-strengthening measures, and a military solution to the Kurdish conflict, bolstering in the process the nationalist conservative

impulses in the country to the detriment of democracy and democratization. When she fell into opposition in June 1997, as a consequence of the pres­ sure the military and some civil societal institutions placed on the DYP-RP coa­ lition, Çiller turned to a new discourse on democratization. The new discourse on democracy was based on three arguments. First, “national will” and “the su­ premacy of Parliament” became the justification of her antimilitarist posture. Secondly, the new democratization program took issue with the “Jacobinist” official ideology of the state, which Çiller now considered as “precluding solu­ tions to problems”^ ‘ because it was antidemocratic. Finally, political reform be­ came the bedrock of Çiller’s new democracy discourse.

One basic difficulty with Çiller’s new democracy discourse was her simul­ taneous embracing of an excessively conservative public discourse in which, among other things, she continued to defend the Susurluk incident and Batman scandal, hoping to attract some disaffected voters of the RP as well as the Na­ tionalist Action Party. She considered the latter party as ultranationalist. But even more vital than this was another basic problem. The democracy package in question simply consisted of a long list of “promises” of political reforms. Çiller failed to realize that in Turkey such political reform populism no longer helped

Tansu Çiller: Lusting fa r Power and Undermining Democracy 213

to muster political support Çiller epitomized the tragedy of a politician who continued to operate much as before and misread Turkey’s new realities.

Impact on Turkish Democracy

Tansu Çiller emerged on the Turkish political scene at a time when there was a general yearning for new political leaders who would depart from past leadership styles, introduce new and creative ideas to deal with Turkey’s social and economic problems, and promote the consolidation of Turkish democracy. However, many who had initially supported her rise to political power were disappointed in Çiller’s political opportunism, lack of trustworthiness, and ineffectiveness in tackling major policy issues. More important, her leadership style and personal behavior as a politician undermined the legitimacy of the democratic processes and representative institutions.

Neither Çiller’s greatest political moments nor her ultimate fall was due to a deep-seated belief or conviction in democracy or a comprehensive worldview. On the contrary, almost everything she achieved or failed to do had something to do with idea-defying and opportunity-seeking day-to-day considerations. Her government was not notable for introducing new ideas and implementing them. Nor was it renowned for its concerns for democracy,

Çiller’s democracy discourse was characterized less by reflexive or norma­ tive considerations than a strong drive for power. Her support for democratic rules of the game did not amount to an unconditional endorsement of the sub­ stantive meaning of liberal democracy, which for her always remained no more than a matter of political expediency.

Çiller considered criticism and opposition as threats, and politicization of issues as dangerous. The state-people dichotomy she adopted was a typical populist strategy that bypassed the role of the parties and made no reference to the institutional and constitutional limits of the modem state. In a typically populist vein, she claimed to represent the demands and sentiments of the ordi­ nary people.

Moreover, Çiller’s political survival depended on the traditional methods of distributing clientelist beneflts. The establishment of genuine political democ­ racy in the DYP and in the country would have undercut her sources of power. It would have led to demands for a transparent and accountable government

Overall, Çiller has had a negative impact on Turkish democracy. Her model of democracy was one in which there were no legal and moral constraints on tlie power of a political leader. Among other things, she has been accused of setting the precedent of a government that had connections with the shady underworld groups allegedly to protect the territorial integrify of the state. Çiller also be­ came the only party leader and prime minister in Turkey who is believed to have built a huge financial fortune for herself with impunity.

Notes

( 1. Çiller gives her year of birth as 1946. However, her critics have claimed that she misfepfesents her age by several years to give a younger image. See Faruk Bildirici,

Maskeli Lady (Ankara: Ümit, 1998), 49.

2. Her father lost the 1954 general elections on the CHP’s ticket in the province of M uğla See Bildirici, A/oy^e/z Lady, 49-50.

3. Bildmci, Maskeli Lady, 52-53. 4. Bildirici, AYaj/re// Lady, 11-1 A,

5. Turan Yavuz, İkinci Vatan: Tansu Ç illerin ABD Macerası (Ankara: Ümit, 1999), 71.

6. One contender was Koksal Toptan, leader of a faction with support from a conservative base. Another was Bedrettin Dalan, whose accomplishments as the ex­ mayor of Istanbul were tarnished by his switch of loyalty from the ANAP, his original party, to the DYP. A third rival was İsmet Sezgin, an old guard, who was thought to have the undeclared support of Süleyman Dem iiel

7. On her connections wiüi the media, see Bildirici, A^ay/re/z Lady, 239-240. 8. Maskeli Lady, 127.

9. Bildirici, Maskeli Lady, 198-211. 10. Bildirici, Maskeli Lady, 234.

11. See Ümit Cizre Sakallıoğlu, “Liberalism, Democracy, and the Turkish Centre- Right: The Identity Crisis of the True Path Party,” Middle Eastern Studies 32 (April

1996) 147-152.

