US embassy cable - 04ANKARA2119

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 002119 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/12/2014 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, TU 
SUBJECT: TURKISH POLITICS: OPPOSITION CHP LEADER BAYKAL 
HUNKERS DOWN 
 
REF: ANKARA 1905 
 
 
(U) Classified by Political Counselor John Kunstadter. 
Reason: 1.4 (b,d). 
 
 
1. (C) Summary: Opposition CHP chairman Baykal and his allies 
in the party continue their campaign of denial in the face of 
fierce intra-party criticism.  Their hold on the party 
leadership appears solid for now, following a marathon of 
recent meetings in which CHP members at all levels -- most of 
whom owe their jobs to Baykal -- re-affirmed their support 
for the CHP chairman.  However, the leadership's inability to 
evaluate its policies critically will further undermine 
support within the rank and file and will undercut what 
little credibility the party has with ordinary citizens.  End 
summary. 
 
 
-------------------- 
In For The Long Haul 
-------------------- 
 
 
2. (C) Amid growing calls for wholesale change in the party 
leadership, main opposition CHP leader Deniz Baykal and his 
increasingly shrinking circle of allies are digging in their 
heels.  In the party's 6 April Parliamentary Group meeting, 
which lasted over 11 hours (group meetings usually conclude 
after two or three), Baykal picked up where he left off at 
his now notorious post-election press conference (reftel). 
According to our contacts in the party and mainstream press, 
Baykal asserted that despite a negative media campaign 
against CHP, the party still received 18 percent of the vote. 
 He also claimed that without him as party leader, CHP would 
have won less support. 
 
 
4. (C) In a subsequent meeting with poloff, Baykal's chief 
advisor Bulent Tanla not surprisingly echoed his boss, to 
whom Tanla owes his political career.  Tanla - a former 
pollster for Gallup -- told us that the municipal election 
results represent neither a victory nor a defeat.  "It 
depends on how one looks at the data; in information theory, 
there are facts and how one views those facts.  A a result, 
no point of view can be said to be wrong," he argued.  He 
conceded that CHP lost around 200,000 votes when compared to 
Nov. 2002 but added that "we still received 5.6 million 
votes; that's the population of Belgium." 
 
 
5. (C) Although utterly convinced that CHP is on the right 
path, Tanla revealingly said that ordinary citizens listen to 
CHPers speak, then listen to AKP members speak, and vote for 
the party whose representatives sound most like themselves. 
In this case, as in Nov. 2002, it was overwhelmingly AKP. 
 
 
6. (C) In an April 12 meeting, CHP Diyarbakir M.P. and close 
Embassy contact Mesut Deger confirmed to us that Baykal is 
not going anywhere soon.  Deger explained that Baykal 
convened both the party assembly and provincial chairmen on 
April 10-11 in Ankara.  Both groups -- whose members owe 
their jobs to Baykal -- gave the CHP leader a vote of 
confidence, according to Deger, suggesting that change is not 
in the offing.  Deger added that the party is awaiting the 
results of a research committee -- headed by Tanla -- that is 
reportedly evaluating the election results in detail. 
 
 
---------------------- 
Opposition Meaningless 
---------------------- 
 
 
7. (C) In his remarks to Parliament, Baykal criticized 
intra-party opposition -- particularly former State Minister 
Kemal Dervis, who recently published a lengthy report on 
social democracy in Turkey that criticized CHP policy. 
Baykal pointedly said he will not change party policy on 
Iraq, Cyprus, or on the headscarf issue.  Any effort to do so 
is an effort to turn CHP into ruling AKP (AKP'lilestirmek), 
he asserted. 
 
 
8. (C) Like Baykal, Tanla was dismissive of opposition in the 
party, even though nine prominent M.P.s, including Embassy 
contact and party executive board member Hakki Akalin, had 
just called for Baykal to resign.  Tanla suggested that 
discontent is the point of equilibrium for a CHP Parliament 
group, adding that opposition inside the party had always 
existed since the time of Ismet Inonu, Ataturk's right-hand 
man.  As if searching for any theme that could mollify the 
party's critics, Tanla asserted that the party needs young 
faces, although he could not explain how that might happen. 
Without prompting, Tanla rejected the possibility that Dervis 
could mount a serious challenge: "I meet with Dervis all the 
time; he doesn't even want to be leader." 
 
 
9. (C) CHP Denizli M.P. Mehmet Nessar, who serves on 
Parliament's NATO assembly and who is normally free of 
knuckleheaded thinking, told us recently that the thrust of 
Dervis' criticism is that: 1) Baykal has refused to accept 
new members into the party; 2) CHP provincial and district 
level officials are only out to benefit materially from their 
positions; and 3) the party is stuck in the 1930's.  While 
conceding that Dervis' points are true, Nessar nevertheless 
claimed that Dervis would have been better served if he had 
worked behind the scenes versus expressing his criticisms 
aloud. 
 
 
------- 
Comment 
------- 
 
 
10. (C) As we noted reftel, CHP's problems run deeper than 
Baykal.  Indeed, Tanla himself said that "the party's 
problems have nothing to do with the party's leader; changing 
personnel won't solve problems."  Yet it is difficult to see 
how the party under Baykal will ever change in the way that a 
small number of more forward-thinking CHP members hope. 
 
 
11. (C) We continue to be struck by CHP's total lack of 
connection to the common man here.  As Hacettepe University 
sociologist/anthropologist Suavi Aydin told us April 12, CHP 
is now seen as merely the party of a close-minded elite.  In 
this regard, Tanla's admission that voters choose parties 
whose members resemble themselves in speech and manner is 
especially revealing.  In another instructive example, Tanla 
questioned Secretary Powell's recent remarks on Turkey and 
Islam.  Tanla suggested that Turkey is getting poorer and 
that education levels are falling (while avoiding 
acknowledging CHP's direct share of responsibility for this 
trend).  Tanla wondered whether the Secretary sees Turkey in 
the same light and is therefore predicting that Turkey will 
become an Islamic Republic. 
EDELMAN