Gulan: Turkey is waiting

http://www.gulan-media.com/h632/g29.pdf

In Turkey last week's most important news was the surprise announcement of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He gives up his campaign to become the next president. But his AKP party fellow, foreign minister Abdullah Gul registered himself as a candidate. Comments to this have been mixed.

AK party has the majority of seats in parliament so it is easy to quess who will be the next president in Turkey. Army seems to be pleased that Erdogan changed his mind. But why army accepts Abdullah Gul?

Public discussion about an AKP representative as the next president has not been so much about what kind of president he would be. Most polemic has been about what the wife of president has on her head. And in this sense Mrs Gul is similar than Mrs Erdogan. Also she wears a scarf. Some weeks ago General Yasar Buyukanit said Turkey must have secular president. So why army is satisfied when Abdullah Gul will be the next president of Turkey?

Because the biggest problem in Turkey is the Kurdish question. "Deep state" is fighting against the Kurds, not against Islamists. In this perspective Erdogan is reformist whose target is clear: the democratization of Turkey. August 2005 he went to Diyarbakir and spoke about solving the Kurdish question. I do not remember that Abdullah Gul would have spoken in such a way.

Erdogan will not be the next president but he is still the prime minister. AKP is running election campaign so that they have both the seats of president and prime minister. AKP has good possibilities to win the elections and to build also the next government.

This is very important year for Turkey. Now everybody is just waiting for the elections. In them the direction of Turkey's future will be decided. Some foreign observers think that the present tension is caused by the coming elections and the situation will cool down after them. I am afraid that they are wrong. It can turn to the opposite. Maybe the elections lead to a very uncear situation. Maybe the winner will be the ultra nationalist party MHP. Or there can be the opposite situation, MHP get much less votes than they expect and the disappointment will lead to violent reactions among its supporters.

From the Kurdish perspective the most important thing is that the elections are not free when hundreads of Kurdish politicians are in prison. The election campaign is going on now. How any party can run a campaign from prison? Arrested DTP leaders must be released immediately.

If elections are arranged under such conditions Kurds can not expect much of the new parliament. Remember that the biggest problem in Turkey is the Kurdish question. If Turks do not understand this and start to find a peaceful solution to this problem what other possiblities the Kurds in Turkey have? It was a surprise that Erdogan changed his mind about becoming the president. More surprises will surely occur during the next weeks and months.