ERDAL INONU: A TURKISH PATRIOT IS LAID TO REST,

C O N F I D E N T I A L ANKARA 002724 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/05/2017 TAGS: PGOV PINR TU SUBJECT: ERDAL INONU: A TURKISH PATRIOT IS LAID TO REST, ALONG WITH HIS SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC LEGACY Classified By: PolCouns Janice G Weiner, reasons 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (SBU) Erdal Inonu -- professor and physicist, reluctant politician, social democrat, former Deputy PM and FM, and son of Turkey's second President, General Ismet Inonu -- was laid to rest November 4 in Istanbul. Inonu's epitaph could well read: here lies an honest, decent human being who wanted the best for his country. ¶2. (SBU) Ceremonies at Parliament in Ankara on November 3, as well as at his Istanbul funeral, were attended overwhelmingly by the older generations. Most in the Ankara throng - government ministers aside - had a personal connection to Inonu, or were long-time Kemalists and/or social democrats. The country's highest ranking retired civilians, former Presidents Sezer and Demirel, came to pay their respects, as did the leaders of the two ostensibly social democratic parties -- Deniz Baykal of the now-nationalist Republican People's Party (CHP),and Murat Karayalcin of the nearly moribund Socialist People's Party (SHP) -- the party Inonu led for a decade (1983-1993). ¶3. (C) The crowd at the brief parliament memorial service showed their displeasure with PM Erdogan's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) by loudly applauding the arrivals of Sezer and Baykal. The applause -- an angry commentary by old Kemalists and leftists on those currently in power -- ran counter to Inonu's true legacy: he favored inclusive politics, creative solutions, and believed in reaching out to all sectors of society. Today's ostensible center-left offers none of the above. ¶4. (C) Inonu's political legacy was personified by the presence of two controversial figures at the parliament ceremony and Istanbul funeral: pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) MPs Ahmet Turk and Sirri Sakik. Both benefited from Inonu's vision when he brought DTP-predecessor, DEP, into parliament in 1991 under the SHP umbrella. At the time, neither the DEP MPs (whose Kurdish language theatrics were provocative),the Turkish polity nor the country's justice system were prepared for the experiment. It ended in disaster in 1993 with the DEP MPs stripped of their parliamentary immunity, thrown in prison and put on trial. Inonu paid the political price as his party's popularity plunged, because of this and poor handling of anti-Alevi rioting in Sivas in 1993. But in 1991, with Kurdish separatism on the rise, he saw it as the right thing to do for Turkey. Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/ MCELDOWNEY