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### Viewing cable 04ANKARA7211, ERDOGAN AND AK PARTY AFTER TWO YEARS IN POWER:

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Reference ID | Date | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | ---
04ANKARA7211 | 2004-12-30 05:05 | SECRET | Embassy Ankara

`

    This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

` `

    S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 05 ANKARA 007211

    SIPDIS

    E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/14/2029
    TAGS: PREL PGOV PINS ECON TU
    SUBJECT: ERDOGAN AND AK PARTY AFTER TWO YEARS IN POWER:
    TRYING TO GET A GRIP ON THEMSELVES, ON TURKEY, ON EUROPE

    (U) Classified by Ambassador Eric Edelman; reasons: E.O.
    12958 1.4 (a,b,c,d).

    ¶1. (C) Summary: PM Erdogan and his ruling AK Party seem to
    have a firm grip on power -- if for no other reasons that
    there is currently no viable alternative and inertia weighs
    heavily in politics.  Nevertheless, Erdogan and his party
    face enormous challenges if they are successfully to embrace
    core principles of open society, carry out EU harmonization,
    and develop and implement foreign policies in harmony with
    core U.S. interests.  End summary.

    ¶2. (C) As PM Erdogan strode through the EU corridors of power
    Dec. 16-17 with his semi-pro soccer player's swagger and
    phalanx of sycophantic advisors, he may have seemed a strong
    candidate for European leader of the year.  A regional leader
    to be reckoned with for a decade to come.  The man who won
    Turkey the beginning of accession negotiations with the EU.
    Who broke loose three decades of frozen Turkish policy on
    Cyprus.  Who drove major human rights reforms through
    parliament and through constitutional amendments.  Whose
    rhetorical skill, while etched with populist victimhood, is
    redolent with traditional and religious allusions that
    resonate deeply in the heartland, deeply in the anonymous
    exurban sprawls.  Who remains the highly popular tribune of
    the people, without a viable or discernible political
    rival...outside his own ruling AKP.

    ¶3. (C) In short, Erdogan looks unbeatable.  But is he?  And
    is he willing to give relations with the U.S. the leadership
    and momentum they need from the Turkish side?

    ¶4. (C) Erdogan has a two-thirds majority in parliament.  Main
    opposition left-of-center CHP amounts to no more than a bunch
    of elitist ankle-biters.  There is currently no serious,
    broad-based political alternative, owing to Erdogan's
    rhetorical dominance and control of the debate on social
    questions close to the hearts of the center-right majority in
    Turkey; other party leaders' political bankruptcy; and the
    stultifying effect of current party and election laws on
    entry for younger, untainted political aspirants.  AKP argues
    that the economy, at least from the perspective of macro
    indicators and continued willingness of emerging-market
    portfolio investors to buy the expectations and sell the
    facts, appears to have stabilized.  Moreover, the authority
    of AKP's nationwide party machine is blurring with the
    Turkish State's executive power at the provincial and
    district level and with municipal functions to an extent not
    seen since the days of the one-party state.  These factors
    seem set to continue for the foreseeable future.

    ¶5. (C) Yet Erdogan and AKP face politically fateful
    challenges in three areas: foreign policy (EU, Iraq, Cyprus);
    quality and sustainability of leadership and governance; and
    resolution of questions fundamental to creation of an open,
    prosperous society integrated with the broader world (place
    of religion; identity and history; rule of law).

    EU
    --

    ¶6. (U) Erdogan indexed his political survival to getting a
    negotiation date from the EU.  He achieved that goal.  The
    Wall Street Journal and other Western and Turkish media have
    opined that the EU owes Turkey a fair negotiating process
    leading to accession, with the Journal even putting the onus
    on the EU by asserting that while Turkey is ready the
    question is whether Europeans are ready for Turkey.

    ¶7. (C) But there's always a Monday morning and the debate on
    the ground here is not so neat.  With euphoria at getting a
    date having faded in 48 hours, Erdogan's political survival
    and the difficulty of the tasks before him have become
    substantially clearer.  Nationalists on right and left have
    resumed accusations that Erdogan sold out Turkish national
    interests (Cyprus) and Turkish traditions.  Core institutions
    of the Turkish state, which remain at best wary of AKP, have
    once again begun to probe for weaknesses and to feed
    insinuations into the press in parallel with the
    nationalists' assertions.  In the face of this Euro-aversion,
    neither Erdogan nor his government has taken even minimal
    steps to prepare the bureaucracy or public opinion to begin
    tackling the fundamental -- some Turks would say insidious --
    legal, social, intellectual and spiritual changes that must
    occur to turn harmonization on paper into true reform.  The
    road ahead will surely be hard.

