Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05ANKARA4497
2005-08-03 08:37:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Ankara
Cable title:  

TURKISH OPPOSITION PARTIES: DEVELOPMENTS ON THE

Tags:  PGOV TU POLITICAL PARTIES 
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This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 004497 

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/03/2025
TAGS: PGOV TU POLITICAL PARTIES
SUBJECT: TURKISH OPPOSITION PARTIES: DEVELOPMENTS ON THE
RIGHT

REF: A. ANKARA 4042


B. ANKARA 1730

C. 2004 ANKARA 7211

Classified By: POL Counselor John W. Kunstadter, for reasons 1.4 (b) &
(d).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 004497

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/03/2025
TAGS: PGOV TU POLITICAL PARTIES
SUBJECT: TURKISH OPPOSITION PARTIES: DEVELOPMENTS ON THE
RIGHT

REF: A. ANKARA 4042


B. ANKARA 1730

C. 2004 ANKARA 7211

Classified By: POL Counselor John W. Kunstadter, for reasons 1.4 (b) &
(d).


1. (C) Summary. Turkey's two main right-of-center opposition
parties have been unable to mount a serious challenge to the
governing AKP. The two parties share very similar ideologies
and compete for the same voters, but they are unable to unite
under a common banner. As with the parties on the
center-left, these parties are also seriously limited by a
tradition of authoritarian leadership and an elitist
unwillingness to engage in the unglamorous work of grassroots
party building. End Summary.


-------------- --------------
CENTER RIGHT PARTIES FAIL TO GAIN TRACTION AGAINST AKP
-------------- --------------


2. (C) The governing Justice and Development Party (AKP)
remains the juggernaut of Turkish electoral and parliamentary
politics. AKP controls 355 of the 550 seats in the
parliament and, according to recent polls, is supported by
between 28 percent and 40 percent of the electorate. The
secular, left-of-center Republican People,s Party (CHP)
controls 158 seats in the legislature and it is supported by
around 15 percent of the electorate. (Ref A for an analysis
of the left-of-center Turkish parties).


3. (C) The traditional center-right True Path Party (DYP) has
only four seats in parliament and the ostensibly liberal
center-right Motherland Party (ANAP) controls fourteen seats
in parliament. Both parties received less than 10 percent of
the vote in the 2002 national elections and 2004 local
elections. Recent polls indicate that DYP is supported by
perhaps 10 percent of the electorate and ANAP is supported by
around 5 percent.


4. (C) AKP has taken plenty of missteps over the past year
(Refs B and C). Many Turks, moreover, are concerned about
the recent rise in PKK-related violence and anxious about the
state of the economy, especially the high level of
unemployment and underemployment. The right-of-center
parties, however, have been unable to make significant
political progress in their struggle against AKP because they
have been pursuing the wrong political strategies and, like
their counterparts on the left, displayed a tone deaf elitism
combined with a deep unwillingness to engage in the

unglamorous work of grassroots party building.


--------------
DYP,S DEEP STATE STATEGY
--------------


5. (C) The DYP is the continuation of the Democrat Party and
the Justice Party, which were banned by the military in the
aftermath of the 1960 and 1980 coups. Traditionally, the
party was very strong in the rural areas, especially among
farmers, villages, and small Anatolian businessmen. DYP,
however, has not done well in recent elections and it has
seen much of its traditional electoral base move into the AKP
camp.


6. (C) DYP Ankara Provincial Chairman Bulent Kusoglu and
former DYP youth group leader Obahan Obanoglu (strictly
protect) told POLOFF separately that DYP is not ready for
elections. Kusoglu claimed that DYP is trying to build a
state-centric anti-AKP coalition. They are reaching out to
small and medium-sized businessmen, villagers, farmers, and
individuals from key state institutions, presumably judges,
prosecutors, governors, subgovernors (kaymakam),regional
police chiefs, and senior bureaucrats in the Ministry of
Justice, the Ministry of the Interior, and the military.


7. (C) DYP chairman Mehmet Agar has been traveling around the
country giving patriotic and anti-AKP speeches to gatherings
of the DYP faithful at provincial and subprovincial meetings.
Although these activities give the appearance of an effort
to build grassroots support for the party, they are actually
designed to solidify Agar,s control of the party by rallying
the diehard DYP supporters behind his leadership.


8. (C) DYP party leaders say they are very fond of Agar. In
meetings with POLOFFs, DYP leaders are quick to praise
Agar,s background, leadership qualities, and
accomplishments. They also describe him to POLOFFs as a
"devlet adami". This phrase can be translated as "statesman"
or as "man of the state": DYP leaders are trying to convey
the later, i.e. that Agar is a creature of and supported by
the State establishment. They claim as well that Agar has
enough credentials as a representative of the "Deep State"
that no one can accuse him of selling out Turkey when he
addresses crowds in the Southeast using the Kurdish dialects
Kurmanji and Zaza.


9. (C) In fact, Agar was head of the Turkish National Police
during the most bitter days of the Turkish authorities,
struggle against the PKK insurgency and he is broadly seen as
responsible for organizing some of the extrajudicial killings
of suspected PKK operatives during the darkest days of the
anti-insurgency. Although Agar,s background is not
controversial within DYP, many outside Turkish observers --
including center-right political analyst Huseyin Kocabiyik --
claim that Agar,s history is one of the main reasons DYP has
failed to gain ground against AKP.

10. (C) DYP hoped to build momentum coming out of its June
2005 convention, but Agar mishandled the convention by
failing to appoint any of the party,s then six MPs -- other
than himself -- to positions on the party,s seventy-member
central decision-making board. Four of the MPs immediately
resigned from the party, although some later returned. As a
result, the news headlines did not focus on any of the
messages DYP wanted to emphasize, but instead focused on the
fact that the party lost two-thirds of its MPs in one day.


