US embassy cable - 05ANKARA501

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 000501 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/09/2014 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PINS, TU 
SUBJECT: MAIN OPPOSITION CHP LEADERSHIP STRUGGLE -- BAYKAL 
USES ANTI-AMERICANISM TO RALLY SUPPORT 
 
REF: A. ANKARA 000198 
 
     B. 04 ISTANBUL 001729 
     C. 04 ANKARA 006841 
     D. 04 ANKARA 006839 
 
POLCOUNS John Kunstadter; reasons 1.4 (b,d) 
 
1. (C) Summary.  Struggle between Republican People's Party 
(CHP) leader Baykal and Istanbul-Sisli Mayor Sarigul for 
control of left-of-center CHP will come to a head at the Jan. 
29-30 party convention.  Most observers think Baykal will win 
the contest, but the outcome is not a shoe-in. The U.S. has 
no direct interest in the internal struggles of the 
increasingly irrelevant CHP, but the lies about U.S. policy 
spread by pro-Baykal supporters have increased the load of 
anti-American rhetoric in Turkey.  End Summary. 
 
2. (C) The struggle between CHP leader Deniz Baykal and 
Istanbul Sisli district Mayor Mustafa Sarigul for the control 
of Turkey's oldest and currently second largest party (Ref A) 
will come to a head at the party's Jan. 29-30 Extraordinary 
Convention.  Most journalists and Embassy contacts think 
Baykal will win the contest.  Anti-Baykal CHP dissidents with 
whom we met this week were noticeably less optimistic about 
their faction's chances for success, but several retained the 
conviction that Baykal would lose. 
 
3. (C) Of the approximately 1,300 CHP delegates who will 
attend the convention, Turkish newspapers report that Baykal 
has the support of about 750 delegates and Sarigul has the 
support of about 500 delegates.  A third potential candidate, 
Zulfu Livaneli, has the support of about 100 delegates, far 
short of the 260 delegates needed to run for the 
chairmanship.  Efforts to find a compromise candidate seem to 
have failed.  A candidate needs to receive a majority of the 
vote from the delegates present at the convention in the 
first or second round to win the election.  If no one 
receives a majority in either of the first two rounds, then 
the plurality winner in the third round becomes the chairman. 
 
 
4. (C) Baykal is very unpopular in the party and in the 
public at large, but he has hand-picked most of the delegates 
and other party officials.  Sarigul asserts he plans to bus 
30,000 supporters to the convention hall to rally outside and 
pressure the delegates.  Although the convention promises to 
make excellent political theater, Sarigul is unlikely to 
unseat Baykal.  In order to win the chairmanship, Sarigul 
would have to maintain his 500 delegates, win the support of 
Livaneli's delegates, and convince around 100 of Baykal's 
supporters to change sides or not participate in the 
elections. 
 
5. (C) Baykal's re-election campaign has focused on two 
issues -- charges of Sarigul's corruption (Ref B) and 
allegations that the USG is interfering in intra-CHP 
politics.  Many CHP contacts dislike Baykal's authoritarian 
leadership style and believe that his leadership has hurt the 
party, but they are also distrustful of Sarigul, whom they 
see as corrupt, uneducated, and authoritarian.  Baykal and 
his allies in the party have publicly accused the USG of 
trying to replace Baykal as punishment for CHP's opposition 
to the failed 1 March 2003 resolution in the Turkish 
parliament that would have authorized US troop deployment 
into Iraq through Turkey.  Baykal's allies misuse Sarigul's 
participation in an IV program in mid-2004 as "evidence" that 
the US backs Sarigul.  Embassy officials have countered 
Baykal's conspiracy theories in private conversations, but 
the mud appears to have stuck in the opinion of some in an 
already conspiracy-theory prone public. 
 
6. (C) Some Embassy contacts -- including MP Hasan Aydin and 
Erol Cevikce -- have predicted that a new party will be 
formed on the left if Baykal retains the party chairmanship. 
Cevikce claims that former Gaziantep Mayor Celal Dogan and 
former Kurdish MP Layla Zana will found a new party uniting 
Turkey's reform-oriented social democrats and anti-Baykal 
leftists with Kurdish and Alevis elements.  Aydin and Cevikce 
both claim that the new party will be able to attract at 
least 20 MPs from CHP, thereby allowing it to form an 
official party block in parliament. 
 
7. (C) We note that, although in principle such a political 
formulation could take root, it would have to overcome a 
number of political hurdles.  In the past, Kurdish-oriented 
parties have been banned by the Kemalist state.  Ethnically 
Turkish social democrats and leftist, moreover, may hesitate 
to ally with Kurdish activists because a similar plan in the 
early 1990s backfired.  Cevikce asserts that military circles 
trust the ethnically half-Turkmen/half-Kurdish Dogan from his 
time as mayor of Gaziantep (i.e. believe that he does not 
harbor Kurdish nationalist or separatist sentiments), but 
Dogan was a left-wing radical in the generation of 1968 and 
the degree to which the military actually trusts him is 
questionable. 
 
8. (C) Comment.  Under Baykal's leadership, CHP is unpopular, 
un-dynamic, and unable to mount a serious challenge to 
governing AKP (Refs C and D). CHP claims to be a modern 
social democratic party, but many of its leaders are 
reactionary defenders of the Turkish 
statist-secularist-Kemalist status quo.  The U.S. has no 
direct interest in the internal struggles of the increasingly 
irrelevant CHP.  However,  there is a danger that desperate, 
dead-end politicians spreading lies about U.S. policy will 
exacerbate the anti-American rhetoric that already circulates 
here.  End Comment. 
DEUTSCH