US embassy cable - 04ANKARA2327

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 002327 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/19/2014 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, TU 
SUBJECT: OPPOSITION CHP: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND 
THE WORD WAS WITH BAYKAL, AND THE WORD WAS MALLEABLE 
 
REF: A. ANKARA 2119 
     B. ANKARA 2153 
     C. ANKARA 1905 
 
 
(U) Classified by Political Counselor John Kunstadter. 
Reason: 1.4 (b,d). 
 
 
1. (C) Summary: Unable to look at the beam in their own eye 
to understand their own responsibility for CHP's serious 
decline, CHP leader Baykal and others in his circle are 
looking for a mote in the U.S.'s eye as they accuse the USG 
of actively seeking Baykal's ouster.  All the while rebels in 
CHP continue to look for a new champion to replace Baykal 
while Baykal alternately scrambles to "Muslimize" his speech 
to attract the Anatolian vote and yet deprecates the same 
Anatolian voter bloc.  Bottom line: CHP remains an elitist, 
dead-end party.  End summary. 
 
 
-------------- 
The Conspiracy 
-------------- 
 
 
2. (C) Islamist and anti-"secular" daily "Yeni Safak"'s April 
16 interview with main opposition CHP chairman and champion 
of "secularism" Deniz Baykal contained a conspiracy-laden 
diatribe against media groups, businessmen, and the U.S. 
Baykal referred to a "secret" document allegedly from the 
Pentagon's "Office of Special Programs" describing illegal 
financial transactions and bribery allegations against Baykal 
and other party leaders -- a document the Embassy publicly 
denounced as absurd and a fraud -- that was leaked to the 
press.  Baykal asserted, "Documents were distributed. 
Documents with Pentagon stamped on them.  When I got these 
papers I wondered if there is such an office.  Later I 
learned that there is.  We (ordered our people) to look into 
whether there is such a name.  They said there is.  The U.S. 
Embassy made a statement saying there is no such thing.  But 
we know that there is." 
 
 
3. (C) Baykal added, "This is an issue about our party. 
Maybe it was thought that a more suitable leader would make 
their work easier here...I am calling on my nation to think 
about who is behind this and why they are attacking CHP so 
much."  When the reporter asked if Baykal was speaking in 
code, the CHP leader replied, "Yes, this is a code.  Figure 
it out and you'll understand everything." 
 
 
4. (C) Several CHPers -- senior M.P.s and Baykal followers 
Mesut Deger and Fuat Cay among them -- had earlier approached 
poloffs privately about the alleged report, asking why the 
Pentagon is interested in "sowing division in the party." 
Reactions to our rejection of the documents as a patent, 
Turkish-origin forgery ranged from plastic smiles amid 
expressions of gratitude for clarifying the situation to 
outright disbelief. 
 
 
5. (C) Adding fuel to the conspiracy fire, CHP Deputy 
Secretary General Oguz Oyan on April 18 told journalists that 
 
SIPDIS 
the U.S.' Greater Middle East (GME) initiative is designed to 
promote ideological divisions within CHP.  "By breaking off a 
piece of CHP, the GME project hopes to develop a more 
social-liberal movement," he claimed.  Oyan added that at the 
same time, GME will "tame and render ineffective" the other 
part of CHP. 
 
 
---------- 
The Denial 
---------- 
 
 
6. (C) CHP M.P. Bulent Tanla, who is Baykal's chief advisor, 
phoned poloff April 16 to deny that the CHP leader believes 
the U.S. is leading a conspiracy to undermine the party. 
Tanla half-heartedly suggested that we were not reading 
Baykal's statements correctly.  He further asserted that 
"Yeni Safak" journalists had distorted Baykal's remarks to 
try to create the impression that CHP is anti-American.  CHP 
Deputy Secretary General Sinan Yerlikaya told poloff April 16 
that Baykal would never make such a statement, although he 
claimed he had not read the interview.  He undertook to get 
back in touch with us after reading the story, but has 
avoided contact since then. 
 
