TRKNWS-L As Ataturk's Legacy ...

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From: APS. at apsf.aps.nl(Newsdesk) (APS (Newsdesk))
Subject: TRKNWS-L  As Ataturk's Legacy ...


Department: Business Week International Editions: Spotlight On Turkey
Issue: January 9, 1995
AS ATATURK'S LEGACY COMES UNDER FIRE......WATERS FLOW OVER AN ARID PLAIN

   In Turkey these days, the battle lines are drawn. On one side are those
who cleave to the secularist ideals set down by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
founder of the modern Turkish nation. On the other are those who challenge
the idea that the vision of a man who died almost 60 years ago can still set
the agenda for 60 million people. And despite-or maybe because of-decades of
near-deification, the numbers in the anti-Ataturk camp appear to be growing.
   In addition to Islamists, represented by the Welfare Party of Necmettin
Erbakan, there are separatist Kurds and other non-Turkish minority groups who
feel stripped of their identities.
   The main challenge to the Ataturk legacy comes from the Islamists.
Capitalizing on public disgust with corruption and greed in high places that
dates back to the Turgut Ozal era of the 1980s, and the total disarray of the
mainstream groups, Erbakan's Welfare Party has emerged as a real contender.
   In municipal elections held in the spring of 1994, the party captured the
mayor's office in Turkey's three largest cities--Istanbul, Ankara, and
Izmir--plus a host of smaller localities. By-elections for Parliament
scheduled to be held in December were postponed by Prime Minister Tansu
Ciller, at least partially because of her fear that Welfare would capture
most of the contended seats. The paradox is that it was Ciller who emptied
them when she stripped a number of Kurdish deputies belonging to the
now-banned Democratic Party (DEP) of their parliamentary immunity. The former
deputies were first charged with treason for meeting with the leader of the
outlawed Kurdish Workers Party in Damascus. The treason charge potentially
carries the death penalty, but this later was dropped, and the former
deputies were sentenced to 15 years in jail.
   Although Ciller recently suggested that the state ``should do to Welfare
what it did to DEP,'' her True Path Party is trying to assuage the Kurds with
religion--which is exactly Welfare's platform. As an ideology, Islamism
transcends ethnic issues between nationalist Turks and Kurds. But the
prospect of giving religion a political role deeply alienates secularists.
   Something must be done about the burning Kurdish issue. Since violence
erupted in 1984, more than 15,000 have died. And despite an expenditure of
around $1 billion a year on security, no end appears in sight. The government
says security must be established before an expansion of Kurdish rights and
prerogatives is discussed.
   Meanwhile, the Turkish lira continues to fall (it is now 38,000 to the
dollar, vs. 20,000 this time last year), the tourism bubble has burst, and
the dream of creating a Turkic economic zone in the Muslim republics of the
former Soviet Union has turned into a black hole into which resources are
poured, but out of which nothing seems to come forth.
   Would you believe a new Garden of Eden? The Turks do, and they call it
GAP--the Turkish acronym for Southeast Anatolian Project--a massive $36
billion project to irrigate Upper Mesopotamia by tapping the waters of the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
   By any yardstick, GAP is huge. Under way since 1976, when completed in
2005, it will consist of 22 dams and reservoirs; 19 hydroelectric plants
capable of generating 27 billion kilowatts of power; and two gigantic,
29-kilometer-long tunnels feeding water into thousands of miles of irrigation
canals crisscrossing 16.9 million hectares of land.
   One reason it took 18 years to complete was the vast financial outlay
required. International institutions, such as the World Bank, declined to
support the project, citing ecological concerns. A more likely reason was
pressure from downstream states of Syria and Iraq, which worry that GAP will
give the Turks total control over the flow of water before it reaches their
borders.
   For Turkey, however, the GAP project is of vital importance. When the taps
were opened in November, allowing water to gush out over the arid plain, it
was a concrete symbol of government concern for the economic development of
the Urfa region and its inhabitants, most of whom are Kurds.

Thomas Goltz in Istanbul