US embassy cable - 04ANKARA1842

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ANKARA 001842 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/26/2014 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PINS, TU 
SUBJECT: TURKISH MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: ...AND THE MAYOR OF 
TURKEY IS TAYYIP ERDOGAN 
 
REF: A. ANKARA 1436 
     B. ANKARA 1833 
     C. ANKARA 1834 
     D. ANKARA 1835 
     E. ANKARA 0348 
     F. 02 ANKARA 7683 
 
 
(U) Classified by Polcouns John Kunstadter; reasons: E.O. 
12958 1.5 (b,d). 
 
 
1. (U) Summary: We expect ruling AK Party (AKP) to win big in 
Turkey's March 28 mayoral and municipal council elections. 
However, victory will weigh heavily on the course of Tayyip 
Erdogan's AK Party (AKP) government and on his and his 
party's ability (1) to manage popular, pent-up expectations, 
both for economic improvement and on social issues such as 
the headscarf; (2) to improve decision-making on domestic 
policies and political balances, and by extension foreign 
policy; and (3) to maintain at a minimum correct relations 
with core elements of the Turkish State which remain most 
wary of AKP: the Turkish military, judiciary, and presidency. 
 End summary. 
 
 
2. (U) This cable lays out conclusions from our pre-election 
trips to 15 provinces from Istanbul and the west through the 
central Anatolian heartland to the Black Sea and Southeast, 
as well as from consultations with other close contacts in 
eastern and southeastern Turkey.  Septels provide first-hand 
impressions and local color. 
 
 
Predicted Results 
----------------- 
 
 
3. (U) It is misleading to focus on the nationwide 
percentages when analyzing the results from more than 3200 
municipalities of widely varying sizes and types.  However, 
since both AKP and its opponents will (mis)use the figures as 
a proxy for AKP's strength, we include the figures.  National 
polls have generally put AKP in the 45%-55% range (ref A), 
with some apparent manipulation: establishmentarian Tarhan 
Erdem's recent poll showing AKP taking Istanbul and Ankara by 
wide margins is seen by our AKP contacts as an attempt to 
scare anti-AKP voters into voting for main opposition 
left-of-center CHP; the forecast of only 45% for AKP in a 
poll released May 26 by AKP-linked ANAR appears to be an 
attempt to still Kemalist fears of an overwhelming AKP 
result.  Judging by what AKP officials have hinted to us in 
Ankara and the field (supported by our own first-hand 
observations), AKP expects somewhere between 50%-52% 
nationally, which might translate into 60%-70% of 
municipalities. 
 
 
4. (C) There is speculation in the national press that 
Erdogan and his top leadership, wishing to stay slightly 
under 50% so as not to provoke greater opposition within the 
Turkish State, aim to provoke voters on the left to coalesce 
around CHP, thereby preserving a formal opposition.  However, 
trying to manage the AKP vote downward, while not impossible, 
would be extraordinarily hard to keep secret.  Moreover, 
Erdogan has continued to expend unusual personal and party 
energy in countrywide campaigning, including right up to the 
end to take Gaziantep from 15-year mayor and CHP icon Celal 
Dogan.  From its side, CHP is lifeless in virtually all its 
campaigns outside selected districts of Istanbul, Ankara, and 
Izmir.  Perhaps the pollsters and Ankara pundits (e.g., 
leading sociologist Sencer Ayata) who now foresee CHP 
rallying from 12% to 18%-22% have a correct sense of 
momentum.  However, from our on-the-ground observations we 
find it difficult to see CHP matching its 19% vote total in 
the Nov. 2002 general elections. 
 
 
5. (C) CHP incumbents with good track records and 
common-touch personalities such as Gaziantep's Celal Dogan 
have a solid chance of retaining their seats when facing 
colorless AKP candidates (see below).  The same applies for 
energetic incumbents from now-shriveled parties such as 
center-right ANAP (e.g., Manisa, Karadeniz Eregli), 
left-of-center DSP (e.g., Eskisehir), and 
rightist-nationalist MHP in smaller cities (e.g., Mengen, 
Beypazari).  Mainly Kurdish left-of-center DEHAP looks set to 
retain at least some municipalities in the southeast.  But 
overall AKP is on a roll.  Its momentum is broad -- if 
lacking the excitement in the period leading up to the Nov. 
2002 general elections -- because, while it remains a 
conglomerate rather than a coherent party, AKP is having an 
impact selling itself as Erdogan, emphasizing its commitment 
to service, and drawing on a campaign organization far, far 
superior to that of any other civilian entity in Turkey. 
 