    ¶8. (U) High-profile naysayers like main opposition CHP
    chairman Baykal, former Ambassador Gunduz Aktan, and
    political scientist Hasan Unal continue to castigate Erdogan.
     But theirs is a routine whine.  More significant for us is
    that many of our contacts cloak their lack of self-confidence
    at Turkey's ability to join in expressions of skepticism that
    the EU will let Turkey in.  And there is parallel widespread
    skepticism that the EU will be around in attractive form in
    ten years.

    ¶9. (C) The mood in AKP is no brighter, with one of FonMin
    Gul's MFA advisors having described to UK polcounselor how
    bruised Turkey feels at the EU's inconsistency during the
    final negotiations leading to Dec. 17 (EU diplomats in Ankara
    have given us the other side of the story).  Gul was
    noticeably harder-line than Erdogan in public comments in the
    lead-up to the Summit, and was harder-line in pre-Summit
    negotiations in Brussels, according to UK polcounselor.
    There was noticeable tension between Erdogan and Gul in
    Brussels according to "Aksam" Ankara bureau chief Nuray
    Basaran.  She also noted to us that when negotiations seemed
    to have frozen up on Dec. 17, Erdogan's advisors got phone
    calls from Putin advisors urging Turkey to walk.  Basaran
    says that at least some of Erdogan's advisors urged him to do
    so.

    ¶10. (C) AKP's lack of cohesion as a party and lack of
    openness as a government is reflected in the range of murky,
    muddled motives for wanting to join the EU we have
    encountered among those AKPers who say they favor pursuing
    membership...or at least the process.  Some see the process
    as the way to marginalize the Turkish military and what
    remains of the arid "secularism" of Kemalism.  We have also
    run into the rarely openly-spoken, but widespread belief
    among adherents of the Turk-Islam synthesis that Turkey's
    role is to spread Islam in Europe, "to take back Andalusia
    and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683" as one
    participant in a recent meeting at AKP's main think tank put
    it.  This thinking parallels the logic behind the approach of
    FonMin Gul ally and chief foreign policy advisor in the Prime
    Ministry Ahmet Davutoglu, whose muddy opinion piece in the
    Dec. 13 International Herald Tribune is in essence a call for
    one-way multi-cultural tolerance, i.e., on the part of the EU.

    ¶11. (C) Those from the more overtly religious side of AKP
    whinge that the EU is a Christian club.  While some assert
    that it is only through Turkish membership and spread of
    Turkish values that the world can avoid the clash of
    civilizations they allege the West is fomenting, others
    express concern that harmonization and membership will water
    down Islam and associated traditions in Turkey.  Indeed, as
    AKP whip Sadullah Ergin confided to us recently, "If the EU
    says yes, everything will look rosy for a short while.  Then
    the real difficulties will start for AKP.  If the EU says no,
    it will be initially difficult, but much easier over the long
    run."

    ¶12. (C) AKP also faces the nuts-and-bolts issue of how to
    prepare for harmonization.  In choosing a chief negotiator
    Erdogan will need to decide whether the risks that the man he
    taps will successfully steal his political limelight outweigh
    the political challenge his choice will face since it will be
    the Turkish chief negotiator's responsibility to sell the EU
    position to a recalcitrant Turkish cabinet.  It is because
    the chief negotiator is likely to be ground down between EU
    demands and a prickly domestic environment that some
    observers speculate Erdogan might give the job to his chief
    internal rival Gul.

    ¶13. (C) At the same time the government must reportedly hire
    a couple thousand people skilled in English or other major EU
    languages and up to the bureaucratic demands of interfacing
    with the Eurocrats who descend on ministries as harmonization
    starts.  If the government continues to hire on the basis of
    "one of us", i.e., from the Sunni brotherhood and lodge
    milieu that has been serving as the pool for AKP's civil
    service hiring, lack of competence will be a problem.  If the
    government hires on the base of competence, its new hires
    will be frustrated by the incompetence of AKP's previous
    hires at all levels.

    Questions About AKP Leadership and Governance
    ---------------------------------------------

    ¶14. (C) Several factors will continue to degrade Erdogan's
    and AKP's ability to effect fair and lasting reforms or to
    take timely, positive decisions on issues of importance to
    the U.S.

    ¶15. (C) First is Erdogan's character.

    ¶16. (C) In our contacts in Anatolia we have not yet detected
    that Erdogan's hunger for absolute power and for the material
    benefits of power have begun to erode his grassroots
    popularity.  Others disagree.  Pollster and political analyst
    Ismail Yildiz has asserted in three lengthy expositions to us
    late in Dec. that the erosion has started.  We note that (1)
    Yildiz expressed frustration to us that the AKP leadership
    did not respond to his offer to provide political strategy
    services; (2) he is currently connected to mainstream
    opposition figures; and (3) he also runs a conspiracy-theory
    web site.  So we treat his view cautiously.  However, judging
    by his references and past experience in the Turkish State,
    he appears to have maintained conncetions with the State
    apparatus and to have a network of observers and data
    collectors in all 81 provinces.

