On the Fast Track of Westernization

Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller rode in May to power on a popular wave bent on political and economic change. Today, that wave seems to have left her high and dry.



A series of political blunders and public gaffes have prompted members of the country's political, economic and intellectual elite to wonder out loud whether Muslim Turkey's first woman prime minister may turn out to be one of modern Turkey's greatest disappointments.



Mrs. Ciller has become the target of both hawks and doves for her reluctance to take the lead in resolving the Kurdish insurgency, and though she vows to push through with privatization and tax reform in a bid to narrow Turkey's $5 billion budget deficit, she faces rebellion in her own True Path Party ( DYP ).



Like American President Bill Clinton, Mrs. Ciller is learning that honeymoons are short and changes are hard to bring about. But Mrs. Ciller's situation is a far more perilous one for she can be removed by the DYP at its congress scheduled for November.



Yet, during a recent interview she made clear that surrender was not an option she is considering.



The 44 year-old Mrs. Ciller radiates confidence, asserting that she will "give the leadership that is required" to finish the job of "restructuring the state" begun by the late Turgut Ozal, the man most Turks credit with launching Turkey's transition to a dynamic regional power.



She leaves no doubt that she will give the military a wide ranging freedom to suppress Kurdish terrorists. At the same time, she has announced an economic aid package for predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey, the country's most underdeveloped region.



She insists that she will move ahead with rapid privatization of Turkey's massive public sector which drains the country's resources and spurs on inflation already galloping at 66 percent.



"I want to move fast," the U.S.-trained economist says. "It is in my nature. But I don't want to do something that will endanger this. Convincing the rest of the world and the people inside Turkey takes time."



Mrs. Ciller's ascendancy represents to many Turks the hope for further westernization of Muslim but secular Turkey, a streamlining of the country's bloated bureaucracy and an end to old-style patronage politics. She came to power at a time when Turkey is witnessing rapid political and economic change and is in desperate need for bold leadership that can resolve its massive problems and establish it as a regional leader at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus.



Noting that Mrs. Ciller has carefully avoided playing Turkey's secular elite against more traditional Islamic segments of society, sociologist Nilufer Gole says "the election of Tansu Ciller has reinforced the idea of change in Turkey. "



An expert on Islam, Ms. Gole describes Mrs. Ciller as a woman who worked her way up the ranks to become both powerful and wealthy. Recalling how she first met Mrs. Ciller at the university, Ms. Gole says: I thought ‘wow' as she pulled up in her white BMW and her expensive white suit. Today, she's a success story, a dream that Turkey may want to share with her."



Adds Rahmi Koc, chairman of Koc Holdings A.S. and Turkey's wealthiest businessman: "People throw stones at trees that bear the best fruit. Ciller must be given a chance. "



Yet, with Mrs. Ciller barely seven months in office, officials of her own party suggest that someone else may have to complete her job.



After serving as economics minister under Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel for 18 months, she became premier when Mr. Demirel switched jobs following President Ozal's death in April.



A self-made woman predictably dubbed the Iron Lady of Turkey, she conveys determination to confront issues and a willingness to take responsibility. Yet, she is seemingly oblivious to the disintegrating world around her.



Political insiders say Mrs. Ciller has put herself in a difficult spot by enlisting the support of a group of powerful Kurdish businessmen and professionals.



This same group that in May helped elect her head of the dominant party in government, thus assuring her ascendancy as prime minister, now seeks a political solution involving full cultural rights and a degree of autonomy to the Kurdish uprising, a nine-year war in southeastern Turkey that has cost more than 6,700 lives.



At the same time, Mrs. Ciller has failed to win the support of the military, still a crucial political force in Turkey who favor brutal suppression of the insurgents. Viewing itself as the guardian against separatism, the military has warned that political concessions to the Kurds would amount to a surrender to terrorism, according to senior government officials, including Mrs. Ciller's chief advisor, Valkan Vural.



Other officials with close ties to the military say that Turkey's military leadership has indicated to Mrs. Ciller that it will seek her replacement as prime minister by engineering her deposal as leader of the True Path Party (DYP) if she crosses an invisible red line.



That red line, these officials say, includes Mrs. Ciller's repeated hints that she may authorize Kurdish language broadcasts. "Such a move would also cause a storm inside her own party," says a senior DYP official.



Mrs. Ciller brushes aside allegations by senior members of her own True Path Party and even fervent supporters that she lacks political experience, a grasp of key issues, the ability to lead a team and that she is blinded by ambition.



By proposing, for example, to create a parliamentary commission that would seek solutions to the Kurdish problem, these sources argue that Mrs. Ciller highlighted her failure to engage the military and her failure to understand the workings of Turkey's political structure.



Asserting that she has as many as seven privatization prospects already lined up, she says she first needs to establish the necessary social security net for those who may lose their jobs before launching her program at the end of the year.



But time may be a luxury Mrs. Ciller can't afford. Though confronted with problems that call for long-term, unpopular decisions, she faces a year of electoral politics.



