Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09ANKARA1475
2009-10-13 15:49:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Ankara
Cable title:  

TURKEY'S DEMOCRATIC INITIATIVE: MORE THAN WORDS?

Tags:  PGOV PINR PTER TU 
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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 001475 

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT ALSO FOR EUR/SE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/13/2019
TAGS: PGOV PINR PTER TU
SUBJECT: TURKEY'S DEMOCRATIC INITIATIVE: MORE THAN WORDS?

REF: ANKARA 1468

Classified By: POL Counselor Daniel O'Grady, for reasons 1.4 (b,d)

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 001475

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT ALSO FOR EUR/SE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/13/2019
TAGS: PGOV PINR PTER TU
SUBJECT: TURKEY'S DEMOCRATIC INITIATIVE: MORE THAN WORDS?

REF: ANKARA 1468

Classified By: POL Counselor Daniel O'Grady, for reasons 1.4 (b,d)


1. (C) Summary: Interior Minister Besir Atalay has
announced that the as-yet unrevealed Democratic Initiative
will exit its first "debate" phase and progress to the second
"concrete step" phase after the Prime Minister returns from a
visit to Iraq on October 15. Details of the project remain
elusive, and a number of embassy contacts argue that rather
than deliver a package, the government may prefer that the
initiative remain an amorphous process gradually unrolled
over a number of years. Though this method would allow for
flexibility, it could meet resistance on the part of an
opposition unable or unwilling to accept the project in its
entirety, and would leave no provision for the continuance of
the project were the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to
be voted out of office in the future. In any event, for
maximum benefit, either approach would require support from
the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP),which appears
reluctant to give it. End summary.

SOUND AND FURY; CUE THE SIGNIFICANCE


2. (C) The theme "Together We Are All Turkey," currently
popping up on billboards around Ankara and prominently
featured as the main slogan for AKP's October 3 party
congress, encapsulates the optimism of the government in
selling the idea of wider democratization -- particularly for
ethic and religious groups that do not have legal minority
status -- as its main domestic agenda in the 2009-2010
legislative year. Yet so far the government's rhetoric has
not been matched with substance.


3. (C) Trumpeting the theme at the conference, Prime
Minister Erdogan emphasized that citizens of Turkey,
regardless of their ethnic, religious, or ideological
background, should be valued and treated equally. He
emphasized how poor Turkish culture would be without the
influences of its diversity, enumerating writers from Alevi
(Haci Bektas and Pir Sultan Abdal),Kurdish (Ahmet Kaya and
Said-i Nursi),and socialist (Nazim Hikmet and Cem Karaca)
backgrounds. (Note: The mention of Said-i Nursi, mentor of
religious leader Fethullah Gulen, elicited an impressive

round of applause among the AKP delegates and other
participants in the congress. End Note.) Erdogan has since
promised to conduct a tour of Turkey promoting the initiative
at public venues. However, the party board tasked with
developing the Kurdish initiative issued a bland anodyne
statement to the congress, reasserting the value that ethnic
diversity and role democratization would play in ending
ethnic conflict without detailing exactly how the initiative
would proceed.


4. (C) The optimism of the congress was not consistently
reflected in our discussions with officials close to the
project. Ahmet Iyimaya, a caffeine-driven MP from Amasya and
expert on constitutional law, expressed concern that the
package would fail. He told us that the Prime Minister,
Interior Minister, and other pertinent officials had
finalized what would be in the package, but were concerned
that the opposition would not support it. The chance of
constitutional amendments passing was "hic, sifir (never,
zero)" and therefore were unlikely to even be proposed to the
current Parliament. He predicted that Atalay would possibly
not bring a coherent package to Parliament at all. Instead,
his presentation to Parliament would be a restatement of
rhetoric that had already been reported -- that the path to
eliminating the PKK and developing the country is through
democratization and the elimination of unfair treatment of
minorities -- and that the package would then be brought to
vote in unconnected pieces.


5. (C) Eyup Tepe, Secretary General of the Ministry of
Interior, told us that Minister Atalay would likely brief
members of parliament on the initiative beginning in the
third week of October, but that the political situation for a
briefing of the whole of Parliament may never exist. He,
too, mentioned a step-by-step approach for passage,
explaining that the committee on the initiative would brief

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PM Erdogan who would then make piecemeal decisions on a way
forward.

CHP PLAYING HARD TO GET


6. (C) Our talks with pro-initiative opposition member Mesut
Deger reinforced Iyimaya's pessimism. Deger had been
preparing a report for the Republican People's Party (CHP)
making suggestions on how a democratization plan to solve the
Kurdish issue could be achieved within CHP's redlines. The
press announced on October 2 that the CHP had released
Deger's report, but by the end of the weekend, CHP officials
had disowned it, claiming that no such report even existed.
On October 9, Deger gave us a copy of the report, telling us
that it had been leaked to a pro-PKK website. The website
unilaterally added several terms unacceptable to the CHP,
including general amnesty for all PKK members other than
Abdullah Ocalan and an immediate end to operations against
the PKK. Deger insists that his original report did not
include such language and that the edits were obvious fakes,
inconsistent in tone and grammar from the remainder of the
report. Deger would not speculate as to how the draft got to
the press, claiming the only people to have had a copy were
himself, Deniz Baykal, Murat Karayalcin, and one of
Karayalcin's aides. (Note: We had previously met with other
CHP members who proudly wielded what they claimed to have
been Deger's report. It is unclear whether they indeed had
his report or had instead a summary of previous CHP
pronouncements in favor of increased democratization and
accommodation for the Kurds. Furthermore, Eyup Tepe said
that Deger had been working with the MoI to produce his
report. He believed that the CHP report was closely aligned
with Minister Atalay's goals, but that CHP was paying a
political game that would, in the end, lead them not to
support the initiative. End note.)


7. (C) The result of the leak of the doctored document was
that the CHP board advised Baykal to distance the party from
it unambiguously, considering even the legitimate parts of
the document to be poisonous. Deger predicted that Baykal
would reject uncategorically AKP's initiative: if it emerged
as a package, he would be forced by the leaked report episode
to reject it as a concession to terrorist demands, but if it
were to come to Parliament in inchoate pieces, he would be
unable to support individual items without knowing what role
they play in the whole. Deger was also pessimistic that
Baykal would respond positively to an Erdogan letter
requesting the two men meet to discuss the initiative.
Baykal has to date accepted the invitation on the condition
that the media cover the event to avoid press speculation
that would follow a closed meeting. Tepe's assurance that
CHP and AKP are meeting at the working level to reach an
accommodation over the initiative, coupled by the optimism in
meetings with us of highly-placed CHP leaders, such as Kemal
Kilicdaroglu and Hakki Suha Okay, suggest that CHP support
may still be in the cards, but perhaps at the high price of
the general lifting of Parliamentary immunity or concessions
over ambiguities in procedures for presidential elections to
be held in 2012.

A ROAD PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS


8. (C) Comment: A combination of AKP being unwilling to
detail its intentions for the initiative coupled with a CHP
reluctance to relinquish state control over anything to
individuals, and, perhaps more likely, to hand AKP a
political success on a platter, may eventually undermine the
Democratic Initiative. In a society that has become
pointedly polarized between the government and the
opposition, CHP support would be key to allaying nationalist
concerns that the AKP is laying the ground for increased
rather than decreased tension. Without CHP support, the
initiative could prove counter-productive, creating more
tension, rather than less. Deniz Baykal could indeed focus
on short-term political gains (despite having championed many
of the proposed reforms himself in the past) leaving AKP with
the unenviable job of trying to convince a stalwart
opposition unassisted.

JEFFREY

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