12. The coalition broke down mainly because after the SHP merged with the reopened Republican People’s Party on February 18, 1995, with the election o f Deniz Baykal as the new leader of the party, problems arose on the terms of extending the life of the coalition.

13. Later Çiller declared, “We were accused of governing by leaning on the military. Which politician and political party not only in Turkey but in any country has come to power by fighting with its own party?” See Tansu Çiller, Türkiyem (Ankara: Başbakanlık, 1995)21.

14. Interview with Doğan Güreş by M. Ali Kışlah, “Güreş: Ordu Darbe Yapmaz,”

(İstanbul daily), November 27, 1995.

15. This convention was held on August 9, 1995, and was described in the press as presenting an opposite image to that of Demirel-style conventions, with its pop stars and mini-skirted, mobile-phoned hostesses. Lead columnist of Istanbul daily Hürriyet, Ertuğrul Özkök, described it as “Çiller's first intra-party step to forming her own DYP.” See Ertuğrul Özkök, “Bıyıksız DYP İçin İlk Adım,” Hürriyet (İstanbul daily), August 10,

1995.

16. Çiller expelled ten deputies, including Hüsamettin Cindoruk, the speaker of Parliament, on October 10, 1995, on the charges that they failed to give a vote of confidence to the minority government Çiller had formed prior to elections.

17. The ultimatum consisted o f an eighteen-point list of measures ranging Irom tighter restrictions on religious dress in public places to banning Islamic broadcasting

Tansu Çiller: Lusting fo r Power and Undermining Democracy 215

channels, Quran courses, and Islamist organizations, and changing compulsory secular primary school education from five to eight years.

18. Çiller persuaded Necmettin Erbakan to resign on June 18, 1997, to soften the military's reaction against the government by transferring the premiership to herself. However, President Demirel called the game off by asking Mesut Yılmaz, the leader of the rival center-right Motherland Party {Anavatan Partisi—ANAP), to head the new government

19. The two parliamentary inquiries for Çiller had already been initiated in April and May 1996 by the ANAP (with which the DYP fonned a coalition government in March 1995, which lasted for four months) and the CHP. In June 1996, the ANAP and the RP and the two center-left parties cooperated in another motion, >\iiich was tabled to investigate ÇiUer’s wealth. After the formation of the RP-DYP government, these motions were defeated by the RP's support for Ç iller’s side.

20. Ahmet Sever and Barçm inanç, “Çiller Orduya Çattı,” Milliyet (İstanbul daily), June 28,1997.

21. Yusuf Özkan, “Genel Kurmaydan Çillere Jet Yamt,” Milliyet, June 28,1997. 22. Sedat Ergin, “90 Sıcak Günün Hikayesi, Fırtma Dosyası,” Hürriyet, August 30, 1997.

23. One of the passengers who died was Abdullah Çatlı, an ultranationalist involved in political killings in the 1970s and who was on the run, a civilian security chief in Istanbul, and a young woman taken for a joy ride. The only survivor was a tribal chief from the southeast who was also a DYP dqjuty and whose tribe was on the side of the state in its fight against the PKK. It became gradually clear that some members of the special security forces fighting against the PKK had been involved in money laundering, drug trafilcking, and extrajudicial killings.

24. A/i7/fyet, December 1,1996.

25. This was, however, hardly a surprising statement, as it is now known that Çiller and her then-police chief Mehmet Ağar were involved in this triangle. In 1995, Ağar had agreed to hunt and eliminate the leader of the PKK, who was in Syria, so as to enable Çiller to capitalize on the event for the December 1995 elections,

26. Turkish Daily News (Ankara daily), February 22, 2000; Ercüment işleyen, “Valiye Özel Tabur,” Milliyet, February 11, 2000; and Tolga Sardan, ‘'Başbakan Onayladı, Kurdum,” Mz7/r>ei, February 11,2000.

