US embassy cable - 03ANKARA5001

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 005001 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/06/2013 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, TU 
SUBJECT: TURKEY: DERVIS HINTS AT CHALLENGING INEFFECTUAL 
BAYKAL FOR OPPOSITION CHP LEADERSHIP 
 
 
REF: A. ANKARA 4862 
     B. ANKARA 2048 
 
 
(U) Classified by Acting Political Counselor Nicholas S. 
Kass.  Reason: 1.5 (b)(d). 
 
 
1. (C) Summary: As opposition CHP struggles in public opinion 
polls, former State Minister/current CHP M.P. Kemal Dervis is 
beginning to push for a more visible role in the party, and 
to hint that he may eventually challenge Deniz Baykal for the 
party chairmanship.  Surrounding himself largely with 
western-trained newcomers to politics, to CHP, and to 
Parliament, Dervis is trying to alter his party's stale, 
shopworn political image as rubber-stamp to an increasingly 
out-of-touch Establishment.  Should Dervis try to follow 
through, he would face an uphill challenge.  His success 
would depend on whether he can loosen Baykal's viselike grip 
on the CHP apparatus and Parliamentary group by: 1) 
demonstrating decisive political leadership and character -- 
which he may not in fact posses; and 2) overcoming his own 
elitist-statist political inclinations and abandoning his 
often uncritical public support for Kemalist equities -- 
something he has so far been loath to do.  End summary. 
 
 
--------------------- 
A Listless Opposition 
--------------------- 
 
 
2. (C) Recent resignations of two M.P.s (ref A) -- and the 
possibility of more to come -- from main opposition CHP have 
brought forward barely concealed fissures within the party. 
According to a recent public opinion poll, support for CHP 
has dipped to 16 percent -- well below the support the party 
garnered in the Nov. 2002 national elections -- while support 
for the ruling AK Party has increased to around 40 percent. 
 
 
3. (C) Staunch Kemalists, for whom CHP is the only 
Establishment representative on the national political scene, 
are criticizing the party in harsh terms for Baykal's 
recklessness and, more importantly, his inability to inspire 
the faithful.  Sina Aksin, a professor at Ankara University's 
prestigious Political Sciences Faculty, a bastion of Kemalist 
rectitude, charged to us that CHP has become a hollow shell 
of itself -- merely "the opium of the Kemalists."  Columnists 
in Turkey's leading dailies are questioning the direction of 
CHP and, more directly, Baykal for an unprincipled and 
far-too-clever tactical approach to leadership.  Erol 
Cevikce, a former Baykal confidant, described the CHP leader 
to poloff Aug. 5 as a very bright but shallow; foreigners 
meeting Baykal for the first time and unaware of his recent 
statements in  Parliament "would no doubt think he is a 
brilliant man," Cevikce said.  Baykal will do anything to win 
votes, including rail against the U.S. even though he has 
been a supporter of strong U.S.-Turkish relations. 
Explaining Baykal's Janus-faced leadership style, CHP deputy 
Damla Gurel told poloff recently that "when I hear what 
Baykal says in Parliament, I am disgusted and consider 
leaving CHP; when I travel with him abroad, I feel hopeful 
again." 
 
 
------------ 
Dervis' Team 
------------ 
 
 
4. (C) With Baykal's weaknesses and high negative ratings in 
the opinion polls, Kemal Dervis, formerly a state minister in 
the previous Ecevit-led government and now a CHP Istanbul 
Deputy, has been assiduously floating trial balloons to gauge 
CHP and public support for a change in leadership.  His 
suggestion that he will seek a position on CHP's central 
committee at the party's general convention this fall has 
been widely interpreted as heralding a possible direct 
challenge to Baykal for the top spot. 
 
 
5. (C) In private meetings with us, Dervis has said he wants 
transform CHP into a pro-reform, "European-style social 
democratic party" free of strong nationalist trappings -- in 
essence arguing that CHP's problem is not that it is straying 
away from Kemalism (the Aksin view), but that the Party of 
Ataturk is still too firmly welded to the dominant and more 
rigid form of the ideology.  Dervis has also argued to us 
that CHP needs an infusion of youth to overcome the "1920s 
Kemalist mentality" -- the xenophobic statist-nationalism 
that, he says, pervades in the party administration (ref B). 
To this end, Dervis has gathered a coterie of like-minded 
M.P.s, including elements he personally recruited to the 
party prior to last November's elections and other 
self-professed social democrats.  Among these are: Damla 
Gurel, who prior to joining CHP, had worked in Istanbul for 
the ARI Movement, a well-connected centrist NGO; Istanbul 
businessman and Harvard-trained economist Memduh Hacioglu; 
Adana CHP deputy and outspoken feminist Gaye Erbatur; former 
Aegean University professor Necdet Budak, who studied at the 
Univ. of Nebraska; and Gulsun Bilgehan, granddaughter to 
Ismet Inonu.  (Note: all of these deputies speak excellent 
English. End note.)  These M.P.s work with Dervis, who heads 
CHP's "Science Platform" research arm,  to analyze 
legislation independent of the party central committee and 
then present their views to the party. 
 