 
The nature of AKP and its campaign 
---------------------------------- 
 
 
6. (C) AKP's grassroots party structure is a cross between a 
communist party (without the same party-line discipline or 
total propaganda machine) and Cuban block warden system. 
Developed by Erdogan in his rise to the mayoralty of greater 
Istanbul, it relies on a system of provincial and 
sub-provincial chairmen and governing boards overseeing 
women's and youth auxiliaries, neighborhood wardens, and 
precinct groups including one rep each from the women's and 
youth auxiliaries and two more senior party activists. 
Extensive computerization of voting stats permits almost 
man-to-man marking of voters. 
 
 
7. (C) As laid out in refs B-D and observed by us in 
Istanbul, Ankara, Afyon, and Gaziantep as well, AKP's women's 
auxiliaries are full of energetic, enterprising women willing 
to put in long hours as volunteer organizers, door-to-door 
campaigners or block wardens.  Yet four factors combine to 
keep women in the background: (1) retrograde attitudes on the 
part of AKP's men; (2) women's abiding sense of 
responsibility to put their duties as wives and mothers first 
(repeated to us in meetings with auxiliaries across the 
country); (3) women's diffidence and lack of access to 
finances (as noted by leading independent women's activist 
Selma Acuner); and (4) rivalries among women (as stated 
bluntly by AKP Istanbul M.P. Nimet Cubukcu).  In this 
context, the exhortations of Tayyip Erdogan and his wife 
Emine to find more women candidates rang exceptionally hollow 
during the campaign. 
 
 
8. (C) AKP insiders as diverse as deputy party chairman for 
policy Dengir Firat, iconoclast conservative Ankara M.P. 
Ersonmez Yarbay, Istanbul Alibeykoy's veteran activists Erhan 
Senol and Suat Sar, and Gaziantep's Nizip district party 
board member Salih Uygur readily admit that, despite AKP's 
formidable grassroots campaign organization, it will take 
years to mold the current formation into a coherent, 
internally democratic party with a variety of compelling 
personalities.  Instead, just as at the national level, at 
the municipal level AKP is trading on Erdogan as the party 
rather than on the identity and capabilities of its 
candidates.  Even Ankara greater municipality candidate Melih 
Gokcek, a character in his own right and a latecomer to AKP, 
pays obsequious homage to Erdogan in one of his campaign 
posters.  In our pre-election travels beyond Ankara we have 
almost invariably come across faceless, colorless AKP 
candidates in thrall to the provincial party machines, which 
remain dominated by veterans of Islamism-colored Milli Gorus. 
 
 
Ghosts of Islamism Past 
----------------------- 
 
 
9. (C) We see a difference in focus between Erdogan and the 
leadership of AKP's 81 provincial party organizations.  A 
ruthless pragmatist, Erdogan has moved beyond the secret 
lodge (cemaatcilik) approach he grew up with under Milli 
Gorus leader Necmettin Erbakan.  Erdogan is attempting to 
mold a "conservative democratic" party embodied in himself, 
modeled after something between the CDU and CSU in Germany, 
and reflective of Islamic values, but not -- for now -- 
Islamist.  His solution for controlling the holdover Milli 
Gorus types in AKP was to forbid provincial or district party 
bosses from running as mayoral candidates.  However, he 
allowed them substantial say in selection of mayoral 
candidates. 
 
 
10. (C) Thus to a great extent AKP's provincial party 
organizations remain dominated by people who in their party 
work continue to reflect a Milli Gorus (MG) approach -- and 
who with their special handshakes, just-so cut of mustache, 
and well-scrubbed, pale, soft faces look the part -- even as 
they claim to have changed. 
 
 
11. (C) Founded by Erbakan more than 30 years ago, fed by 
Saudi and, at least previously by Iranian, money, and 
continuing to be financed to a great extent by its membership 
in western Europe (principally Germany and Belgium), MG is a 
classic example of Turkish secret-lodge duality.  On the one 
hand, MG poses as the true path to an Islamic world.  Its 
rhetoric is full of nostalgic references to the Caliphate and 
supposed tolerance of the Ottoman Empire, droning appeals to 
Muslim piety, and the dream of the ummet (the extended 
brotherhood of Muslims) in place of the Kemalist Republic. 
It bathes in paranoia and anti-American, anti-Christian, 
anti-Alevi (heterodox Muslims), conspiracy-laden cliches.  It 
revels in anti-Zionism (at the same time conveniently 
forgetting that, as Prime Minister in 1996-97, Erbakan 
approved military cooperation agreements with Israel). It 
treats women imperiously.  Teacher (Hoca) Erbakan is treated 
as the infallible leader of the brotherhood and his 
authoritarianism is accepted as righteous. 
 
