INDEPTH: TURKEY
Recep Erdogan
Martin O'Malley, CBC News Online | November 20, 2003
His party won a stunning landslide victory in Turkey’s general election on November 3, 2002 – the first time in 15 years one party has captured an absolute majority in the Turkish parliament – but Recep Erdogan couldn’t serve as the country’s prime minister or even take a seat in the legislature because he has been convicted of a crime and had to serve time in jail.
The crime was inciting religious hatred in this stridently secular country by writing and publicly reading an Islamic poem that was regarded as “antisecularist.” The poem says, in part:
The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers….
Erdogan was sentenced to 10 months behind bars but was freed after four and assumed his prime ministerial duties.
The charismatic, 48-year-old leader, who once played professional soccer, heads Turkey’s Justice and Development Party, also known as the AKP, which was formed in 2001. Erdogan’s party won 34 per cent of the vote, capturing 363 seats in Turkey’s 550-member parliament, defeating the government of 77-year-old Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit.
Born into poverty
Erdogan was raised in poverty. His father worked in the city of Rize on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. He had four brothers and sisters when his father moved the family to Istanbul in 1967 when Erdogan was 13. In time, he earned a degree in management at Istanbul’s Marmara University and eventually, in 1994, became mayor of Istanbul.
One of the explanations for the surprise AKP win was the sluggish Turkish economy, with some two million unemployed in the country of 65 million. Erdogan’s stunning victory was a deep humiliation for the country’s political and military elite. The last time an Islamist government took over in Turkey, in 1997, the military intervened to force it from office.
After the vote, Erdogan told reporters, “I see this as an important step towards the more clear functioning of democracy in Turkey. If a two-party parliament is established then I believe we will enter a period of far more healthy work.”
There has been speculation that Erdogan’s Justice party, because it commands an absolute majority in the Turkish parliament, will launch a campaign to change the constitution so that Erdogan can become prime minister. With 363 members, the AKP needs only four more seats to reach the plurality of 367 seats needed to rewrite the constitution.
The impressive win – and Erdogan’s awkward predicament – came at a time when Turkey occupied a strategically key place in global politics in the region because of the military build-up to the U.S.-led war against Iraq. Turkey is the only Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The nation is 99.8 per cent Muslim; Christians and Jews make up the remaining fraction.
U.S. and British jets have been using Turkish air bases to patrol no-fly zones in northern Iraq, as they did in the 1990-91 Gulf War, and as they expect to do in any attacks against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Turkish bases are only 500 nautical miles from Baghdad, close enough to launch attacks on Iraq, far enough away to be out of reach of Iraqi missiles.
The front-burner item on Erdogan’s – and Turkey’s – agenda is membership in the European Union. With an application pending, Turkey is due to become a full EU member in 2004.
To that point, Turkey had been an associate member of the EU for nearly 40 years.
The reason often cited for excluding it from full membership is the country’s human rights record. Security forces in Turkey are known to have used torture on suspects. Turkey also has not endeared itself to the EU because of various restrictions it has imposed on its Kurdish minority, which comprises 25 per cent of the population.
^TOP
|
|
 |
 MENU |
|
|
| QUICK FACTS: |
Population: 68,109,469 (July 2003 est.).
Capital: Ankara.
Prime Minister: Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Major languages: Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Armenian and Greek.
Major religions: 99.8 per cent Muslim.
Area total: 780,580 sq. km.
Border countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Natural resources: Antimony, coal, chromium, mercury, copper, borate, sulphur and iron ore.
Exports to Canada: $400.5 million (2002)
Imports from Canada: $265.5 million (2002)
Sources: CIA, DFAIT
|
|
| CBC MEDIA: |
 Evan Dyer reports on CBC Radio's Dispatches (Runs 16:11)
|
|
| EXTERNAL LINKS: |
|
|
| MORE: |
|
|
|
CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in new window.