The Social Democrat People's Party (SHP), the minor partner in the ruling coalition, is likely to soon choose a new leader who will be less accommodating on the Kurdish issue as well as on the social consequences of privatization than present Deputy Prime Minister Erdal Inonu, an elderly gentleman who has announced his withdrawal from politics.



In November, Mrs. Ciller has to seek reelection at the congress of her own True Path Party and the following March local elections in Turkey are certain to be viewed as a national referendum on her government.



"Ciller is dynamic, quick and smart," says Mehmet Akif Isik, a businessman from southern Turkey who established a close relationship with Mrs. Ciller when she was still an economics professor at Istanbul's Bosphorus University. "The question, however, is whether she can assemble the right team. Indications are she can't. She has always had a problem of gathering the right team and getting along with it," Mr. Isik says.



"The problem is that Mrs. Ciller knows nothing," adds Mehmet Dulger, third in command in Mrs. Ciller's True Path Party, in charge of the party's daily affairs. She would not know if (the southern city of) Malatya is east or west of Kayseri. It's very difficult for us after a man like Demirel who knew every hamlet in the country and the name of even the most minor government officials," he says.



Like Mr. Isik, Mr. Dulger takes issue with Mrs. Ciller's failure to include her opponents from within the party in her cabinet and her alleged inability to take advice from even her closest aides.



"She has organized a cabinet in which she is the only economist," says Mr. Dulger. "She has to authorize everything".



In charging that her government is too centralized, Mr. Dulger adds that Mrs. Ciller has put obscure people in important posts. "The minister of communications in charge of transport and the PTT, a sector with a highly developed technology, does not speak a foreign language," he says.



Adds Mr. Isik: "Ciller represents my aspirations and my vision of a very Westernized, developed and dynamic Turkey. But Ciller has made a mistake. She should heal the wounds in the party instead of letting them fester. The problem is that she has a weak grasp of the issues."



Mr. Isik likens Mrs. Ciller to Ronald Reagan whom he describes as a successful president even though he "knew nothing about nothing." Though photogenic and sensitive to her image in the media, Mrs. Ciller has yet to prove that like Mr. Reagan she has the ability to communicate her vision to the Turkish people.



She dismisses repeated language gaffes, including correct linguistic references to the symbol of her True Path Party and the names of Turkic heads of states, as the result of being overworked.



"Turkish is my native language. It's true that I've been overworked the last two to three weeks, but how can I be lacking in my Turkish," she says responding to allegations that her command of the language is limited.



Mrs. Ciller's litmus test is likely to be the Kurdish issue.



While hardliners endorse her determination to combat terrorism, many Turks are hoping that she will also unveil proposals to erase the roots of widespread dissatisfaction in southeastern Turkey.

Adopting tough language while stressing her dedication to human rights, Mrs. Ciller insists that Turkey "does not have a Kurdish problem ... We don't have a minority problem. (We have) in southeastern Anatolia a terrorism problem ... The state has an obligation to protect its citizens. I am bound to do that and determined to do that," she says.



Following military leaks to the Turkish press asserting that the rebel Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) is supported by Iran and Syria and in addition operates military camps in Kurdish controlled northern Iraq, Mrs. Ciller argues that combating terrorism is an international problem.



Referring to Syria and Iran in a speech on radio and television, Mrs. Ciller warned that "those who want to be our enemies should think twice."



Mrs. Ciller is vague in her answers to questions concerning proposals to lift restrictions on Kurdish language broadcasts, the changing of Turkish town names with their original Kurdish ones and the granting of a far-reaching degree of autonomy to the Kurds.



"Our language is Turkish. That is the language we teach in schools," she says without rejecting the possibility of a bilingual Turkish and Kurdish curriculum. Proposals for Kurdish language broadcasts have yet to be "studied by parliament, " she adds.



Supporters of Mrs. Ciller say that she has deliberately adopted a tough public stance to cover her right-wing flank should she decide to announce significant gestures to the Kurds.



But her critics are less convinced. "Ciller is trying to take control of the Kurdish issue without discussions with military commanders," Mr. Dulger says. "They are Turkey's most powerful pressure group and still in politics whether you like it or not."



Military and conservative distrust of Mrs. Ciller is fueled by her reliance on a group of key Kurds who include the chairman of the Union of Chamber of Commerce Yalim Erez and Minister of State Necmettin Cevheri, a senior DYP official, described by party insiders as Turkey's backstage prime minister.



These insiders who include Mrs. Ciller's chief advisor, Mr. Vural, say Mr. Erez and Mr. Cevheri engineered both the political and financial support Mrs. Ciller needed to win the DYP leadership last May which almost automatically ensured that as a leader of the major coalition partner she would also become prime minister. "Cevheri is her political backing, Erez is her financial backing. That is what concerns people and that is what (Chief of Staff Gen. Dogan) Gures knows," says a senior DYP official.



For her part, Mrs. Ciller dismisses allegations that inexperience coupled with lack of communication may prove to be her downfall. "I don't believe I lack experience. I've been in government for two years," she says.



"I was the only person with projects behind her. I developed these projects as fast as I could and was determined. The country needs this and the country recognizes this."