--------------
ANAP,S PARLIAMENTARY STRATEGY
--------------


11. (C) ANAP, the party founded by former PM and later
president Turgut Ozal in 1983, is an ostensibly liberal
center-right party that traditionally received strong support
in Turkey,s urban areas and along the Black Sea coast. The
party has seen its popularity drop in every election since
1983 as new parties entered the arena and as allegations of
corruption clung increasingly tightly to ANAP,s neck. By
late 2002, many of the party,s previous supporters had
defected to AKP and many commentators were writing ANAP,s
obituary.


12. (C) MP Erkan Mumcu became the leader of ANAP this spring.
Formerly in ANAP until he broke with then-chairman Mesut
Yilmaz, Mumcu had been a minister in PM Erdogan,s
government, but he defected from AKP to take over the failing
ANAP. He has managed to have some success in building the
party,s representation in parliament. Although ANAP
originally had no members in the legislature, Mumcu has been
able to convince thirteen (excluding himself) MPs to join his
party.


13. (C) ANAP members assert they are not worried about their
party,s current poor showing in the polls, because they are
focused on Mumcu,s efforts to get a minimum of twenty MPs to
defect to their party. If ANAP can collect twenty MPs, then
it forms an official parliamentary group allowing it to exert
greater influence over parliamentary procedures and winning
additional financial support from the state. Dursun Akdemir,
an ANAP MP, asserted to POLOFF that if ANAP can accumulate
twenty supporters in parliament, then the party will attract
media attention and garner mass support. Kocabiyik, who is
advising Mumcu, also claimed that breaking the twenty MP
threshold would open up new possibilities for ANAP.


14. (C) Although Mumcu has drawn attention to the party (and
himself) he will have to overcome significant hurdles before
he can succeed in building ANAP into a viable political
movement. A number of Embassy contacts have commented on the
fact that Mumcu -- who is only in his early forties -- is
seen by many Turks to be egocentric, an elitist hedonist, and
overly ambitious. Prior to the 2002 election, Mumcu
challenged then-ANAP leader Mehmet Yilmaz for control of the
party. Only after losing to Yilmaz did Mumcu jump from ANAP
to AKP. Less than three years later, he jumped from AKP back
to ANAP. Mumcu will also have to overcome, according to
several Embassy contacts, the public,s widespread disgust
with the political corruption attributed to ANAP throughout
the 1980s and 1990s.


-------------- --------------
THE DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN BUILDING THE GRASSROOTS
-------------- --------------


15. (C) The major difficulty facing ANAP and DYP, however, is
their inability to build an extensive grassroots organization
similar to AKP. Obanoglu claimed to POLOFF that the
difficulty is largely financial. With the notable exception
of AKP,s workers, most Turkish party workers at the
grassroots level are not ideologically motivated. They are
poorly educated, unemployed, poor, and largely motivated by
the chance to earn a little money doing door-to-door
canvassing for the party. Grassroots canvassers earn
transportation money, lunch money, cigarette money, and
pocket money for their troubles.


16. (C) Under the Turkish party law, political parties
receive financial contribution from the state treasury based
upon the percentage of the vote they received in the previous
election and the number of seats they control in the
parliament. In 2005, AKP received a subsidy of about $24
million and CHP received about $13 million. DYP, in
contrast, received around $6 million and ANAP received only a
little over $2 million. Parties can also charge membership
fees; but, these fees are minimal and do not significantly
contribute to the party,s overall finances, according to
Obanoglu. ANAP,s miniscule subsidy is causing a real
strain. POLOFFs have noticed on recent visits to ANAP
headquarters that the building is largely empty; the lights
are off in most rooms; there are few computers on the desks;
the main reception desk in the foyer has peeling paint; there
are broken tiles on the floor; and the party's internet page
(www.anap.org.tr) has been down for the past several weeks.


17. (C) AKP has huge structural advantages when it comes to
party building, according to Obanoglu. AKP controls the
national and most local government, so it is able to use the
resources of these institutions to reward party supporters.
AKP also receive the largest financial subsidy from the
state. Finally, unlike the other parties, AKP is able to
recruit ideologically motivated canvassers from the pro-Islam
National View (Milli Gorus) movement. Obanoglu claims that
AKP,s grassroots workers are just as uneducated and poor as
the other party,s workers, but AKP,s canvassers combine an
ideological motivation with their desire to earn a little
money.


18. (C) Comment. Obanoglu,s assessment reveals a deeper
problem facing the opposition parties in Turkey. They see
grassroots party building as something to be farmed out to
low paid and poorly educated workers. The leaders of ANAP,
DYP, and the other opposition parties are largely unwilling
to do this work themselves and they are unable to recruit
ideologically motivated young people to go door-to-door for
them. Although AKP,s financial advantages are substantial,
in a country where political advertising on television and
radio is heavily restricted, the ability to have motivated
workers going door-to-door is critical.


19. (C) Comment Continued. ANAP and DYP, moreover, are
limited by the failure of their leaderships over the past
generation to come together to build a unified, broad based,
center right political party in Turkey. DYP and especially
ANAP are plagued by allegations of past corruption. Finally,
the right-of-center parties have failed to overcome the
traditional lack of intra-party democracy in Turkey. While
AKP suffers from the same defect, internal party reform could
breathe new life into the right-of-center parties. As things
stand, party members are promoted for unthinking loyalty to
the party leader, not for innovation or political skill.
This contributes to tactical and ideological stagnation, and
attenuates the center-right,s ability to mount a serious
challenge to AKP. End Comment.

MCELDOWNEY