 
------------- 
The Admission 
------------- 
 
 
7. (C) Undermining his colleagues' denials, CHP M.P. Gokhan 
Durgun, who is close to Baykal, told poloff April 21 that 
there is, in fact, a widespread view among CHP deputies that 
the U.S. is out to punish the party.  Durgun described the 
CHP thinking in a typically convoluted and self-absorbed 
fashion.  Senior CHP officials -- Durgun among them -- have 
put together disparate pieces of information to spin a USG 
conspiracy against them.  Given CHP's hard-line stance on 
Cyprus and Iraq, the USG wants to install a more pro-U.S. 
leader at the top of CHP, he asserted.  Durgun said he 
appreciated the Embassy's public statement regarding the 
alleged Pentagon report but asserted that "someone" in 
Washington must have know about the document and sanctioned 
the leak to the press. 
8. (C) Durgun and CHP leaders have misinterpreted Secretary 
Powell's remarks on Turkey and Islam (ref A), which in any 
event we and the Department have since clarified, as evidence 
that the USG prefers a government under ruling AKP, which has 
Islamist roots.  In light of the Secretary's remarks, Durgun 
claimed, the GME project takes on a sinister meaning: the 
U.S. wants to promote "moderate Islam" at the expense of 
"secular" (sic) political movements like CHP.  Durgun 
concluded his monologue by saying "if I were the U.S., I 
would do the same thing." 
 
 
------------------ 
The Power Struggle 
------------------ 
 
 
9. (C) Meanwhile, Baykal spins madly in three different 
directions.  First, he has announced his intention to travel 
the roads of Anatolia in a minibus to understand what the 
common man thinks.  In this regard, he has approached two of 
our close contacts with the urgent request for coaching on 
how to "Muslimize" his speech. 
 
 
10. (C) Yet at the same time, he revealed his true feelings 
toward the common man in a public debate with PM Erdogan. 
When Erdogan emphasized the value of democracy, Baykal 
remarked that democracy is fine as long as it doesn't clash 
with "the achievements of the Republic."  As ruling AKP 
parliamentary whip Sadullah Ergin and another contact 
explained to us, this was Baykal's coded way of reiterating 
CHP's and the Turkish "secular" Establishment's long-standing 
assertion that the ordinary citizens of Turkey are not ready 
for democracy, and that leaving Turkey exposed to full 
democracy would lead the country away from the principles 
imposed from above with the advent of the Republic in 1923. 
 
 
11. (C) Not content to stop there, Baykal has tried to lay a 
trap for ruling AKP by seeming to encourage AKP to submit 
draft legislation to curtail certain powers of the Turkish 
military embedded in two laws.  The press preferred to 
interpret Baykal's move as a breakthrough in AKP-CHP 
relations and a sign that the idea of cutting back the 
military's guardian of the Republic role has gained steam. 
However, closer examination of what Baykal said reveals that 
he merely offered to "take a look at" any AKP proposal, 
Baykal-speak for "now you see it, now you don't". 
 
 
12. (C) With Baykal holding on grimly, internal CHP opponents 
and hard-core "secularists" outside the party who see CHP as 
the only viable vehicle to safeguard their Kemalist interests 
appear to be focusing their efforts on selling Istanbul Sisli 
district mayor Mustafa Sarigul (ref C) to the elite in Ankara 
as the answer to both Baykal and AKP.  Contacts here, 
including former Ecevit deputy PM Husamettin Ozkan, tell us 
Istanbul University rector Kemal Alemdaroglu and current Land 
Forces Commander Aytac Yalman are among those promoting 
Sarigul.  Ozkan has signaled to us that his interest in 
Sarigul (ref C) may be on the wane.  A long-standing 
financial sector contact of ours has also given us details of 
a specific incident of Sarigul's corruption in the past, 
involving Sarigul's use of the Cevahir mafia group to shake 
down a business consortium. 
 
 
------- 
Comment 
------- 
 
 
13. (C) Refusing to engage in any self-criticism, CHP leaders 
have turned to finger-pointing and flimsy conspiracy theories 
to explain away the party's elitist stagnation.  Under 
Baykal, CHP will continue to relegate itself to the political 
sidelines.  While Sarigul's supporters pump up attributes 
they think will make him attractive to Anatolia (he is from 
the eastern Anatolian city of Erzincan, has an Erdogan-like 
populist swagger, and tries politically to market his 
tolerance for religion and pious Turks), their own entrenched 
Kemalist nature is likely to be a drag on any move he might 
make to the national stage. 
EDELMAN