ISTANBUL // Turkey's main opposition, the Republican People's Party, or CHP, has lashed out at its traditional allies in the military in a move that may signal the end of a long-standing coalition of forces opposed to the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister.
"The alliance between the CHP and the army is nearing its end," wrote Celal Kazdagli, an author, in a column for the internet portal cafesiyaset. "Even if the connections between the CHP and the military have not been cut entirely, they have loosened." The CHP and the military are traditional allies who see themselves as heirs to the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, an army general who became Turkey's first president and founded the CHP in 1923.
Both institutions adhere to Kemalism, an ideology that goes back to Ataturk and views political Islam as an anti-democratic and dangerous development. The CHP, which ruled Turkey until 1950, is often described as the country's "state party" because it enjoys strong support in state institutions, including the military, the judiciary and the bureaucracy. That may be about to change. Last week, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a leading CHP politician, angered the army leadership by criticising what he sees as a reluctance to confront Islamist tendencies in the army and even implied that the general staff might have been bought off by Mr Erdogan.
Mr Kilicdaroglu, a close aide of Deniz Baykal, the CHP leader, and a deputy leader of the party's parliamentary group, has been acting as an informal party spokesman since the start of parliament's summer recess on Aug 1. He pointed out that not a single officer had been expelled from the military for Islamist tendencies at the last meeting of the High Military Council, or YAS. As the sacking of officers accused of Islamist views had been a routine occurrence at previous YAS meetings, Mr Kilicdaroglu suggested there was some kind of a deal between the military and the government of Mr Erdogan, which has roots in political Islam.
"I am of the opinion that there are very warm relations between the government and the general staff," Mr Kilicdaroglu said. He said the government had given an armoured luxury car worth one million lira (Dh3.1m) to Gen Yasar Buyukanit, who will leave the position of chief of general staff at the end of the month. The general staff reacted immediately to Mr Kilicdaroglu's statement, posting a press release on its website only hours after the CHP politician had spoken. "The decisions of the YAS to expel officers are not made to please or disappoint certain quarters," the general staff said.
Without mentioning Mr Kilicdaroglu, the military accused him of launching "baseless attacks" against the army. The general staff confirmed that an armoured car was earmarked for Gen Buyukanit, but said the general had been the target of four assassination attempts in recent years. It gave no details. The cooling of relations between the CHP and the military is partly due to the party's disappointment with what it sees as a soft approach of the general staff in dealing with Mr Erdogan's government, observers said.
Earlier in the year, the CHP criticised the army for withdrawing from northern Iraq prematurely, after the general staff ordered a retreat of Turkish forces from the neighbouring country following a week-long intervention aimed at destroying camps of the Kurdish rebel group PKK. As Mr Erdogan has succeeded in co-operating closely with Gen Buyukanit despite their ideological differences and expects to do the same with Gen Ilker Basbug, who will succeed Gen Buyukanit at the end of the month, the CHP has grown uneasy, commentator Rusen Cakir wrote in Vatan, a daily newspaper.
The impression of a harmonic co-operation between Mr Erdogan's government and the army angered the CHP, because it "has built its entire strategy ? on tensions and even conflicts between state institutions". At the same time, CHP politicians "think the generals have taken some steps in favour of the AKP", Mr Cakir wrote. "Therefore, they burn the bridges" with the military. Critics said the CHP has become a party of increasingly nationalist naysayers, blocking many reforms launched by Mr Erdogan in the framework of Turkey's EU bid.
The CHP recently opposed changes to Turkey's penal code aimed at strengthening free speech and has taken the government to court repeatedly for passing laws that give foreigners the right to own real-estate in Turkey. Mr Baykal has also publicly defended members of a suspected gang of radical nationalists who are to stand trial in October for trying to overthrow Mr Erdogan's government. The hardline course steered by Mr Baykal has driven many followers away from the CHP.
"You cannot say there is an organised and democratic opposition in Turkey," columnist Oral Calislar, a leading representative of left-leaning intellectuals, wrote in Radikal, a daily newspaper. "Most of the opposition in this field comes from the European Union." The CHP has not won an election since 1977. At last year's general elections, the party received 20.1 per cent of the vote, far less than Mr Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which raked in 46.6 per cent.
A poll made public last week suggested that the CHP has since failed to close the gap, showing the party at 17.8 per cent and the AKP at 47.6 per cent. @Email:tseibert@thenational.ae