    ¶17. (C) Inside the party, Erdogan's hunger for power reveals
    itself in a sharp authoritarian style and deep distrust of
    others: as a former spiritual advisor to Erdogan and his wife
    Emine put it, "Tayyip Bey believes in God...but doesn't trust
    him."  In surrounding himself with an iron ring of
    sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors, Erdogan has isolated
    himself from a flow of reliable information, which partially
    explains his failure to understand the context -- or real
    facts -- of the U.S. operations in Tel Afar, Fallujah, and
    elsewhere and his susceptibility to Islamist theories.  With
    regard to Islamist influences on Erdogan, DefMin Gonul, who
    is a conservative but worldly Muslim, recently described Gul
    associate Davutoglu to us as "exceptionally dangerous."
    Erdogan's other foreign policy advisors (Cuneyd Zapsu, Egemen
    Bagis, Omer Celik, along with Mucahit Arslan and chef de
    cabinet Hikmet Bulduk) are despised as inadequate, out of
    touch and corrupt by all our AKP contacts from ministers to
    MPs and party intellectuals.

    ¶18. (C) Erdogan's pragmatism serves him well but he lacks
    vision.  He and his principal AKP advisors, as well as FonMin
    Gul and other ranking AKP officials, also lack analytic
    depth.  He relies on poor-quality intel and on media
    disinformation.  With the narrow world-view and wariness that
    lingers from his Sunni brotherhood and lodge background, he
    ducks his public relations responsibilities.  He (and those
    around him, including FonMin Gul) indulge in pronounced
    pro-Sunni prejudices and in emotional reactions that prevent
    the development of coherent, practical domestic or foreign
    policies.

    ¶19. (C) Erdogan has compounded his isolation by constantly
    traveling abroad -- reportedly 75 foreign trips in the past
    two years -- with a new series of trips planned for 2005 to
    Russia, "Eurasia", the Middle East and Africa.  Indeed, his
    staff says 2005 is the "year of Africa", but they provide no
    coherent reason why.  This grueling cycle of travel has
    exhausted him and his staff and disrupted his ability to keep
    his hand on the tiller of party, parliamentary group, and
    government.  He has alienated many in the AKP parliamentary
    group by his habit of harshly chewing out MPs.  Moreover, we
    understand that MUSIAD, an Anatolia-wide group of businessmen
    influential in Islamist circles who gave Erdogan key
    financial support as AKP campaigned prior to the 2002
    elections, is disaffected by Erdogan's unapproachability.
    Judging by comments to us of insiders in the influential
    Islamist lodge of Fethullah Gulen such as publicist
    Abdurrahman Celik, the lodge, which has made some inroads
    into AKP (Minister of Justice Cicek, Minister of Culture and
    Tourism Mumcu; perhaps 60-80 of 368 MPs; some appointments to
    the bureaucracy), has resumed the ambivalent attitude it
    initially had toward Erdogan and AKP.

    ¶20. (C) Second is the coalition nature of AKP, the limited
    number of ministers whom Erdogan trusts, and the efforts of
    some -- principally FonMin Gul but from time to time Cicek --
    to undermine Erdogan.  No one else in AKP comes close to
    Erdogan in grassroots popularity.  However, Gul's readiness
    to deprecate Erdogan within AKP and even to foreign visitors
    (e.g., Israeli deputy PM Olmert) and his efforts to reduce
    Erdogan's maneuvering room with hard-line criticisms of U.S.
    policy in Iraq or EU policy on Cyprus have forced Erdogan
    constantly to look over his shoulder and in turn to prove his
    credentials by making statements inimical to good
    U.S.-Turkish relations.  We expect Erdogan to carry out a
    partial cabinet reshuffle early in 2005, but he will be
    unable to remove the influence of Gul.

    ¶21. (S) Third is corruption.  AKP swept to power by promising
    to root out corruption.  However, in increasing numbers
    AKPers from ministers on down, and people close to the party,
    are telling us of conflicts of interest or serious corruption
    in the party at the national, provincial and local level and
    among close family members of ministers.  We have heard from
    two contacts that Erdogan has eight accounts in Swiss banks;
    his explanations that his wealth comes from the wedding
    presents guests gave his son and that a Turkish businessman
    is paying the educational expenses of all four Erdogan
    children in the U.S. purely altruistically are lame.

