[A-List] TURKEY: AKP, CHP, Kurds, Women, and Jobless Growth

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,,2133351,00.html>
Turkey raises hopes of peace with Kurds

· Poll victory gives Erdogan power to resist military
· Kurdish party wins 23 seats in new parliament

Ian Traynor in Istanbul
Tuesday July 24, 2007
The Guardian

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is likely to use his
sweeping election victory to open a dialogue with his country's
Kurdish insurgents, according to Turkish and Kurdish experts.

He is also expected to oppose an invasion of Kurdish northern Iraq and
has invited the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to Ankara for
talks that would include US officials.

Mr Erdogan is in a strong position to dismiss military pressure for a
cross-border crackdown on PKK Kurdish guerrillas based in northern
Iraq and to extract concessions on the Kurdish conflict from the
Americans and Kurdish leaders.

Turkey has massed tens of thousands of troops on the Iraqi border in
recent weeks, with hawks in the high command pressing for an invasion.
Mr Erdogan has resisted. Thrust into an unassailable position by a
landslide election victory on Sunday, he now looks better placed to
push a new political initiative on the Kurdish issue rather than opt
for military action.

"Invasion is off the agenda now, there's a new momentum," said Cengiz
Candar, a Turkish analyst.

As well as securing a national victory on Sunday, Mr Erdogan scored a
remarkable triumph in the Kurdish south-east, doubling the vote of his
AKP or Justice and Development party in mainly Kurdish areas to win an
absolute majority of the vote with 52%.

"The AKP beat us. The government now has complete power and
legitimacy," said a Kurdish official in the regional capital of
Diyarbakir.

Having received such a vote of confidence from the Kurds, Mr Erdogan
is unlikely to alienate them by invading. The Americans are fiercely
opposed to a Turkish incursion into Kurdistan, the only bit of Iraq
that is relatively stable and successful.

At the weekend, the British ambassador in Ankara said he could not see
what Turkey had to gain from invading northern Iraq. Government
officials and diplomats agree.

One former Turkish ambassador said Turkish forces would get bogged
down "in a quagmire" in the guerrilla territory of mountainous
northern Iraq.

An aide to Mr Erdogan said: "There's been 26 cross-border operations
in 30 years. If Turkey had the feeling that a 27th would put an end to
the PKK, it would not blink."

In addition to the AKP's electoral success in the Kurdish areas, the
main Kurdish party in Turkey, the DTP, took 23 seats, putting it in
the new parliament for the first time since 1994. The DTP is seen as
the political wing of the PKK. The Turkish election system is stacked
against it by setting a 10% national threshold for representation in
parliament. The DTP beat the system by running candidates as
independents.

"That will make a difference," said Hizsar Ozsoy, a Kurdish analyst in
Diyarbakir. "There's definitely a chance for a political opening."

The Erdogan camp has been trying to open political channels to the
Kurdish leadership in Iraq for months, but has been stymied by the
military top brass and the outgoing hostile president of Turkey.

When Mr Erdogan wanted to invite the Iraqi president and Kurdish
leader, Jalal Talabani, to Ankara, Turkey's president, Ahmet Necdet
Sezer, vetoed the move.

In Istanbul and Ankara, the military pressure for an invasion was also
seen as a warning to the Erdogan government against dialogue with the
Kurdish leadership.

Turkey has been at war with the PKK for 30 years in a conflict that
has taken almost 40,000 lives. At least 70 Turkish security forces
have been killed this year. Turkey is home to around 15 million Kurds,
by far the biggest of the Kurdish populations also native to Iraq,
Iran and Syria.

Officially, Turkey does not recognise the regional government of
Kurdistan led by Massoud Barzani. But, sources say, there were
attempts several months ago to set up a secret meeting between the
Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, and Mr Barzani, who, when
leading the Kurdish insurgency against Saddam Hussein, travelled on a
Turkish diplomatic passport.

"If there's an improvement in contacts with Kurdistan and with
Barzani, that will be good for the Turkish Kurds," said the Kurdish
official.

