TURKEY: POLITICAL RETURN OF ISLAMIST LEADER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 001742

SIPDIS


E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/28/2012
TAGS: PGOV PREL TU
SUBJECT: TURKEY: POLITICAL RETURN OF ISLAMIST LEADER
ERBAKAN CAUSING HEARTBURN FOR RULING AK PARTY

REF: A. ANKARA 1350

B. ANKARA 1624

C. ANKARA 1488

D. ANKARA 1410

E. ANKARA 1636


(U) Classified by Political Counselor John Kunstadter.
Reason: 1.5(b)(d)



1. (C) Summary: Returning from the political wilderness,
Islamist former Prime Minister Erbakan is bent on using
Saadet Party and the Iraq issue to hammer the ruling AK Party
and P.M. Erdogan, a former Erbakan protege. It is unlikely
the septuagenarian Erbakan can reclaim his once dominant
place in a political movement now badly fractured and
represented in part by both AK and Saadet. But the wily
Erbakan "Hoca" ("Teacher") is already causing problems for
AK, and may eventually recruit enough disaffected AK M.P.s to
form a parliamentary group and mount a vocal alternative for
core AK supporters in Turkey's increasingly charged political
environment. How Saadet approaches Turkey's problematic
relations with its own Kurdish citizens will be a key to
success or failure. End summary.


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The Teacher
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2. (C) Erbakan, founder of the Islamist "Milli Gorus"
(National View) Movement, is just coming off a five year
court ban from formal politics (February 1998-2003). This
resulted from what Turks call the military's "post-modern"
coup d'etat against his Refah Party-led government in 1997
and Refah's subsequent court-mandated closure. Even so,
Erbakan quietly continued to exert de facto control over both
the now-banned Fazilet Party and, subsequently, Saadet.



3. (C) Oguzhan Asilturk, Erbakan's right-hand man, asserted
to us March 12 that Erbakan is preparing officially to join
Saadet March 21, and to assume the leadership at the Party
conference in May. Nevertheless, Erbakan is not yet in the
clear. First, as Asilturk called it, the Turkish "Deep
State" -- principally the military -- will try to keep
Erbakan under tight control. Second, Erbakan was separately
convicted and banned for spreading religious hatred (Penal
Code Art. 312) but never served his sentence, which
complicates his situation. Diyarbakir State Security Court
No. 1 has denied Erbakan's petition to expunge his criminal
record in the wake of constitutional amendments
decriminalizing some of the provisions under which he was
banned -- a step that Erdogan must complete in order to
reassert fully his political rights. In its holding
published March 19, the court ruled pursuant to legal
technicalities that Erbakan is ineligible to return until
Jan. 3 2004. Most observers expect Erbakan eventually will
win on appeal.


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Opportunity: Iraq
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4. (C) Many Turkish pundits wrote off Saadet and its greying
leadership as the younger, more dynamic Erdogan and his AK
Party -- which emerged after Fazilet's banning as a breakaway
faction eager to replace Erbakan at the top of the Islamist
movement, not only for political reasons but also to take
their share of the sizeable income stream that Erbakan
benefits from -- headed for a big win in the November 2002
national elections. More recently, however, the Iraq debate
has intensified ideological and personality strains within
the AK parliamentary group. With the AK government's March 1
failure to pass a parliamentary resolution authorizing
deployment of U.S. troops through Turkey (ref A) -- and with
nearly 100 AK M.P.s voting against the government -- those
internecine conflicts have become even more visible.
According to several sources, a rejectionist appeal from
Erbakan to his sympathizers in the AK group played a role in
the resolution's defeat.



5. (C) Saadet seeks to exploit AK's divisions by having
Erbakan articulate his time-tested message, designed to: (1)
appeal explicitly to the more radical Islamic sentiments in
the AK group by declaring that a U.S.-led war against Iraq is
merely the latest Western imperialist "Crusade" in the lands
of Islam; and (2) implicitly suggest that those in AK who
support the USG, including Erdogan, are "Americanists" and de
facto religious apostates -- a serious charge among the
religiously-inclined. Some Erdogan supporters -- notably
Korkut Ozal, who failed in his own bid to wrest the Islamist
crown from Erbakan in the 1970s -- have downplayed to us
Erbakan's return and his political prospects. Nevertheless,
they admit that the Hoca is by far Erdogan's superior both as
a pragmatic tactician and in knowledge of how the Kemalist
State works -- and that he thus "can cause problems" for AK.
As one senior columnist asserted to us Mar. 19, "if Refah had
been in AK's place the troop deployment issue would have been
handled far more smoothly. These AK guys are like political
adolescents" compared to Erbakan.


-- The overwhelming majority of AK M.P.s cut their political
teeth in Erbakan's movement, on occasion still privately
refer unapologetically to their past affiliation with the
National View, and evince considerable sympathy for their
former leader even though for tactical political reasons they
have gravitated to Erdogan.


