US embassy cable - 03ADANA66

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ADANA 0066 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
DEPT FOR EUR/SE 
 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PINS, PHUM, TU, OSCE, ADANA 
SUBJECT:  THE VIEW FROM THE SOUTHEAST, 
ERDOGAN SET TO WIN 
 
 
REF:  ANKARA 1410 
 
 
Summary: Reftel reported the view from Ankara 
that AK Party and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan 
seems poised to win March 9 special election in 
Siirt.  Indications from our contacts in 
predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey also 
point to a comfortable victory for Erdogan and 
AK. There are three seats at stake in Siirt. 
While AK officials in Siirt naturally predict a 
clean sweep, CHP representatives there hope to 
win one, or at most two seats.  The province's 
most popular party, DEHAP, is furious at not 
being allowed to contest the election; acting 
apparently on instructions from headquarters, 
local DEHAP supporters are being informally urged 
to boycott or spoil their ballots.  Widespread 
anxiety among Siirt Kurds about war in Northern 
Iraq and possible Turkish military involvement 
there does not seem to be pushing voters toward 
CHP in sufficient numbers to offset AK's 
advantage.  End Summary. 
 
 
1) Consulate Adana poloff toured Siirt Province 
March 4-5 to gauge trends prior to the March 9 
parliamentary by-election.  Siirt province likely 
has 80,000 voters. (Note: Like most other SE 
Turkey provinces, Siirt is almost entirely made 
up of ethnic Kurds, with the exception of small 
pockets of Turks sent to work for the Government 
and Turkish traders of Arab origin. Endnote.) 
 
 
2) In all locals, (note:  We toured the 
provincial capital, Siirt (est. population 
100,000), and three smaller townships, Kurtalan 
(est. pop. 30,000), and Baykan (est. pop. 12,000) 
End Note.) in proportion to their size, the 
normal election-campaign apparatus and 
apparatchiks were on display: banners, pennants, 
posters, the occasional deputy or minister from 
Ankara shaking hands, and campaign buses cruising 
the streets blaring a mixture of slogans and 
music.  We are unaware of any opinion polling 
going on in the province prior to the election. 
 
 
------------------------- 
AK Predicting a Landslide 
------------------------- 
 
 
3) In conversations with AK Party officials at 
all locations, we found them almost giddy with a 
sense of imminent triumph.  They are not going to 
be satisfied with a 3-0 sweep over their only 
serious rival, CHP.  Rather, we repeatedly heard 
the figure of eighty percent as their predicted 
vote total.  AK Party headquarters in all 
locations gave an impression of being hectic and 
chaotic, but flush with resources, including 
plenty of campaign workers. 
 
 
4) It appears AK Party has indeed been applying 
its advantage as the party of government. 
Although we heard from AK Party officials about 
effective government, from other party officials 
and from random citizens we heard anecdotal 
evidence of how AK has been focusing resources on 
Siirt in the run-up to the election.  For 
example, an isolated hamlet might finally get its 
road or its electricity repaired after many years 
of waiting. (Note:  Road repair crews were in 
evidence as we drove around several towns.) 
Similar promises for future delivery of services 
are allegedly being made widely.  In Eruh, one 
citizen said he had heard of (but not seen), 
voters being bought - for as little as 50 million 
Turkish Lira (approx USD 30). 
 
 
5) AK Party officials and supporters seemed 
unconcerned that the party and Erdogan 
specifically would pay a price at the ballot box 
in Siirt because of the government's, and 
Erdogan's, support of the defeated resolution 
concerning US troops coming to Turkey and Turkish 
troops in northern Iraq.  As one party official 
somewhat disingenuously explained, "Mr. Erdogan 
is not in the parliament, so the responsibility 
cannot be assigned to him." Besides, he said, 
lots of AK deputies voted against the resolution 
anyway. 
 
 
6.)  One final factor that gives comfort to AK in 
Siirt is the depth of religiosity in the 
province. (Note:  In Ottoman times Siirt was 
known for its holy men and shrines honoring them 
are unusually common.End note) The religious vote 
in Siirt will go for AK, to spite the secular 
CHP. 
 
 
--------------------------- 
CHP Gamely Hanging in There 
--------------------------- 
 
 
7).  In all CHP headquarters we visited, 
officials described a frustrating two-front 
battle.  Firstly, they had to find a way to 
appeal to voters through ideas rather than 
through instant or promised "pork, " which is the 
prerogative of the party in power. Secondly, they 
seemed to be getting nowhere in their personally- 
made pleas to their DEHAP counterparts to vent 
protest via a CHP vote rather than abstention. 
The CHP in Siirt, based on their dealings with 
DEHAP there, believe DEHAP's boycott instructions 
came from the top, not spontaneously from its 
Siirt supporters. 
 
 
8)  CHP believes that the popularity of the anti- 
war and anti-US-troops-in-Turkey stance of the 
party and CHP Chairman Deniz Baykal in particular 
is helping - but not enough.  It would seem 
perhaps logical that Kurdish voters might reward 
the CHP and punish AK, as it was the AK cabinet 
that proposed allowing US troops to come to 
Turkey and Turkish troops to go into northern 
Iraq.  However, as one frustrated CHP official 
put it, "DEHAP wants to punish everybody." 
 
 
9) No CHP official or supporter in Siirt told us 
that the party would be shut out, nor that it 
would take all three seats.  One seat, or two, if 
turnout was high in Siirt City, was their 
refrain. 
 
 
------------------------------------------- 
DEHAP: Anger at an Anti-Democratic Election 
------------------------------------------- 
 
 
10) Not surprisingly, without exception DEHAP 
members and supporters rejected the upcoming 
March 9 election as illegitimate and 
undemocratic.  Noting that DEHAP was easily the 
major party in the province, why was it being 
blocked from participating this time, they 
wondered. This was particularly galling, they 
noted, in light of the fact that two, completely 
insignificant parties - the Workers Party and the 
Communist Party - had been allowed to run this 
time, and were doing so.  (Note:  While the 
Communist Party is all but invisible in Siirt 
right now, the Workers Party has managed to put 
up posters and run some campaign buses; their 
slogan is "No to American Soldiers!" End note.). 
 
 
11) DEHAP people in Siirt do not feel warm 
towards AK Party.  Their demands have not found 
resonance with this government, and in Siirt they 
are still waiting for the State to get off their 
back, i.e., put Kurdish language liberalization 
into practice, facilitate village returns, end 
the enforced isolation of Abdullah Ocalan, and in 
general, as one interlocutor put it, "stop 
treating us like animals."  Although DEHAP 
officials acknowledged the logic of expressing 
disappointment with AK by casting votes for CHP, 
they said that a boycott and spoiled-vote 
strategy was preferable.  The need to highlight 
the anti-democratic nature of this election - and 
of Turkish politics writ large - was the 
overriding objective. 
 
 
12) When asked to predict the likely outcome of 
the election in any case, most DEHAP members 
handicapped it as a likely 2-1 outcome, with 
either AK or CHP on top. 
HOLTZ