27. Ercüment işleyen, “Akşener: Çiller Yalancı,” A7i7/(ver, July 28, 1999.

28. On the eve of the April 1999 elections. Milliyet ran a long list of untrue statements and unkept promises that Çiller had made. See Milliyet, April 10, 1999.

29. Ruşen Çakır, “DYP'nin Mayası Milliyet, January 14, 1999.

30. Yeşim Arat, “A Woman Prime minister in Turkey: Did It Matter?” TFomen and

Politics 19, no. 4 (1998) 12. Also see Yavuz Gökmen, Sarışın Güzel Kadın (Istanbul:

Doğan, 1999), 24.

31. In the wake of the December 1995 elections, in her attempt to remove Demirel sympathizers from the party by placing nationalist-conservative candidates in favorable places in the party’s election slates. Çiller excluded fifty incumbent deputies from the lists altogether and placed many more in nonelectable places. See Yeni Yüzyıl, November 28, 1995. In the April 1999 elections, too, she disregarded the primaries and eliminated the names of twenty-eight incumbent deputies from the slates and moved some other

deputies to risky places. In these elections, she was able to eradicate all pro-Demirel names from the party’s parliamentary group. See Radikal, February 25, 1999, and

Milliyet, February 5, 1999.

32. The strongest candidates for leadership in the convention were the doyens Necmettin Cevheri and Köksal Toptan. By November, they had a fallout on who would declare his candidacy, when, and how. At the end. Cevheri withdrew his name from the race, and Toptan and Mehmet Dülger remained as the two rivals to Çiller, who once more defeated them.

33. The three most important old guards were Necmettin Cevheri, Esat Kıratlıoğlu, and Nahit Menteşe. Cevheri won the primaries by topping the list in the 1999 elections, but Çiller's decision to hold primaries in Cevheri's constituency can be taken as a sign o f a souring relationship. Esat Kıratlıoğlu’s name was not even put on the lists. It was then that they became the leaders of an opposition movement against her.

34. Hürriyet, October 8, 1995.

35. Şebnem Güngör, “DYP Bölünme Eşiğinde,” Yeni Yüzyıl, July 23, 1996.

36. From the 1996 National Convention to June 1999, Çiller expelled 65 out o f the existing 80 elected party heads of provinces. Only in Istanbul, 126,000 registered members of the party were expelled. See Bilal Çetin, “Eski DYFlilerin Yuvaya Dönüş Hazırlığı,” Milliyet, June 23, 1999.

37. Ercüment İşleyen, “Akşener: Çiller Yalancı,” Milliyet, July 28, 1999. 38. Radikal, January 9, 1999.

39. Hürriyet, March 7, 1997.

40. Çiller, Türkiyem, 67. Also see Yeni Yüzyıl, January 8, 1995. 41. Çiller, Türkiyem, 153.

42. This section largely draws upon the author’s “Liberalism, Democracy and the Turkish Centre-Right: The Identity Crisis of the True Path Party,” 152-157.

43. DYP Genel Başkanı ve Başbakan Tansu ÇillePin Konuşmaları, 19 Haziran-5

Kasım 1993 (Ankara: Başbakanlık Basın Merkezi, 1993), 13, 62, 95.

44. See Ertuğrul Özkök, “Çiller: Türkiye Milliyetçiliği Doğdu,” Hürriyet, October 31, 1994.

45. The number of Prayer Leader and Preacher Schools her government opened was sixty-five. This figure exceeded the number of schools opened under Demirel's premiership between 1991-93 by twenty-two and Özal's between 1983-89 by fifty-nine. See Hürriyet, December 21, 1994.

46. Başbakan Tansu Çiller'in Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi DYP Grup

Konuşmaları—22 Haziran-2 Kasım 1993, (Ankara: Başbakanlık Basın Merkezi, 1993),

99

,

,

,

.

47. DYP Genel Başkanı ve Başbakan Tansu Çillerdin Konuşmaları, 19 Haziran-5

Kasım 1993, 98, 121.

48. Osman Ulagay, “Çiller’in Devrimci Programı,” Cumhuriyet January 21, 1992. 49. Ertuğrul Özkök, “Çiller: Kürt Haklarını Tartışmaya Açıyorum,” Hürriyet July 7, 1994.

50. Sedat Ergin, “Kürt Sorununda Kendisinin Bile Gerisine Düştü,” Hürriyet, August 18, 1994.