A NEW ERA

Presidential elections in Turkey, which will have a different status than before, are not far off. For the first time in the country's history the president will be elected not by deputies of the legislative body, but by a nationwide ballot. An amendment to this effect was tabled to the Turkish Constitution six years ago. The struggle for the post of head of state will be contested between three candidates.

The main opposition forces - the People's Republican Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) - have presented a united front with their prot?g?, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the former secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The candidate from the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party is one of its leaders, Selahattin Demirtas.

The intrigue around the candidate from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) continued well into July, although there was no intrigue as such. "We are perfectly clear about the name of our candidate," one of the founders of the AKP, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, said a few days earlier. So, when the AKP leadership announced that Recep Tayyip Erdogan was their candidate for president, nobody was surprised.

Power

Nominating Erdogan as their candidate was very important for the AKP. The incumbent prime minister has been head of the Turkish government for two years running and, according to the party's charter, he cannot be elected a deputy and, accordingly, prime minister for a third term. So all that remained was to put forward their leader for a different political level, i.e. the country's president. 

Hence the AKP's natural wish to change the declarative nature of the office of president and invest it with real power. With this in mind the Turkish authorities announced an initiative to reform the parliamentary form of the governance of the state into a presidential one. However, this proposal did not win sufficient support in parliament, although experts are convinced that if Erdogan triumphs at the presidential elections these amendments will go ahead. 

A victory for Erdogan would, of course, bring forward the urgency of such issues as creating a new government, appointing a new prime minister and, accordingly, elections for the new party chairman. In that case all eyes are on Erdogan's closest associate, the incumbent president Abdullah Gul. The prime minister announced his candidature almost immediately after Gul expressed his reluctance to stand for a second term, also not forgetting to mention his intention to leave the political arena altogether. However, as the Turkish media is saying, Gul might reconsider his plans because Erdogan is doing everything to make the incumbent Turkish president the leader of the party.

Since he has been in office the incumbent Turkish prime minister has been able to build a fairly strong and disciplined vertical of party authority. Now he needs a dedicated individual at the head of the party. At the same time, he must be neither weak nor strong. A strong leader might form his own team and start his "own game". With a weak leader and being such a heterogeneous party, the AKP, which was created with the help of a merger between various political groups, could break up into small inter-party groups. Accordingly, today Gul is the ideal candidate for the post of chairman of Turkey's ruling party. Here, experts believe, lies the main reason for Erdogan's decision to stand so late - after long talks with Gul. However, in our opinion, there is another reason for such tardiness: the AKP first wanted to know the name of the opposition candidate. 

The Opposition

If Erdogan's nomination was generally expected, the opposition's candidate came as a surprise to many. Opponents of the liberal Islamists, who call themselves the "secular opposition", surprised many people by nominating the moderate conservative, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, as their candidate.

The leader of the main opposition party CHP, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, took a similar decision together with another opposition leader, Devlet Bahceli, chairman of the Nationalist Movement Party.

By an irony of fate, the secular republicans and the nationalists gave their preference to a politician (although until recently it was difficult to describe Ihsanoglu as such) who could be called an Islamist. Born and bred in Egypt, 70-year old Professor Ihsanoglu is the author of over ten books on Islam and, some reports say, supports the "Muslim Brotherhood" organization.

It seems that the opposition also plans to use the religious factor in order to win votes from the ruling party. After all, the former secretary-general of the OIC holds almost the same political views as Erdogan, and represents the same social base. Except perhaps if Erdogan's opponents set him up as a radical Islamist, the more moderate Ihsanoglu could be an alternative to him. To be fair, one should point out that the political ideas of Erdogan and his party are a very long way short of Islamic radicalism.

The paradox of the situation is that, first of all, Ihsanoglu was nominated by representatives of the CHP who regarded the followers of political Islam as a force in opposition to the secular system in Turkey. Second, the Turkish nationalists decided to get behind the conservative from Egypt who is linked more with the Arab world.

It is true that Ihsanoglu purports to be a devotee of the ideas of Ataturk, but he also professes to be a secularist, i.e. he favours separating religion from politics. Despite this, by no means everyone in the opposition camp has confidence in him.

The result is there has been a split in the ranks of the government's opponents. Some influential functionaries in the CHP did not support the single candidate. It should also be borne in mind that traditionally one of the main electoral groups of the CHP are the Alawites living in Turkey who may this time not vote for their party's candidate because Ihsanoglu is an Islamist of the traditional Sunni sect. A third candidate, a 41-year old lawyer and pro-Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, could win the votes of the Alawites, as well as the supporters of the traditional left. That is how the main and most delicately balanced game of the coming presidential elections could pan out.

The Kurdish factor

According to the statistics for recent municipal elections, the ruling party won about 40-45 per cent of the vote nationwide. This gives Erdogan a chance of winning, but only in the second round - not the first - of the ballot. But if he is not to lose ground he needs to win in the first round. In that case, the missing votes and the question of how to win them acquire very great significance! This factor makes Demirtas and the Kurdish factor very significant and relevant because it is they who can provide the missing votes for Erdogan.

According to observers, the ruling party and Kurdish political groups are already having debates about this.  A statement by one of Erdogan's close associates and an AKP functionary, Huseyin Celik, that "Kurdistan is fraternal for Turkey" came as a surprise to many. The logical message hidden under the word "Kurdistan" remains curious. Even if Celik meant Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey's readiness to recognize its independence, quite a few analysts believe that the Turkish Kurds have been promised autonomy, although what kind of autonomy, remains unclear. Also, experts believe, Erdogan could improve his rating among the Kurds even more by promising to move Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish separatists and head of the terrorist organization PKK, responsible for the murder of 30,000 people in the last 30 years, to house arrest.

It is, of course, difficult to say what might happen to Turkey's state system and territorial integrity after such steps. But even today it is possible to predict that Turkey is entering a new era in its history. In any event, the leader of the ruling party and presidential candidate Tayyip Erdogan is promising the country this "new era".