Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's political honeymoon finally came to an end this year, writes Gareth Jenkins In January 2008, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoyed greater political power than any civilian politician in living memory. Still flushed with the landslide election victory of his Justice and Development Party (JDP) in the general election of 22 July 2007, when it had been returned to power with 46.6 per cent of the national vote, there appeared little prospect of any challenge to Erdogan's authority from inside or outside the government. The opposition parties were still headed by the same quarrelsome and lacklustre leaders who had so singularly failed to inspire the electorate in the July elections. Even the Turkish military, which for generations had been the ultimate arbiter of political power in the country, appeared to have sunk into a sullen, silent impotence; humiliated by its failure to prevent Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul from being appointed to the presidency in August 2007. Gul's elevation to the presidency had also removed from active politics the one member of the JDP with the potential to challenge to Erdogan. Yet it was in January 2008, when opinion polls suggested that support for the JDP exceeded 50 per cent and when he appeared at his most invincible, that Erdogan made the greatest mistake of his political career. In his victory speech on the evening of 22 July 2007, Erdogan had promised that the JDP's second term in power would be characterised by liberalising reforms and that as prime minister he would serve the JDP's opponents as much as its supporters. But over the next six months, these promises remained empty rhetoric. Never short of self-belief, Erdogan became increasingly enveloped by a coterie of trusted, sycophantic advisors. Members of the business community who called for measures to address the growing indications of an economic slowdown were angrily dismissed as politically-motivated scaremongers, while calls from the European Union for the JDP finally to deliver on its long overdue promises of political reform were simply ignored. When, in January 2008, Erdogan thought he saw the opportunity to amend the constitution and lift the ban that prevented the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in Turkish universities, he leapt at the chance, cancelling all engagements to remain in Ankara and try to push the amendment through parliament. Initially, Erdogan appeared to have been successful. On 9 February 2008, Erdogan's amendments were approved by parliament. But liberals were infuriated by the contrast between the time and energy that Erdogan devoted to the headscarf ban and his apparent complete lack of interest in the many other constraints on freedom of expression in Turkey; ranging from the battery of laws curtailing freedom of speech and draconian restrictions on the expression of Kurdish political or cultural identity to blatant discrimination faced by religious minorities, not least the substantial heterodox Islamic Alevi community. More importantly, the constitutional amendments were a gift to hard-line secularists in the Turkish establishment who had previously been cowed into passivity by the JDP's stunning electoral success. The main opposition Republic People's Party (RPP) immediately applied to the Turkish Constitutional Court for the amendments to be annulled. On 14 March 2008, Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya went one step further and filed a case with the Constitutional Court for the JDP's closure on the grounds that it was attempting to erode the principle of secularism enshrined in the Turkish Constitution. For the next four months, the prospect of the JDP being banned overshadowed all political activity in Turkey. On 5 June 2008, the court upheld the RPP's application and annulled the constitutional amendments. On 30 July 2008, the same court found the JDP guilty as charged by Yalcinkaya, but opted to impose a $20 million fine rather than outlaw the party. Even if the JDP had escaped closure, the case severely damaged the reputation of both the party and Erdogan himself. Over the weeks that followed the verdict, as questions about Erdogan's political acumen were accompanied by growing evidence of corruption amongst his close associates. By November 2008, even previously fawning members of the pro-JDP media had begun to complain about the abrasive aggression of Erdogan's autocratic management style and his refusal to countenance anything that he believed could be interpreted as casting a shadow over his government's record. In autumn 2008, when the global credit crunch dealt another devastating blow to an already ailing Turkish economy, Erdogan simply denied that anything was wrong, blithely assuring an unconvinced public that the global economic crisis would pass Turkey by. More critically, he also refused to allow government colleagues to take any measures to soften the impact of what everybody else knew was an impending economic crisis. Nor was such dogged inertia limited to the economy. While the closure case was still before the Constitutional Court, Erdogan had used it as excuse for the JDP's failure to introduce any of the measures demanded by the EU. But, by late December 2008, five months after the court had issued its verdict, there was still no sign that Erdogan was preparing to introduce the long-overdue liberalising political reforms or honour its 2005 promise to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot ships and planes. Nor did either Erdogan or the JDP appear aware that time was running out. Privately, EU officials insist that unless there is substantive progress on the reform programme and the JDP lifts its ban on Greek Cypriot ships and planes, there is a real chance that the EU may suspend Turkey's entire accession process in late 2009. Perhaps more worrying has been the JDP's failure to address, much less resolve, the demands of Turkey's Kurdish minority. In November 2007, the US finally lifted its opposition to Turkey launching military strikes on the camps and bases of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq. Repeated air raids and, in February 2008, a nine-day ground operation against PKK positions in northern Iraq have undoubtedly degraded the organisation's ability to stage military operations inside Turkey. But they have manifestly failed to destroy it. On 3 October 2008, the PKK demonstrated its resilience by killing 17 Turkish soldiers in an attack on the military outpost of Aktutun on Turkey's border with Iraq. It was the largest Turkish death toll in a single incident in more than a decade. For many of Turkey's Kurds, such gestures of defiance are proof that the nearly 25-year-old conflict cannot be solved by military means alone and that Turkish authorities should finally sit down at the negotiating table with the PKK. By late 2008, a palpable increase in respect, if not always affection, for the PKK had been accompanied by dwindling hopes that the JDP would ease of its own accord the many restrictions on the expression of Kurdish identity and an alarming growth in ethnic tensions. During 2008 there was a sharp increase in racist attacks by Turkish ultranationalist youths on Kurds living in western Turkey. In late December 2008, the main focus of political attention in Turkey was on nationwide local elections, due to be held 29 March 2009, amid speculation that the JDP would suffer the first decline in its popular vote since the party was founded in August 2001. But regardless of how the JDP fares in local elections, no one in Turkey doubts that "however difficult 2008 may have been" the ailing economy, ethnic tensions and the prospect of a crisis in relations with the EU are likely to ensure that 2009 is going to be even worse.