 
--------------------------------------- 
A Fight Too Tough for the Dervis Tekke? 
--------------------------------------- 
 
 
6. (C) Dervis and his colleagues admit that they face an 
uphill battle in winning control of the party apparatus -- 
one non-Dervisite described the Science Platform to us as an 
organization "that produces reports no one reads" -- and 
developing a new CHP ethos.  Dervis offered to us recently 
that changing CHP from within is a slow process and that he 
does not expect immediate results.  "There is still some 
resistance from 'traditionalists,'" he noted.  The resistance 
is also weighing heavily on Dervis disciples Gurel and 
Hacioglu, both political newcomers.  Gurel told poloff that, 
if she did not believe in what Dervis is doing, she would 
leave politics all together -- scant months after having 
joined CHP.  Expressing his frustration with politics in 
general, Hacioglu railed against "those circles who continue 
to resist reform: CHP leadership, the bureaucracy, and the 
army."  "I wish I had never left my business," he said. 
 
 
7. (C) Dervis et al tell us that in addition to outright 
opposition to intra-party reform, 'traditionalists' also 
often heap scorn on them for their supposed "Americanist" 
(Amerikanci) outlook.  Before the failed March 1 vote in 
Parliament that would have authorized deployment of U.S. 
troops to Turkey in the run-up to the Iraq war, Dervis 
privately told poloff that he felt he could not speak openly 
in favor of strong U.S.-Turkish ties, because many in CHP 
"already consider me an American agent."  More recently, 
Dervis claimed that the incident in Sulaymaniyah (involving 
the brief detention of Turkish troops by U.S. forces) had 
"made his life difficult" by strengthening the hand of the 
traditionalists.  Similarly, Budak explained to us late July 
that he too has long been thought of as an Americanist, 
which, he said, is a double-edged sword at best.  On the one 
hand, CHP deputies go to Budak when they have questions about 
the U.S.  On the other, Budak said he is aware of "people 
whispering in the halls" against him, which in effect freezes 
him out of the party administration loop. 
 
 
------------------- 
The Character Issue 
------------------- 
 
 
8. (C) The key problem confronting Dervis, however, is not 
his presumed Americanism but his own elitist-statist 
inclination.  This, while more sophisticated than the 
run-of-the-mill, rigid tendency exhibited by the party 
cadres, does not sit well with the growing majority of voters 
eager for change.  Dervis has also exhibited a lack of both 
political acumen and the courage of his ostensibly 
non-traditionalist convictions.  This might be even more 
problematic for him, given that the principal indictments 
against Baykal are based on exactly the same character flaws. 
 Before the 2002 elections, Dervis encouraged rebellion 
within then P.M. Ecevit's center-left DSP, but left his 
erstwhile colleagues twisting in the wind as he sought safe 
harbor in CHP.  He also publicly proclaimed his support for 
the Kemalist status quo as embodied by the National Security 
Council (NSC) -- a move, widely perceived to be an effort to 
pander to Turkey's powerful generals in the run-up to the 
polls, that infuriated the reformist intellectuals who had 
supported his rise to prominence and covered for him in their 
columns.  More recently, Dervis has privately praised AK's 
NSC-related and other reform efforts, while expressing to us 
only the mildest of reservations about AK's ultimate goals. 
To journalists, however, Dervis is promoting the specter of 
AK as an "Islamic threat" to Turkey -- although as "Hurriyet" 
columnist Cuneyt Ulsever offered to us recently, Dervis 
"knows better."  While Dervis may be making such statements 
to cover his political flanks, the impression he leaves is 
that of a man without a political compass. 
------------------- 
Kemal the Apostate? 
------------------- 
 
 
9. (C) Dervis is now looking to CHP's convention this fall, 
where he hopes to see changes to the party administration. 
Beyond that looms next April's local elections, which many in 
CHP view as a referendum on Baykal's leadership.  It is an 
open question whether Dervis can, or in the final analysis is 
inclined to, resist the strong pull of the Turkish 
Establishment "traditions" that he privately assails, and 
thus to avoid becoming just another in a long line of 
unsuccessful political wannabes.  Moreover, Dervis is still 
seen as a technocrat unwilling to sully his hands in the 
dirty game of Turkish retail politics.  There is, in fact, an 
unmistakable aura surrounding Dervis of elite technocratic 
disapproval of Anatolian realities -- a quintessential CHP 
characteristic that hurt the party badly in the 2002 
elections and helps explain its current dithering and 
ineffectiveness.  In short, to succeed Dervis has to 
demonstrate that he is neither Baykal nor a staunch Kemalist, 
which given his present circumstances and disposition would 
be tantamount to apostasy. 
DEUTSCH