The key to any breakthrough, said the Erdogan aide, was a clear signal
on "terrorism" from Mr Barzani.

<http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=117598>
European Socialists deplore Baykal's decision to stay

European Socialists have deplored the fact that Deniz Baykal, the
leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP), their sister party in
Turkey, has chosen not to resign after a resounding electoral defeat
on Sunday.

Despite Baykal's defiant stance, his political rivals in the left,
Hikmet Çetin and his friends already took action hoping to find a new
leader that would take Turkey's left to new heights.
Socialists who have strongly criticized Baykal on many occasions --
for being too nationalist, too military-inclined and too removed from
the real problems of the Turkish people -- called for the resignation
of Baykal just hours after election results that gave the Justice and
Development Party (AK Party) a landslide victory unprecedented in
Turkish republican history. The officials of Socialist International
(SI) told Today's Zaman that any decision on the CHP should wait until
the beginning of next year, reacting cautiously to questions of
whether the organization would investigate into whether the CHP has
been abiding by the rules of the SI.

Despite the SI's prudent approach, one of the heavyweights of the
European Socialists, Hannes Swoboda, told Today's Zaman he deplored
Baykal's decision to stay at the helm of the party. The vice chairman
of the Socialists at the European Parliament said CHP urgently needed
fundamental reform. "I doubt this can be done with Mr. Baykal. I
deplore the fact that he will not resign and give an opportunity to a
new generation of leaders," he said. Cem Özdemir, a German deputy of
Turkish origin in the European Parliament, told Today's Zaman that the
CHP is now "a private club of Deniz Baykal's" and that it was a waste
of energy to comment on it.

The vice chairman of the Socialists -- the second largest group in the
European Parliament with 217 out of 785 seats -- and a former
rapporteur on Turkey, Swoboda said there would be serious pressure
from Europe, including his group, to put the CHP under serious
observation to determine whether it is still a Social Democrat party
aligning itself with the principles of social democracy. The Socialist
leader said that if Baykal manages to survive until September, the SI
would "absolutely have a serious debate" about future relations with
the CHP. He said there would be a delegation going to Turkey to check
facts on the ground that would speak to both current and former
members of the CHP, including those who have been elected on the AK
Party ticket. When asked if it was ironic that the SI would talk to
social democrats elected from AK Party lists, Swoboda said, "It is a
disaster for the CHP." Accusing the "so-called leftist parties" and
the right-wingers of not being interested in modernizing Turkey,
Swoboda said the election has been between the democrats and the
non-democrats, implicitly implying that the AK Party was the only
democratic party seriously engaged in the modernization of the
country.

Özdemir said the new left should be organized in a new political
movement that includes liberals, Alevis, union activists, Freedom and
Democracy Party (ÖDP) members, members of the Social Democratic
People's Party (SHP) and independent Kurds as well as people like
Hikmet Çetin and Ercan Karakaş if Baykal resists calls for his
resignation. Stressing that the CHP has no relation whatsoever with
the universal principles of the left, Özdemir said the SI should start
to seriously think about what to do with the CHP.

Jan Marinus Wiersma, the vice chairman of the Socialist group in the
European Parliament, and Joost Lagendijk, the co-chairman of the
Turkey-EU Joint Parliament Commission, had both called for the
resignation of Baykal late Sunday night as it became clear that the
CHP had been defeated once again.

25.07.2007
SELÇUK GÜLTAŞLI  BRUSSELS

<http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=79136>
Women stronger in the Turkish Parliament
Tuesday, July 24, 2007

YASEMİN SİM ESMEN
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News

The number of female deputies more than doubled in Sunday's general
elections. Increasing from 24 in the previous Parliament elected in
2002 to 50 in Sunday's elections, women have made their mark on the
2007 general elections. The Justice and Development Party's (AKP)
responsibility toward women has increased, claims the Women
Entrepreneurs association of Turkey (KAGİDER) President Gülseren
Onanç. As evidence, she cites the fact that the Justice and
Development Party (AKP) yielded more than half of the female deputies
in the new Parliament. She said she believes this to be a directive
for the AKP's to solve women's issues in Turkey. "I do not know if the
AKP has read this as 'I have now given you the authority and I would
like a resolution for my problem.' But a resolution will be demanded,"
she says.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118523976477375697.html>
Turkey's No. 1 Task Is More Employment
By AYSE FERLIEL
July 24, 2007; Page A6

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
party's stronger-than-expected victory in parliamentary elections
Sunday was an endorsement of economic policies that have helped fuel
several years of growth and made the country a candidate for European
Union membership, economists and other analysts said.

