In Turkey, the word “political” and “crisis” rarely seem to be very far apart for very long. They have come together again in the last ten days. This time their conjunction would seem to spell the end for the coalition government led by veteran socialist Bulent Ecevit.
Prime Minister Ecevit, who is 77, is clearly very ill. He has canceled most of his meetings recently, scrapped foreign visits and on his rare public appearances has given the impression of a man struggling to keep it together.
When Ecevit brushed aside any suggestion that his deteriorating health should cause him to stand down, his ministers began to resign, including his deputy, the leader of his right-wing coalition party partner. Yesterday, however, came the seventh and most significant defection, that of the widely respected Ismail Cem, economy supremo in the last Motherland Party government and, until yesterday, Ecevit’s foreign minister.
At one level, these defections and those of over 30 ordinary MPs, could be characterized as rats leaving a sinking ship. The Ecevit government has been as economically illiterate as most of its predecessors. Turkey has once again crashed into the international economic buffers and, unable to service its foreign debt, has had to receive yet another bailout package from the IMF. The Turkish lira, rarely stable in the last 30 years, rapidly lost 25 percent of its value against the dollar. Interest rates, already so high that few legitimate businesses could afford them, rose a further 15 percent and life for the ordinary man in the street became even harder. In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that opinion polls suggest that if elections were held tomorrow, none of the coalition parties in power would score the necessary minimum percentage vote to have any MPs at all in Parliament.
Elections are not due for two years yet, but all of the defecting ministers are claiming that the premier’s failing health means that September or November elections this year are essential. However, that has never been in Bulent Ecevit’s character. In the 1970s, when he led the old Republican People’s Party, originally founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Suleyman Demirel led the rival Justice Party, the pair of politicians made up a disastrous Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee act, which in a series of revolving-door governments, took Turkey down into the abyss of civil conflict which was only ended when the military made its third intervention.
Ecevit was always a political firebrand whose broad stubborn streak alienated allies and sometimes drove aides and advisers to despair. It is typical of Ecevit that though his government is collapsing, along with his health, he has refused for so long to accept the political reality of his position and either give way to a colleague or set in train fresh elections while he withdrew gracefully from the scene.
But Ecevit is really only the most prominent example of a breed of politician that has dominated the Turkish political scene for too long. When the republic can find a cadre of politicians, who, when the chips are down, will act for the good of the country and not out of naked self-interest, the words “political” and “crisis” may become strangers.
