Three things that can lose you a referendum

It's referendum time in Turkey again. On 12 September, 49 million or so Turks will be asked to approve the latest package of substantive changes to the constitution drafted 28 years ago by the country's last military junta. In the best traditions of irony, voting day wil also mark thirty years since the coup that put that junta in power.

The last time Turks were consulted on constitutional change was October 2007, when the headline reform was to the presidency. "We want a president elected by the people," the AK government proclaimed, "and may he hold office for two five-year terms." 69 percent of voters agreed. Changes relating to parliament's voting rules and term in office were bundled into the same package. All said, an easy win.

Three weeks tomorrow, voters will be called back again, but this time it won't be as straightforward for the AK Party. Opinion polls indicate the yes vote is ahead, but only narrowly so, and a large proportion of voters are still undecided. Three reasons help explain why 2007 won't be repeated again.

The first is the Turkish army, which is not a factor in this referendum. In 2007, the General Staff published its notorious "e-coup" online, criticising the government and the threat it posed to the secular state. The gamble back-fired: AK called a snap poll, was returned by an increased majority, and went through a honeymoon period that helped it comfortably win the referendum too. Many AK supporters then were simply those alarmed by the prospect of a military intervention.

This time, there is no stand-off with the military. Aside from a spat surrounding the appointment of one particular general to the post of Land Forces Commander, the government and army have been in full agreement - over the fight against the PKK - and there is no anti-coup sentiment to exploit.

This helps partly explain the second reason why history won't be repeated - that the government's support base is shrinking. 2007 saw a strong government with a strong mandate presiding over a strengthening economy; 2010 brings us a weaker government with a nearly-expired mandate, presiding over an economy out of recession but facing unemployment above 10 percent. Put another way, the people are bored with this government and aren't all that richer than they were three years ago. Besides, they now have a credible alternative.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was elected leader of the opposition CHP in late May. Turkish voters were interested: here at last was a personality to rival Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister, who spoke colloquially about jobs and public services, and didn't have that aura of elitism that followed the former CHP leader around.

Mr Kılıçdaroğlu has maintained his party's support of a no vote, not entirely out of a compulsive rejection of anything proposed by AK, but also because of rational argument: why, for instance, is a package of such diverse reforms being voted as a whole, rather than as individual clauses? The CHP leader's voice will sway many in the next few weeks.

The third reason why this referendum will be no easy win is that the proposed reforms are hideously complicated. I certainly can't profess to understanding them all yet, and I suspect a lot of the Turkish public is with me. Part of the reason for this is the lack of any headlining reform: in 2007, people were promised the right to elect their own president. Most people understood that. In 2010, people are being promised that senior judges will be appointed in a slightly different way. A marketing dream this is not.

As it stands, the governing AK party is supported by the far-right Great Union Party (BBP) and the religious Felicity Party (SP) in a yes vote. Aside from the CHP, the major parties urging a no vote are the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), the centre-right Democrats (DP) and the centre-left DSP. The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) are currently boycotting the vote, but have incidated they may switch to a yes if some of their demands are met.

But more on that in a future post. Over the coming weeks, I'll examine the arguments of the yes and no camps, cover the political machinations as Mssrs Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu campaign, and come to a - no doubt highly influential - conclusion over what verdict Turks should reach on 12 September.

Haven't you missed the boat?

Today was really just a formality. Almost a quarter century after Turgut Özal tore his loyalties away from Süleyman Demirel, the prime minister unseated by Turkey's 1980 coup, and formed a party of his own, a reconciliation is now official. Neither man was there to witness the reunion – Özal died in 1993, while the elderly Mr Demirel is in retirement – but a huge photograph of the two in thoughtful conversation looked down on delegates from both parties gathered to seal the deal. Today those delegates voted to abolish Özal’s Motherland (Anavatan) party and transfer all its assets to the Democrat Party (DP), successor to an outfit established by Mr Demirel.

Party leader Hüsamettin Cindoruk hailed it as a momentous event, the long-awaited reunion of the Turkish centre-right. The former claim might be true, but the latter is doubtful.

There was little love lost between Turgut Özal and Süleyman Demirel. Özal was a member of Mr Demirel’s Justice Party (AP) in the 1970s, and was catapulted into the transitional government established after the military coup of 12 September 1980. He was handed responsibility for reviving Turkey's shattered economy, a role that gave him broad recognition in a country suddenly bereft of civilian politicians. Özal benefited from this new-found profile, and from Mr Demirel’s ban from politics, to establish Motherland and soundly win the first post-coup election in 1983. He repeated the success in 1987. Many Demirelites still regard his defection as treason.

When his ban was lifted in 1987, Mr Demirel did not join his former deputy but took the helm of the True Path Party (DYP) and established himself in opposition. There was little policy difference to separate the two centre-right parties, so the divide became one over personalities. Far from serving together in government, they became occupied with slandering each other, and would often refuse to support the other’s policy simply because of who proposed it. It was a bitter separation that defined Turkish politics in the 1990s and helped turn conservative Turkish voters to more overtly religious parties. Anavatan never won another election after Mr Demirel’s return to politics; neither did the DYP after Mr Demirel became president. Both parties failed to cross the 10 percent electoral threshold in 2002 and became rump outsiders.