    ¶22. (S) Among the many figures mentioned to us as prominently
    involved in corruption are Minister of Interior Aksu,
    Minister of Foreign Trade Tuzmen, and AKP Istanbul provincial
    chairman Muezzinoglu.  As we understand it from a contact in
    the intel directorate of Turkish National Police, a
    continuing investigation into Muezzinoglu's extortion racket
    and other activities has already produced evidence
    incriminating Erdogan.  In our contacts across Anatolia we
    have detected no willingness yet at the grassroots level to
    look closely at Erdogan or the party in this regard, but the
    trend is a time bomb.

    ¶23. (S) Fourth is the poor quality of Erdogan's and AKP's
    appointments to the Turkish bureaucracy, at party
    headquarters, and as party mayoral candidates.  A broad range
    of senior career civil servants, including DefMin Gonul,
    former Undersecretary of Customs Nevzat Saygilioglu, former
    Forestry DirGen Abdurrahman Sagkaya, and many others, has
    expressed shock and dismay to us at the incompetence,
    prejudices and ignorance of appointees such as Omer Dincer,
    an Islamist academic whom Erdogan appointed Undersecretary of
    the Prime Ministry, THE key position in the government/state
    bureaucracy.  Dincer is despised by the TGS.  Many
    interlocutors also point to the weakness of Erdogan's deputy
    party chairmen.  The result is that, unlike former leaders
    such as Turgut Ozal or Suleyman Demirel, both of whom
    appointed skilled figures who could speak authoritatively for
    their bosses as their party general secretary and as
    Undersecretary of the Prime Ministry, Erdogan has left
    himself without people who can relieve him of the burden of
    day-to-day management or who can ensure effective, productive
    channels to the heart of the party and the heart of the
    Turkish state.

    Two Big Questions
    -----------------

    ¶24. (C) Turkey's EU bid has brought forth reams of
    pronouncements and articles -- Mustafa Akyol's
    Gulenist-tinged "Thanksgiving for Turkey" in Dec. 27 Weekly
    Standard is one of the latest -- attempting to portray Islam
    in Turkey as distinctively moderate and tolerant with a
    strong mystical (Sufi) underpinning.  Certainly, one can see
    in Turkey's theology faculties some attempts to wrestle with
    the problems of critical thinking, free will, and precedent
    (ictihad), attempts which, compared to what goes on in
    theology faculties in the Arab world, may appear relatively
    progressive.

    ¶25. (C) However, the broad, rubber-meets-the-road reality is
    that Islam in Turkey is caught in a vise of (1) 100 years of
    "secular" pressure to hide itself from public view, (2)
    pressure and competition from brotherhoods and lodges to
    follow their narrow, occult "true way", and (3) the faction-
    and positivism-ridden aridity of the Religious Affairs
    Directorate (Diyanet).  As a result, Islam as it is lived in
    Turkey is stultified, riddled with hypocrisy, ignorant and
    intolerant of other religions' presence in Turkey, and unable
    to eject those who would politicize it in a radical,
    anti-Western way.  Imams are for the most part poorly
    educated and all too ready to insinuate anti-Western,
    anti-Christian or anti-Jewish sentiments into their sermons.
    Exceptionally few Muslims in Turkey have the courage to
    challenge conventional Sunni thinking about jihad or, e.g.,
    verses in the Repentance shura of the Koran which have for so
    long been used to justify violence against "infidels".

    ¶26. (C) The problem is compounded by the willingness of
    politicians such as Gul to play elusively with politicized
    Islam.  Until Turkey ensures that the humanist strain in
    Islam prevails here, Islam in Turkey will remain a troubled,
    defensive force, hypocritical to an extreme degree and
    unwilling to adapt to the challenges of open society.

    ¶27. (C) A second question is the relation of Turkey and its
    citizens to history -- the history of this land and citizens'
    individual history.  Subject to rigid taboos, denial, fears,
    and mandatory gross distortions, the study of history and
    practice of historiography in the Republic of Turkey remind
    one of an old Soviet academic joke: the faculty party chief
    assembles his party cadres and, warning against various
    ideological threats, proclaims, "The future is certain.  It's
    only that damned past that keeps changing."

    ¶28. (C) Until Turkey can reconcile itself to its past,
    including the troubling aspects of its Ottoman past, in free
    and open debate, how will Turkey reconcile itself to the
    concept and practice of reconciliation in the EU?  How will
    it have the self confidence to take decisions and formulate
    policies responsive to U.S. interests?  Some in AKP are
    joining what is still only a handful of others to take
    tentative, but nonetheless inspiring, steps in this regard.
    However, the road ahead will require a massive overhaul of
    education, the introduction and acceptance of rule of law,
    and a fundamental redefinition of the relation between
    citizen and state.  In the words of the great (Alevi)
    Anatolian bard Asik Veysel, this is a "long and delicate
    road."

    ¶29. (U) Baghdad minimize considered.
    EDELMAN

`