A family quarrel !

Turkey's president

A family quarrel !

Is Abdullah Gul ready to challenge Recep Tayyip Erdogan ?

Apr 15th 2010 | ANKARA | From The Economist print edition

A Turk in his palace

THE elegant office of President Abdullah Gul says something about Turkey. Its bay window looks out over Ankara. On a wall hang landscapes by an Armenian Ottoman court artist, Ivan Aivasovsky. Under Mr Gul’s predecessor, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the window was walled in and the Aivasovskys rotted in the cellar. A dour former judge, Mr Sezer rarely travelled. Mr Gul completed his 61st foreign visit as president (to Oman) this week. Overtly pious, yet pro-Western and a free-marketeer, Mr Gul symbolises the new global ambitions of his country.

To most of the world Mr Gul is a moderate, who in five years as foreign minister balanced the excesses of his mercurial prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Erdogan publicly sparred with Israel, but Mr Gul quietly lobbied Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. Mr Erdogan stands for charisma, Mr Gul for common sense. But now an undeclared battle is brewing: Mr Erdogan is believed to covet the presidency, but Mr Gul wants to keep it.

One problem is that nobody, not even Mr Gul, seems to know when his term expires. “Do I have seven years or five years? I don’t know,” Mr Gul says. The trouble is that when parliament (dominated by Mr Erdogan’s mildly Islamist Justice and Development, or AK, party) elected Mr Gul to the job in 2007, it introduced changes to have the next president directly elected by voters for a renewable five-year term. The question is whether Mr Gul can benefit from this and run again; or whether he, like previous presidents, can serve only a single seven-year term and step down in 2014.

Legal opinion is divided, but politics will surely prevail. The Gul camp argues that the president is entitled to another term. Mr Erdogan’s allies disagree. “Mr Erdogan supported Mr Gul’s presidency. It’s his turn to make sacrifices for Mr Erdogan,” says a source close to the prime minister. A general election is due next year. Should AK win a third term, Mr Erdogan may be tempted to use the mandate to elevate himself into the presidency. Some believe that the AK’s latest attempts to reform the constitution, including measures to enhance the president’s powers, are tailored for Mr Erdogan to take the job. But what if Mr Gul decides to stand against him? That could split the party and even bring down the government.

The party faithful ridicule this idea. In Islamic tradition, they argue, the ambitions of any individual are set aside for the common good of the umma, or community. They may be right. Mr Gul and Mr Erdogan began their careers in Turkey’s Islamist movement and have been close for years. They co-founded AK and secured its first election victory, in 2002. Mr Gul was prime minister to start with, as Mr Erdogan could not take his parliamentary seat until March 2003, when he made Mr Gul foreign minister.

Differences between the two did not surface until 2007, when Mr Gul announced his bid for the presidency, apparently against Mr Erdogan’s wishes. The chief of staff, Yasar Buyukanit, promptly threatened a coup, on the grounds that Mr Gul’s wife, Hayrunissa, wears the Islamic headscarf (banned in state institutions), making her husband unfit to be president. Mr Erdogan then called a snap election, giving Mr Gul a platform to campaign for his presidency. When AK won again, with an even bigger share of the vote than in 2002, Mr Gul duly got the job.

This was a huge blow to the generals. Had Mr Gul not stuck to his guns, their views might have prevailed. Mr Gul’s mild demeanour disguises the steely will that first led him to rebel against Necmettin Erbakan, founder of Turkey’s political Islamists, who was ousted as prime minister in a “soft coup” in 1997. Although he does not have Mr Erdogan’s popular support, he retains influence inside AK. But will he keep it when Mr Erdogan draws up candidates’ lists for the next election?

Much may depend on the election result. Should AK do relatively badly, Mr Erdogan’s presidential ambitions will be squashed and Mr Gul might count himself lucky to have his seven years. What is clear is that, so long as Turkey’s opposition parties are ineffectual, the only serious challenges to AK come from within.

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