TURKEY: SAADET MIGHT BE AKP'S ELECTION SPOILER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 000390 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT ALSO FOR EUR/SE E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/16/2019 TAGS: OSCE PGOV TU SUBJECT: TURKEY: SAADET MIGHT BE AKP'S ELECTION SPOILER REF: ANKARA 377 Classified By: POL Counselor Daniel O'Grady, for reasons 1.4 (b,d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: The Saadet Party (SP),a small, religion-based party with roots intermingled with those of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP),may prove to be the surprise of Turkey's nationwide local elections on March 29. Though still on the political margins, SP's conservative religious ideology, combined with a leadership change and highly visible political activity, may attract voters disgruntled with AKP administration. If so, it poses a potential future threat to AKP in its core constituency. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (C) The SP and AKP are twin offshoots of the National View (Milli Gorus) tradition of religious conservatives in Turkey, both having formed in the wake of the 2001 closure of the Fazilet Party, itself a successor to the Refah Party, which enjoyed a short period as the largest party in Parliament during the late 1990s. In general, the younger generation followed Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul to found AKP, whereas the older generation created SP. The two parties originally competed for the same segment of the Turkish vote, but SP's aging, unimaginative leadership could not match the charisma and dynamism of Erdogan and Gul, leaving SP in the electoral doldrums with less than three percent of the national vote in the 2002 parliamentary elections. In recent months, however, SP has worked to renew itself, and is showing signs of success. NEW IMAGE, SAME IDEAS... -------------- ¶3. (C) SP held its most recent party convention in October 2008, showcasing not only the energy of its core supporters, but also new leadership and hints of the policies it would focus on in the run-up to local elections. With great fanfare and chants of "mujahid," (i.e.: holy warrior) SP retired its aging and largely ineffective chairman, Recai Kutan, replacing him with Numan Kurtulmus, a fifty year-old American-educated businessman. Party veteran Oya Akgonenc told us in a meeting just before the convention that Kurtulmus's nomination was a result of the recognition that SP had to change to meet new conditions in Turkey, but was not an abandonment of Saadet's older generation or its principles. She assured us that a committee of "elders" would provide continuity and advice to the new party �0A;administration. ¶4. (C) The resulting change is mostly superficial: Kurtulmus's speech at the congress reiterated the standard litany of his predecessors' policies: he railed against imperialism in the form of Israel, the World Bank, and IMF, called for the defusing of societal divisions within Turkey by embracing the traditional principles of Islam and the Ottoman Empire, and demanded that the Turkish state allow headscarved women access to university education. As an added bonus, the audience leapt to its feet upon being informed that a HAMAS delegate was in attendance as an observer, showering him with chants of "Israel be damned." ¶5. (C) Since the congress, SP has done its best to keep itself in the public eye. Kurtulmus made especially strong use of the Gaza crisis, speaking before a group of thousands of protesters in Istanbul before the government or other opposition parties had addressed the issue. It has also achieved some tactical victories in preparation for elections. For example, when AKP refused to renominate the mayor of Sanliurfa, Saadet enlisted him on its ticket, turning a safe seat for AKP into an electoral battleground. It also highly publicized the March 9 defection of 1600 AKP members in Elazig province to SP. ¶6. (C) SP has selected candidates appropriate to its districts. On the cosmopolitan side, SP's candidate in Ankara's posh Cankaya district, Esra Acu, is a chic theater actress and dancer (with no notable previous political ANKARA 00000390 002 OF 002 experience). Its candidate for the conservative city of Sivas, Osman Secilmis, is a more traditional choice for SP: a soft-spoken civil engineer and businessman well-known among the locals. The SP platform hearkens back to standard National View policies. Sitki Cengil, the party chairman in Adana province, outlined the SP platform to us in a February 28 meeting. SP will create jobs through increased production, encouraging investment in cooperatives by reducing the interest rate to zero (code for Islamic banking); demand that Turkey be treated in EU negotiations as an equal, not a supplicant; and promise that democracy, economy, and public order will all be strengthened by intra-societal harmony under the aegis of faith. ...MORE VOTES? -------------- ¶7. (C) Political observers largely write off SP as a relic of the past which will fail to revive itself, but a handful are concerned that religious voters frustrated over the headscarf issue and worried that AKP is failing to cushion the impact of the global economic crisis have no other choice but to turn to SP. Ozer Sencar, the general director of the MetroPoll polling company, told us in a March 11 meeting that Saadet has been playing very wise politics. He said that it had planned its face lift long ago. It selected the bulk of its mayoral candidates a year ago and has been planning, preparing, and training for these elections ever since. His polls have shown a gradual increase in Saadet's popularity, giving SP the potential to surpass its previous electoral results by a significant margin. He said the electoral battle in the Southeast between AKP and the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Society Party (DTP) may allow Saadet to claim some large municipalities there, and also noted that some municipalities not normally associated with religious conservatives, such as Istanbul's Uskudar district, may give unusually large numbers of votes to SP. Salim Ensarioglu, a Kurdish veteran of the now-marginal center-right Democrat Party (DP),echoed these sentiments in a March 9 meeting with us, pointing to Sanliurfa, Batman, Bingol, and Igdir as provinces where SP could win or do especially well at the polls. COMMENT -------------- ¶8. (C) Saadet is not a short-term threat to the AKP. It will not win more than a handful of mayoralties and it will probably still linger below the national ten percent threshold that, in Turkish politics, indicates that a party is nationally viable. But even a six percent return for Saadet poses a potential long-term threat to AKP. Saadet and AKP both consider rural conservative voters to be their core supporters. Any significant increase in Saadet's share indicates that AKP may be neglecting its core. Some observers with whom we have talked suggest this would be a positive development, indicating that AKP has moderated and morphed into a party of the center-right. Others see it in a negative light, arguing that it will force AKP back to the right to reclaim the votes they have lost. Either way, growing popularity for Saadet would cause much soul-searching in the AKP. Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Turk ey Jeffrey