MESOP ANALYSIS : Gul’s next move depends on Erdogan
AL MONITOR – 4.6.2014 – Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not yet announced that he will run for president in the elections to be held Aug. 10. He may remain mute on the subject, but senior members of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) are spelling it out plainly. Mehmet Ali Sahin, a former justice minister currently a deputy head of the AKP, is one such person.
Addressing party supporters on May 30 in Cankiri province, Sahin announced that the AKP wanted to see Erdogan become president, saying, “They say, ‘Tayyip Erdogan should not be a candidate. He is behaving like a dictator.’ Forget it! Tayyip Erdogan will continue to serve this nation and he will do so as president.”
Sahin also underlined the party’s intention to return to parliament even stronger after the 2015 general elections so that it can change the constitution and introduce a presidential system. “Thus, our Prime Minister Erdogan, as a member of the party, will serve our nation as president until 2023,” he added, not mincing his words.
A day after Sahin’s remarks, Bulent Arinc, a deputy head of the AKP and veteran member of the party, also dropped heavy hints of this intention, although he remained more circumspect. “So who is the AKP candidate?” Arinc asked tauntingly during an address to local party members in the city of Manisa on June 1.
“Well, you know it, so don’t force me to say it,” he added, saying it was 90% obvious whose name had come up within the party. Using a Turkish saying, Arinc said that even the deaf sultan knows by now who the candidate is. So why is Erdogan holding out, while allowing open or shrouded hints about his candidacy from senior members of his party? The answer may lie in recent remarks by another deputy head of the AKP, namely Besir Atalay, a former interior minister. Answering questions June 1 on Kanal 7, a news and entertainment station with links to the AKP, Atalay also indicated that Erdogan was favored by party members to run for president. He said, however, that the important thing at this stage was the future of what he referred to as “their movement.” Atalay said that the AKP was seeking a formula that would overcome difficulties with regard to the general elections in 2015 to achieve all of its objectives, including the new constitution required for a strong president.
“Convincing [President Abdullah] Gul to head the party again will enable these elections to pass with greater ease for us,” Atalay said, indicating that this would also increase trust not just among grassroots AKP supporters, but also the public at large.
There is more meaning embedded in Atalay’s remarks than first meets the eye. Other than confirming, like Sahin and Arinc, that Erdogan will be the AKP candidate for president, Atalay also, perhaps inadvertently, revealed that there are concerns within the AKP as to what will happen to the party once Erdogan leaves its chairmanship to become president.
While the opposition has failed to come up with other candidates or a credible joint candidate to run against Erdogan, the AKP appears to have a similar difficulty in finding a name that can keep the party unified and focused on its mission without a leadership struggle ensuing after Erdogan departs.
Gul, who co-founded the AKP with Erdogan and is widely respected within the party, is of course the first name to come to mind. It was also widely accepted by the party’s rank and file until not long ago that he would assume the leadership of the AKP after Erdogan.Gul himself, however, dashed this expectation when he declared in April that he “had no political plans concerning the future.” His announcement had a bombshell effect on AKP members and supporters who were taken by surprise.
It was highly telling that Gul’s remark came almost immediately after Erdogan announced his intention to use presidential powers to the limit if elected.“If I step into the [Cankaya Presidential Palace], I will be the people’s president. I will use my full constitutional competencies,” Erdogan reportedly told his deputies during an evaluation meeting at the AKP headquarters in Ankara on April 16.
Gul’s declaration that he had no political plans for the future was generally taken by political analysts as sign that he is not prepared to become a Dmitry Medvedev to Erdogan’s Vladimir Putin. It was also taken as evidence that Gul will not harm the “AKP mission” being spearheaded by Erdogan.
He clearly wants to avoid a situation where the two might come to loggerheads over specific issues in the future, with Erdogan as an assertive president and himself an assertive prime minister.Gul’s wish not to harm the AKP’s mission by blocking Erdogan’s path is also taken as the main reason why he decided against contesting the presidential elections himself. There was a tangible desire among opposition politicians to see him do so to take the wind out of Erdogan’s sails, but Gul clearly wanted to avoid playing into the opposition’s hand.
The only thing Gul could do “under these conditions,” to use his words, was to withdraw honorably from politics. Atalay’s remarks, however — coming from a senior AKP member — have put the spotlight on Gul once again. Al-Monitor contacted sources close to the presidency to try to learn what effect, if any, Atalay’s remarks had on Gul and to discern if Gul was inclined to change his mind about withdrawing from politics, given such an important plea for the sake of the AKP’s future success. It appears Atalay’s remarks have been noted by Gul’s close advisers, who see embedded in the words of the deputy AKP head an inability by the party to come up with a viable candidate who will not only keep the party unified, but also carry it to success in the 2015 general elections.
If the AKP’s plans for those elections go awry, it is clear that this will also have serious consequences for Erdogan as president, endangering his intention to introduce a presidential system to Turkey by changing the constitution.
If the AKP comes out weaker than today from the 2015 elections, Erdogan’s intention to exercise executive powers as president will also take a blow, since there will be a limit to what he can do under the present constitution.Sources close to Gul indicated that the prevailing conditions mentioned by Gul in April have not changed, and that Erdogan’s intention to exercise executive powers remains problematic. This, they suggested, makes it harder for Gul to come up with an immediate and positive response to Atalay’s plea.
There is also another difficulty posed by Gul’s past declaration that if there is to be a presidential system in Turkey, it should have the kinds of checks and balances one sees in the United States. That, however, is not what Erdogan and his party executives want. They are aiming instead at a strong executive presidency unencumbered by either parliament or the judiciary.
But Gul has put principle aside in the past for the sake of Erdogan and the AKP, despite his strong remarks in favor of the liberal democratic principles that have been blatantly violated by the government. This was clearly seen when Gul endorsed the government’s highly restrictive Internet law in February.It was also apparent when he endorsed, again in February, the government’s law governing the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors that effectively put the judiciary under government control, in violation of the separation-of-powers principle that lies at the heart of any genuine democracy. Gul is therefore more likely than not to heed the calls from within the AKP to lead the party and become prime minister, if only for a transient period until the 2015 general elections, should a viable alternative to Erdogan not be found in the lead-up to the presidential elections. Gul’s commitment to the AKP and its mission has, after all, trumped his commitment to advanced democratic principles in the recent past. The wild card in all this, of course, is the highly unlikely prospect that Erdogan will decide, for the sake of the AKP’s future, not to run for president. But no one is seriously banking on that possibility.