It is significant, of course, that these two parties have finally come together. But it has happened after so many missed opportunities: 1987, after Mr Demirel’s return; 1993, after Özal’s death; 2002, when both parties were curtly dismissed by voters; and particularly 2007, when a resurgent Motherland under Erkan Mumcu could have helped elect Turkey’s next president and thus dictated the terms of the merger. Mr Mumcu chose to boycott the presidential vote. His subsequent opinion polls were so low he didn’t even bother to contest the subsequent general election.

This new emboldened Democrat Party is far from unifying the centre-right. For one, it is spectacularly unpopular: SONAR opinion poll in today’s Cumhuriyet suggests less than two percent of Turks would vote for it. Perhaps more importantly, there are other parties that claim the centre-right crown. The governing AK party’s founder members include many former DYP and Motherland heavyweights. One of them, Abdullatif Sener, has since separated to form a non-descript party of his own, the Turkey Party. The centre-right is as crowded as ever before.

Speaking this afternoon, Mr Cindoruk made the populist move of slamming the AK party’s Kurdish policy. But interestingly, and in contrast to the opposition parties in parliament, he also called for the government to revive its plans for a new constitution, one that has not been drafted by the army. The question is whether he will keep to that line, and whether he anyone will hear him.

Why, oh why, could anyone possibly think that this is a good idea?

Part of the government in Britain, where I appear to be invariably based at the moment, seems obsessed with dispensing with its prime minister after less than a year in the job. "We're not popular, we'll probably lose the next election, it's not working out for us," they mutter behind closed doors, before adding: "Off with his head and bring in a new one." Or something to that effect.

The instinct in Turkey is precisely the opposite. When things go wrong, the prevailing mood is one of either stagnation or regression. Stagnation is the case with the Republican People's Party (CHP), which recently re-elected its directionless leader, unopposed, in an appalling example of democracy (see my outdated entry on the CHP for some back story). Regression appears to be what is happening to the Democrat Party (DP), which is trying to bring back its former leader and last prime minister, Tansu Çiller.

Mrs Çiller assumed the vacant post of prime minister in 1993, after Süleyman Demirel moved up to the presidency. She wasn't particularly high-ranking - a mere state minister, certainly not senior in the cabinet - and she contested her party's leadership against such heavyweights as İsmet Sezgin and Köksal Toptan. Her victory was credited largely to Turkey's media, including the fledgling private television channels, which made much of the idea of a first woman prime minister.

If you asked her what her greatest achievement in office was, she would probably tell you it was that Turkey entered a Customs Union with the European Union under her watch. Or that the military's funding was stepped up to combat the mounting PKK threat. She wouldn't be one to talk of the banking crisis of the early 1990s, her alleged corrupt practices (including tenders that favoured her wealthy businessman husband), or the fact that she never won a election.

Mrs Çiller was a staggeringly ineffective leader. Under her, the party won a successively smaller share of the vote, finally failing to cross the electoral threshold in 2002. Her first election, in 1995, saw her lose to Necmettin Erbakan's Welfare Party (RP). It was a shock to Turkey's secular establishment for the overtly religious RP to do so well; what shocked them more was Mrs Çiller joining them in coalition. During the campaign, she had declared Mr Erbkaban "a smuggler of heroin" and herself "the safeguard of secularism", but after six months and a hefty libel fee the two leaders were in a "power rotating" scheme whereby Mr Erbakan would be prime minister first, and Mrs Çiller would follow in a year-and-a-half.

She stood silent as her senior partner spurned the west and made highly publicised visits to Iran and Libya. She was genuinely surprised, upon Mr Erbakan's resignation, not to be asked to form the next government. She was not a good leader, and now her old rump party wants her back.

To bring back a former, supposedly succesful leader is a delusional byword for political recovery in Turkey. Party leaders are effectively sanctified in the country - most party conventions, for instance, will feature large portraits of both Atatürk and the present leader - and they are a rallying point for genuine enthusiasm and unwavering loyalty. During a recent parliamentary debate on smoking bans, one Nationalist Action Party (MHP) MP spoke passionately about the charismatic style with which his leader, Devlet Bahçeli, could hold and smoke a cigarette. He was probably not even planted.

This near-blind degree of loyalty makes it somewhat easier to understand why Turkish parties tend not to blame their leaders for electoral failure. But it is still delusional: parties don't to recognise it even when the public have had enough of them. In the 1999 elections, having failed to cross the ten percent threshold to win seats in parliament, Mr Baykal resigned. It was widely hailed as an act of political maturity, but he was back in just six months. Mr Bahçeli, Mrs Çiller and Motherland Party leader Mesut Yılmaz all made similar pledges when their parties failed to cross the threshold in 2002; with this latest offer to Mrs Çiller, all have now returned to politics.

Turks have a long tradition of sanctifying their leaders. Any tourist to Turkey will tell you Kemal Atatürk is an obvious example, but it applies to more recent leaders too: the late Bülent Ecevit ousted CHP leader and War of Independence veteran Ismet İnönü in 1973. İnönü had been leader for thirty-five years, and Ecevit was widely credited with ending what was effectively a theocracy. But that same cult of personality came to apply to Ecevit, and it would be twenty-nine years before he was toppled himself.

Few outside the DP will celebrate Mrs Çiller's return. It will do little for the party's electability, as its traditional centre-right base has long been subsumed by the ruling AK Party. But it does have wider implications for Turkish politics: a year ago, I wrote that AK's electoral victory, while welcome, urgently needed to be balanced by an effective opposition. With stagnation in the CHP and regression in the DP, it does not appear to be happening. And that is not good for Turkey.