Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
07NICOSIA971
2007-12-11 14:58:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Nicosia
Cable title:  

AKP AND OP: IS THE AKP GOVERNMENT IN SEARCH OF A

Tags:  PGOV PREL TR CY 
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VZCZCXRO8920
RR RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHNC #0971/01 3451458
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 111458Z DEC 07
FM AMEMBASSY NICOSIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8388
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHAK/AMEMBASSY ANKARA 5081
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 1027
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 NICOSIA 000971 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/04/2017
TAGS: PGOV PREL TR CY
SUBJECT: AKP AND OP: IS THE AKP GOVERNMENT IN SEARCH OF A
NEW TURKISH CYPRIOT ADDRESS?

REF: NICOSIA 887

Classified By: Ambassador Ronald L. Schlicher for reasons 1.4 (b) and 1
.4 (d)

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 NICOSIA 000971

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/04/2017
TAGS: PGOV PREL TR CY
SUBJECT: AKP AND OP: IS THE AKP GOVERNMENT IN SEARCH OF A
NEW TURKISH CYPRIOT ADDRESS?

REF: NICOSIA 887

Classified By: Ambassador Ronald L. Schlicher for reasons 1.4 (b) and 1
.4 (d)


1. (C) Summary: Many Turkish Cypriots (T/Cs) consider
Turkey's AKP the force behind the T/C Freedom and Reform
Party (OP),the junior "coalition" partner to "TRNC
President" Mehmet Ali Talat's CTP. Any doubts regarding
AKP's support for OP were dispelled recently by the Turkish
party's high-profile participation at an OP congress, and by
the allegedly AKP-inspired defection of two opposition DP
mayors to OP, which infuriated DP leader Serdar Denktash.
According to both opposition and "government" sources, AKP
has swung its support to the newfound (September 2006) OP and
its leader, "Foreign Minister" Turgay Avci, hoping to deliver
the "settler" (mainland Turkish-origin) vote and thereby
weaken an increasingly feckless and recalcitrant T/C
right-wing opposition. In so doing, AKP also aims to create
a pliant counterbalance to the dominant (though weakening)
position of CTP, without harming good relations with that
party. AKP meddling reportedly has angered Talat. In
contrast to the T/C right-wing parties, most CTP officials
admit that the loathesome Avci has shone as "FM," and they
evince little worry at his party,s rise of fortunes. It
remains unclear whether OP, even with help from Turkish PM
Tayyip Erdogan and AKP, can gather enough support to be a
major, enduring player in T/C politics, however. End Summary.

--------------
"Support from Ankara vitally important"
--------------


2. (C) The participation of AKP deputy and foreign policy
advisor Egemen Bagish at the November 24 Freedom and Reform
Party (OP) party congress confirmed for many Turkish Cypriots
the long-standing rumors of AKP support for OP, the junior
"coalition partner" in the "TRNC." Bagish, along with AKP
Antalya mayor Menderes Turel and AKP deputy Mevlut Cagusoglu,
all spoke at the OP congress, the party,s first since its
founding in September 2006. On November 26, Hasan Ercakica,
"Presidential" spokesman, told us that AKP "seems to be
supporting OP," given such high-level participation. Usually,

Ercakica claimed, only low-level Turkish party officials
attend T/C party congresses.


3. (C) AKP hopes its support for OP will deliver the
"settlers," Turkish migrants who have obtained "TRNC
citizenship," who number approximately 33,870 and comprise
roughly twenty-percent of all "TRNC citizens" (Note: An
additional 77,731 Turkish citizens, about 29.3% of the total
"TRNC" population, reside in the "TRNC" under some status
less than citizenship. They include students, guest workers,
and those Turkish military personnel and their families that
live off base. End Note). Bulent Aliriza, a scholar at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a
long-time Embassy contact, told Poloff on December 4 that PM
Erdogan had inquired why "our people" were not better
represented in the "TRNC parliament" and "government." The
CTP's Salih Usar, the "Public Works and Transport Minister,"
joked with us on November 29 that the Turkish settlers are
like "little Turkish ambassadors" who take their signals from
Ankara.


4. (C) OP has played up its close connections with Ankara and
regularly boasts of its admiration of AKP, Erdogan, and
Turkey (Reftel). In a December 5 interview with "Kibris,"
the highest-circulation daily in northern Cyprus, Avci said
that "support from Turkey was vitally important to him."
(Comment: While such a statement may be a fact for other
parties as well, Avci,s wording would surely grate on native
Turkish Cypriot sensitivities given their love-hate
relationship with Turkey, not blind infatuation. End Comment).

