Looking to Turkey

A lesson in what to do

Turkish politicians have succeeded in an area where their Pakistani counterparts have singularly failed: reining in the army. For one, unlike Pakistani politicians, Recep Tayyip Erdogan had no skeletons of financial scams rattling in the cupboards. What is equally important is the fantastic improvement of the national economy, domestic law and order and the rise of Turkish prestige in the region and the world at large under the rule of the Justice and Development Party.

Unlike Zardari, Erdogan had inherited no political mantle. Unlike the Sharifs, he owned no factories or lands. What is more, he did not enjoy the support of any of the mainstream political parties. It was through a realistic vision supported by sheer hard work that this graduate from Marmara University’s Faculty of Economic and Commercial Sciences got himself elected Mayor of Istanbul, the economic and social capital of Turkey, in 1994. He had a brief stint in jail towards the fag end of his tenure. Within three years of his release, he founded the Justice and Development Party in 2001. The party contested the elections next year and assumed power with nearly two thirds majority in Parliament in 2003.

Erdogan single-mindedly set himself on two tracks: improvement of the economy and turning Turkey into a genuinely democratic country. The first step towards the goal posts was setting up a clean government, which has never been a hallmark of the successive governments in Pakistan. He brought no relatives or cronies into the cabinet nor did he promote any blue eyed boys in bureaucracy. His two successive tenures were totally scam free. The same is true about the recently begun third tenure.

The generals had dominated politics since 1923 when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, assumed power. Till 1946, the country had a single party system alien to democracy. Even the late introduction of the multiparty system was looked at with distrust by the generals who staged three military coups, executing one prime minister in the process. During the last military coup in 1980 alone, fifty people were executed and half a million arrested, hundreds died in jail, and many more disappeared in three years of the military rule. The natural growth of the political system was thus stunted. The parties who came to power often ruled through unstable alliances. Both under the military rule and political governments, the economy suffered and jails were filled with dissenters.

Erdogan had to work hard to prove that his policies and style of governance could deliver where the generals and rival politicians had failed the nation. Only then could he challenge the generals. By the time Erdogan contested for the third time he had emerged on the scene as the most powerful Turkish leader since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Erodogan’s trump card is the management of the economy. Up till a decade ago, the country lurched from one crisis to another, with sky-high inflation and interest rates and a feeble currency. Under Erdogan, the Turkish economy has tripled in size since he took over in 2002, the largest economic growth in Turkish history. Today, Turkey enjoys economic growth rates close to China’s, its companies competing successfully in the EU, the Middle East and increasingly further afield, in Africa and Central Asia.

Turkey’s independent foreign policy now has provided it a higher profile on the international stage. Turkey is creating a place for itself in the Middle East through vigorous engagement with its immediate neighbours. It is also hosting the Pak-Afghan dialogue. Its economic performance is the envy of the European Union which had rejected Turkey’s overtures of join it.

Erdogan did not, therefore, bat an eye when the chief of Turkish armed forces along with heads of ground, naval and air force offered to resign last year. On Wednesday, retired General Kenan Evren, along with a former airforce chief, the main surviving architects of the last military coup in 1980, have been put on trial. A decade ago, the actions would have been enough provocation for the army to step in.

The Turkish army has enjoyed enormous prestige due to its leading part in the creation of modern Turkey. With the exception of Musharraf, the Pakistani generals who staged coups were on the other hand the products of the colonial British army. Keeping these dictators in mind, the much decorated Pakistani General Tajammul Hussain reminisced, “We were all trained as real mercenaries who were only concerned with their own bread and butter. It was regarded as none of our business to think about what happened to the rest of the country. Our job was solely to protect the British Empire and to stand to attention every evening when retreat was sounded and the Union Jack was brought down from the official buildings, or the regimental band played to the British Empire Anthem ‘God Save the King’.”

It would have been easier to bring the army under control if the Pakistani politicians had acted honestly and wisely. The Turkish Spring which has arrived after more than eight decades of cold winter brings with it the message that it is never too late for the politicians to set their house in order to able to rein in the army.

The writer is a former academic and a political analyst.