But rapid growth has failed to translate into more employment, and Mr.
Erdogan's next economic task will be to expand jobs and let wealth
trickle down to the thousands who either lost their jobs or have never
joined the work force.

Economic growth was a major factor in the vote, as Mr. Erdogan
acknowledged in a speech after the election Sunday: "We will continue
with economic development and democratic reforms with determination in
order to raise our nation's living standards."

Markets welcomed the victory by the Justice and Development Party, or
AKP, amid expectations the election results would bring continuity in
economic restructuring and Turkey's efforts to join Europe. Istanbul's
blue-chip stock-market index rose 5.1%, while the Turkish lira rose
more than 2% against the dollar and the euro.

Mr. Erdogan has been a strong advocate of the International Monetary
Fund-recommended changes Turkey has been implementing since the 1980s
to replace state paternalism with private-sector-led growth.

The economy has been booming. In the past five years, growth in gross
domestic product exceeded 7% annually, and exports more than tripled
to more than $95 billion for the year ended June 30. Stronger growth
hasn't substantially reduced Turkey's unemployment rate. The social
costs of the changes -- such as increased crime rates, displaced
families and even suicides -- are starting to appear before the full
benefits of the growth have been realized.

"Economic growth and employment creation have become disconnected,"
the Independent Social Scientists Alliance of Turkey, a group of
academics and researchers, said in a report last month describing
Turkey's "jobless growth" path.

Unemployment has remained stubbornly high -- about 10%, compared with
6.5% in 2000, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute. And in
the cities, where hundreds of thousands of rural workers flock each
year in search of jobs, unemployment last year was 12.6%, the
statistical institute says.

<http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/NA-AN501_TURKEC_20070723192121.gif>

In the past three years, the effects of prolonged unemployment
combined with job losses from privatization have started to stanch
consumers' willingness to spend, economists have said.

Historically, private consumption in Turkey has accounted for slightly
more than half of gross domestic product. In 2001, private-consumption
expenditure was growing at a 44% rate but by last year, that had
fallen to 16%. In the same period, consumer sentiment also fell
sharply.

After Sunday's election victory, "a more unified and progressive AK
Party has a fresh mandate...and thus could prove a more effective
legislative force," Moody's Investors Service Vice President Kristin
Lindow said.

Much will depend on how quickly a new government is formed and on how
the AKP-dominated Parliament faces electing a new president. If Mr.
Erdogan can come up with a candidate acceptable to all parties as well
as the military, and form a government at the same time, a new cabinet
will likely announce its program by mid-August, observers say. The new
government will have to tackle several structural issues, from
unemployment to social-security and tax overhauls.

The Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association said in a
report last month that at least 550,000 jobs should be created on
average each year, to reduce unemployment outside the agricultural
sector.

The AKP government said the key to reducing unemployment is more labor
flexibility. "Turkey has made huge progress in terms of macroeconomic
reforms. Now, it's time for microreforms, which will make the country
more competitive," Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan said in an
interview before the election. Mr. Unakitan was re-elected to Turkey's
parliament Sunday.

"One of our priorities will be reducing the tax burden on employment,"
he added. "In addition, we will make labor more flexible, by changing
some of the laws that hinder employment. Part-time employment should
also be encouraged."

The industrialists' association report echoed Mr. Unakitan's views.
"The labor market has to be supported by micro reforms," it said in
its report. "Regulations related to flexible labor should be designed
such that they can create jobs and not encourage the informal
economy," it said. "They should also be supported by social-security
reform."
--
Yoshie