-- After the March 1 debacle, mainstream "Hurriyet" columnist
Cuneyt Ulsever confided to us that Erdogan is fearful of
being outmaneuvered by Saadet on the Islamist flank. AK M.P.
Emin Sirin, deputy chairman of the Parliament's Foreign
Affairs Committee and formerly Fazilet's public relations
adviser, volunteered on March 4 that "up to 20" AK M.P.s
might switch to Saadet, enough to constitute a formal
parliamentary group. "Sabah" trumpeted AK's "Fear of
Erbakan" in its March 16 headlines, and reported former
Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis' assertion that 15-20 AK M.P.s
could resign from the party in the event the AK government
submits another troop deployment resolution. Ulsever and
others privately put the potential figure in the 40-plus
range and even higher.


-- Asilturk told us March 12 that parties including the right
of center True Path (DYP) of Mehmet Agar, with three seats in
Parliament, are "secretly" negotiating with a number of AK
M.P.s. Saadet, Asilturk avowed, has no need to do any real
advance work, but would be open to giving AK defectors a
home. His Saadet colleagues were even more assertive in
meetings with us March 14. They claimed erstwhile AKers will
flock to Saadet "once the bombs start dropping."


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Saadet, AK, and the Kurds
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6. (C) Given the emphasis on war and Turkish fears of a
possible independent Kurdish state in N. Iraq, how Saadet
handles Turkey's own Kurdish problem will be key to whether
Erbakan can reemerge as a strong political force. Islamists
have long criticized the Kemalist State for its "racist"
policies (ref B) toward the Kurds. In a bid to win Kurdish
votes, Islamists have long justified expanding Kurdish
cultural and regional rights, in part by reference to Quranic
passages celebrating God-created differences among men and to
what they boast was Ottoman-era political "decentralization."
At the same time, Erbakan and his crew have long been wary
of nationalist ideologies, which they see as a challenge to
an "Islamic" political identity. As a result, the
Turk-dominated Saadet, like its Fazilet and Refah
predecessors, opposes the emergence of an independent Kurdish
state as both a physical and ideological manifestation of
Western imperialism -- and thereby defines the limit of its
rapprochement with radical Kurdish nationalist elements.


-- Erbakan's ideological focus on the "ummet" -- community of
the Islamic faithful-- as opposed to ethnic nationalism has
long appealed to Kurds and others who have yet to come to
terms with Ataturk's secularist "Turkish" revolution.
According to Abdurrahman Anik, formerly the Refah Mayor of
Bingol and now an AK M.P., a basic respect for Erbakan is
still evident among religious elements throughout the Kurdish
southeast.


-- While many Kurdish activists criticize Erbakan for failing
to follow through on his commitments to the Kurds, they
privately express their ideological preference for Erbakan
over the more "Turkish nationalist" Erdogan.



7. (C) Erdogan apparently is aware of this image and is
taking steps to improve his position among Kurds and thus to
head off Saadet's efforts to hive off M.P.s. Two former
Refah Kurds -- long-time contacts with impeccable Kurdish
nationalist and Islamic credentials -- have separately told
us that Erdogan has directly called them to solicit their
views on the situation in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish
Southeast and the impending conflict in Iraq. One of these
sources, who also has strong political ties to Barzani,
speculated to us that Erdogan is also interested in using
well-connected Turkish Kurds as Refah had -- as
intermediaries to Barzani and others. (Note: In the March 18
edition of pro-AK "Yeni Safak," columnist Ahmet Tasgetiren
calls on Erdogan to push a package of pro-Kurdish reforms to
end-run "international power centers" trying to play the
"Iraq card against Turkey." End note.)


-- The pro-Barzani Kurd noted that many of the AK members who
voted against the Government's March 1 troop deployment
resolution were Kurds worried that a war in Iraq would bring
the Turkish State down on their heads -- echoing points made
to us separately by Kurdish Saadet officials on March 14 (ref
B). Nevertheless, he said that most AK Kurds will stay put,
knowing that Erdogan is their best chance politically.


-- The source also asserted that prior to the special March 9
elections in Siirt province that brought Erdogan to
Parliament, AK cut a deal with the pro-Kurdish (and
just-banned) HADEP for support against the opposition CHP,
which resulted in Erdogan getting votes in Kurdish
nationalist villages he otherwise would have had to write
off. In return, AK agreed: (1) to end Ocalan's recent lack
of access to his lawyers; and (2) to prepare for a post-Iraq
war wide-ranging amnesty for PKK fighters still hiding in the
mountains. (Note: As reported in ref C, HADEP formally
boycotted the Siirt election; as reported ref D, however,
HADEP admitted to us privately their preference for AK over
CHP regarding Kurdish issues; ref. E notes the break in
Ocalan's isolation. Saadet and HADEP had briefly but
seriously considered entering a de facto alliance for the
November 2002 election. End note.)


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Implications
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8. (C) Saadet is clearly enjoying AK's discomfort and appears
energized and hopeful that, after four decades in politics
and one stint as P.M., Erbakan will yet again make a mark on
Turkey's fractious political system. With talk of yet
another parliamentary resolution in the air, we expect
Erbakan to do everything he can to promote squabbling in the
AK ranks and failure on the floor of parliament. The
benefits to Saadet from another such blow to AK would be
considerable.
PEARSON