Turkey’s new government. Not enough cleaning yet

Date: 08/02/03

The “clean” party that now governs Turkey is not living up to its name

AFTER years of ineffectual rule by assorted coalitions, Turkey got a single-party government after the Justice and Development Party (AK) swept to power with 34% of the vote last November. The party (whose initials spell ak, “clean” in Turkish) looked well placed to root out corruption, sort out the economy, drive through a deal to reunify Cyprus and accelerate reforms at home to secure eventual entry into the European Union. Three months on, such hopes are fading. “This is one of the weakest and clumsiest governments we've ever had,” says Cuneyt Ulsever, a commentator for the daily Hurriyet, and until recently a vocal AK enthusiast.

That may be unfair. Power came at a bad time for the AK. Against most Turks' wishes, the country is about to be dragged into the attack on Iraq. Time is running out for a deal in Cyprus, after decades.

On both issues the AK has tried to be bold. The prime minister, Abdullah Gul, had defied intense pressure from Washington to let thousands of American ground troops be deployed in Turkey, until he started this week to give way to Mr Bush. On Cyprus, Tayyip Erdogan, the AK's chairman and real leader, has embraced the latest UN peace plan, defying his generals and accusing the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, of obstruction.

It is on the economy that AK is floundering; so much so that the IMF has delayed releasing its next loan tranche of $1.6 billion until the government proves it is serious about reforms. The main test is the Fund's target, 6.5% of GDP, for its “primary” (ie, before debt-service) budget surplus. To reach that will mean further cuts in spending - and reneging on pre-electoral promises of relief to the millions of civil servants, pensioners and unemployed, who helped propel the AK to power. The government has yet to come up with convincing evidence that it can meet the target. Meanwhile, it has raised pensions, claiming it can pay for this through a tax increase on tobacco and alcohol.

The measure has brought its beneficiaries little relief. Wholesale prices surged by 5.6% in January, thanks notably to higher oil prices. The government is pledged to cut annual consumer-price inflation to 20% from the 30% recorded at the end of 2002. That looks unlikely.

On top of this, the IMF disliked a bail-out deal last week by the banking-watchdog agency with Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, owner of Pamukbank, a failed bank seized by the agency in June. He is alleged to have siphoned vast sums out of it and another bank that he controlled into his other companies. He is also a media magnate. The government rescued him, claim his rivals, in exchange for backing from his newspapers and television channels.

Mr Erdogan said that the watchdog had worked out the deal on its own. But he then added that the independence of such agencies needed to be reduced by bringing them under political control, triggering fresh wrath at the IMF.

Openness is not, it seems, a priority for the government. It has shelved plans to end the immunity from criminal charges enjoyed by members of parliament. And it is talking of revising a public-procurement law brought in by the previous government, under EU and IMF pressure, that makes it very hard to rig public contracts. The idea is to exempt municipalities - which account for some 70% of these contracts. In sum, not a very ak picture.

The 'clean' party that now governs Turkey is not living up to its name.