Or that the military’s funding was stepped up to combat the mounting PKK threat. If you asked her what her greatest achievement in office was, she would probably tell you it was that Turkey entered a Customs Union with the European Union under her watch. Her victory was credited largely to Turkey’s media, including the fledgling private television channels, which made much of the idea of a first woman prime minister. She wasn’t particularly high-ranking – a mere state minister, certainly not senior in the cabinet – and she contested her party’s leadership against such heavyweights as İsmet Sezgin and Köksal Toptan. Mrs Çiller assumed the vacant post of prime minister in 1993, after Süleyman Demirel moved up to the presidency. Regression appears to be what is happening to the Democrat Party (DP), which is trying to bring back its former leader and last prime minister, Tansu Çiller. Stagnation is the case with the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which recently re-elected its directionless leader, unopposed, in an appalling example of democracy (see my outdated entry on the CHP for some back story).
When things go wrong, the prevailing mood is one of either stagnation or regression. The instinct in Turkey is precisely the opposite.
“We’re not popular, we’ll probably lose the next election, it’s not working out for us,” they mutter behind closed doors, before adding: “Off with his head and bring in a new one.” Or something to that effect. Part of the government in Britain, where I appear to be invariably based at the moment, seems obsessed with dispensing with its prime minister after less than a year in the job.
Why, oh why, could anyone possibly think that this is a good idea?
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