--------------
"AKP game to destroy DP"
--------------


5. (SBU) Serdar Denktash, DP leader and former "Foreign
Minister" before CTP dumped him in September 2006 in favor of
OP and Avci, declared war on AKP after his party lost another
two mayors--both Turkish settlers--to OP on the eve of the
latter's party congress. At a November 26 press conference
upon his return from Turkey, where he engaged AKP officials,
Denktash charged that "the rumors turned out to be true. AKP
is behind OP." He then presented an ultimatum to his own

NICOSIA 00000971 002 OF 003


party members: "If there is anyone who says that we will do
whatever this or that party in Turkey wants, let him resign
within a week."


6. (C) In a November 30 meeting with Embassy officers,
Denktash related that AKP,s "game is to destroy DP,"
allegedly over support that his father, long-time "TRNC
President" Rauf Denktash, gave to the National Action Party
(MHP) during recent Turkish parliamentary elections. He
claimed that Egemen Bagish had "confessed" this in Ankara.
He also alleged that AKP deputies had taken one of his
defecting mayors to Turkey and made promises of financial
support, both to his municipality and to the mayor
personally. Denktash added that the present Turkish
"ambassador" had kept out of the fray. (Note: Another cause
of friction between DP and AKP is the former's 14-month
boycott of "Parliament," in which the main right-wing
opposition group, the National Unity Party (UBP),also
participates. The two parties are protesting OP,s unethical
entry into "Parliament." The AKP, Erdogan, and Turkish
President Abdullah Gul repeatedly have urged them to return
to the "legislature." End Note)

--------------
Tensions rising between Avci and Talat?
--------------


7. (C) AKP-inspired friction between Avci and Talat dominated
the front page of "Kibrisli" on November 30. The paper
charged that AKP interference had exacerbated political
tension between them. Aliriza confirmed the
usually-sensationalist "Kibrisli report, telling Poloff that
Talat, whom he had met in Cyprus days earlier, was unhappy
that "Turkey's ruling party (AKP) was involved in Turkish
Cypriot politics." The CSIS analyst added that the
"President" and "FM" had met one-on-one for thirty minutes on
November 25. One topic of conversation may have been Avci's
increasing free-lancing; "Prime Ministerial" adviser (and
reported former Talat squeeze) Yonca Senyigit complained to
us November 26 that she had learned of several of Avci,s
trips from the newspapers.


8. (C) Oddly, while most in CTP are contemptuous of Avci,
they grudgingly admit he has succeeded in raising the
"TRNC's" international profile and, as far as they know, has
kept on the CTP's pro-solution message. The votes he steals
come mainly from the right wing, they assert, not CTP's
left-of-center base. Kutlay Erk, CTP's unofficial foreign
policy guru, told Poloff on November 19 that Avci "was not
doing a bad job as 'FM' and should travel even more."
"Presidential" spokesman Ercakica complained of Avci,s
nepotism and penchant for corruption, although he admitted
that OP might be a convenient coalition partner for CTP in
the future.

-------------- --------------
Comment: "What does the AKP government really want?"
-------------- --------------


9. (C) Comment: Every ruling party in Turkey has played
favorites on Cyprus, from ANAP developing close ties to UBP,
to CHP and MHP cozying up to Rauf Denktash. If indeed AKP is
trying to build its "own" party in the TRNC--and there
definitely are signs to that effect--we question the choice
of OP and its focus on mainlanders. Settler parties have
coalesced in the past, but did not take root mainly because
of migrants' disparate political leanings, a degree of T/C
prejudice and suspicion toward newcomers, and the
difficulties any new party faces in the north's entrenched
electoral system. Even if OP were to squeak past the
five-percent barrier for "parliamentary" representation in
the next scheduled elections, it would need at least double
the minimum to really matter--a much taller order. Further,
AKP must build up OP without souring relations with CTP,
still the T/C community's strongest party and the only major
one professing the same bizonal, bicommunal, federal Cyprus
solution that Erdogan has espoused publicly.


10. (C) Conflicting reports regarding AKP,s view on early
"parliamentary" elections here further confuse the picture.
According to Ercakica, Egeman Bagish told "President" Talat
in late November that AKP wants the CTP-OP government to
endure. If true, that "demand" would put OP in a far
stronger position to contest regularly scheduled 2010
elections and drive UBP and DP, who seek elections in 2008,
even further into their self-imposed, boycott-driven "exile."

NICOSIA 00000971 003 OF 003


Aliriza, however, reports that Turkish Deputy Prime Minister
Cemal Cicek, who has the Cyprus portfolio, is so annoyed by
the boycott and by T/C political squabbling that he is
pressing for early elections in 2008 to clean the political
slate here. Such an outcome would benefit UBP and DP, and
put OP in the tough spot of contesting elections barely
eighteen months after its founding. It would also undermine
CTP, which has steadfastly opposed 2008 elections in favor of
a vote in late 2009. Early elections falling in 2008 also
would harm hopes for a restart of Cyprus Problem
negotiations, already in a de facto holding pattern because
of the February 2008 Republic of Cyprus presidential vote.
End Comment.
SCHLICHER