 
12. (C) On the other hand, what really drive MG are sheer 
material interests, profit-making commercial or political 
deals for the boys, appreciation of Oriental cunning, and 
utter opportunism.  The archetype of hypocrisy, MG and its 
actions are far from spiritual, far from the ascetic, Sharia 
norms its rhetoric suggests. 
 
 
13. (C) What has frustrated forward-looking AKPers is the 
grip the MG types continue to have on provincial party 
matters at the expense of the candidates.  Sule Kilicarslan, 
a dynamic and ambitious younger woman in the AKP Istanbul 
provincial organization, recently expressed to us her sharp 
dismay at having been denied the AKP Bahcekoy mayoral 
candidacy in Istanbul by the MG network, which chose a 
central-casting MG type instead.  In response to our comment 
that as many as 20 of the 72 AKP mayoral candidates in 
greater Istanbul appear to be former MG types (as asserted by 
Sule Kilicarslan), Firat expressed relief that the number is 
"only 20" and went on wearily to describe his battles with 
the MG mentality.  Mahmut Kocak, an AKP M.P. from the 
heartland province of Afyon whose common touch and 
problem-solving approach are rare in the AKP parliamentary 
group, railed to us at the retread mayoral candidates the 
AKP's Afyon MG mafia had imposed; we followed Kocak on the 
campaign trail around Afyon province in mid-March, and with 
one exception, a long-time incumbent with a strong local 
following, found his complaint on the mark. 
 
 
14. (C) Beyond the question of how the MG mentality will 
affect patronage and decision-making, there is another 
negative aspect to AKP's campaign: its choice of allies and 
candidates in some areas.  Aside from the incomplete vetting 
of candidates and choice of characterless candidates beholden 
to the provincial machines or to Erdogan himself (Alibeykoy's 
Senol and Sar dismiss greater Istanbul candidate Topbas as 
"Erdogan's caretaker"), AKP has shown itself ready to ally 
with unsavory partners.  A retired imam and an Islamist 
former confidant of Erdogan in Gaziantep point out that AKP 
has allied itself in the local race with a network of two 
dozen Turkish (Kurdish) Hizbullah activists in mosques and 
has waged an anti-Kurdish, anti-Alevi campaign.  We confirmed 
the party's anti-Kurdish attitude in Gaziantep from AKP 
women's auxiliary activists' comments to us. 
 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
 
15. (C) As the embodiment of AKP and Turkey's mayor, Erdogan 
faces his most decisive challenges after his expected big 
win. 
 
 
16. (C) First, although the cult of personality among Turkish 
party leaders dates from the beginning of the Republic, AKP 
has identified itself excessively with its leader.  And if 
Erdogan stumbles, the party will deflate.  In this regard, 
Erdogan's arrogance toward ordinary citizens on the campaign 
trail has drawn a widely-read warning from leading Islamist 
journalist Ahmet Tasgetiren. 
 
 
17. (C) Second, AKP will own the majority of Turkey's chronic 
municipal problems; as the ruling party in Ankara it will 
have no excuse if it cannot deliver resources to 
AKP-controlled municipalities.  Third, a big win at the 
municipal level will increase grassroots impatience for 
solutions to economic and social problems, e.g., 
legitimization of the Islamic headscarf (turban).  Fourth, 
patronage appointments are markedly more sensitive at the 
local level, where change of status is immediately felt by 
the whole community.  Packing newly-won municipal 
administrations with AKP loyalists, especially those with an 
MG past, will provoke profound disquiet.  Kemalist daily 
"Cumhuriyet"'s defense correspondent Sertac Es, a son of 
Anatolia and thus more directly in touch with the heartland 
than his elitist colleagues, has alerted us that local 
garrison commanders have already begun to receive streams of 
angry written complaints on this score from people opposed to 
AKP; commanders are forwarding bundles of complaints up the 
chain to the TGS. 
 
 
18. (C) Moreover, the strains from a big win will highlight 
question marks over the party (refs E-F).  These are (1) 
Erdogan's character weaknesses, his choice of weak advisors, 
and the quality of his expected post-election cabinet 
shuffle; (2) rivals in the party (the widest range of our 
political, journalist, and religious contacts warn us FonMin 
Abdullah Gul and his supporters such as deputy party chairman 
Murat Mercan and foreign policy advisor Ahmet Davutoglu are 
much more cunning and hostile Islamists -- in a Saudi sense 
-- than Erdogan); (3) thinness of technocratic skill and 
inability to manage the resistant State bureaucracy; (4) 
corruption; (5) the party's attitude toward equal access for 
women in society and politics; and (6) Erdogan's and AKP's 
secret-lodge mentality and consequent failure to communicate 
 
SIPDIS 
clearly within the party or externally, and indifference to 
concerns about AKP's intentions on the part of core 
institutions of the State. 
EDELMAN