Turks seek to win Father State's trust

By Ralph Boulton

ANKARA (Reuters): Can the Turkish people win the trust of a Father State that holds them still so tightly by the hand?

The answer to this somewhat paradoxical question could yet decide Turkey's place in modern European democracy.

Courts here may soon ban two prominent parties, the main opposition Islam-based Virtue, the other a Kurdish party.

The two, it is said, embody the EU candidate's twin demons of fundamentalism and separatism; demons that make Turkey a democracy "unlike others", reined by courts and army, guaranteed against the sometimes skewed judgment of a flawed people.

Spurred by the approach of Europe, a growing number question the notion of a special Turkish democracy. The state needs the people's trust and must serve the people, and not vice versa.

"We just cannot continue distrusting everything and everyone and hiding and being scared," said Ilnur Cevik, editor of the Turkish Daily News. "We have to believe in the Turkish people."

The state only fanned extremism by bans and restrictions.

Turkey's eager chief prosecutor, Vural Savas, might call this rank naivety. Filing for a ban on Virtue, he described Islamists as "vampires" roaming the land, gorging on ignorance.

In western cities like Istanbul, a distrust of the people is not rare. "People are uneducated," said Hulya, a shop manager. "We need protection against that. We don't want Iran here."

Savas would be Hulya's protector.

"People who say 'no' to terrorism and political Islam...do the greatest service to democracy," he told Reuters just after filing for the ban. "One simply has to know how to say 'no'."

The state is mollycoddled. Deriding the generals or other state servants may mean jail. It is a stern master. Politicians must weigh words carefully or face sometimes draconian sanction.

Turkey, it is true, has its fair share of ghoulish realities; the dozens of bodies, tortured and chained, unearthed recently in houses held by the radical Hizbullah faction.

There were some accusations of ties between the Virtue Party and Hizbullah, something Virtue leader Recai Kutan vehemently denies. He says, however, that banning Virtue could drive people into the arms of militants and close the door to the EU.

Virtue, after all, won 15 percent in polls last April.

"We say no, there can be no democracy, human rights or secularism peculiar to Turkey," Kutan told Reuters. "These are universal norms. Whatever the application is in the developed democratic countries of Europe, Turkey must have the same."

Three previous parties of the "Islamist" tradition have been banned on charges of opposing the secularist order established in 1923 by westernizing state founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. About as many Kurdish parties have suffered the same fate.

The question is whether Virtue is dangerous -- Islamic fanaticism behind a smiling face -- or if it is, as Kutan insists, a democratic party; if it can be trusted or, more to the point, if the people can be trusted to reject it if it proves a danger.

The present constitution makes a Virtue ban quite possible. Virtue could be presented as a simple continuation, albeit under another name, of the Welfare Party banned in January, 1998.

Welfare was outlawed shortly after the government it had led for just less than a year was eased out under army pressure.

The army plays a special role in the untrusting state. Three times in 40 years generals have ousted governments deemed unable to uphold secularist democracy. In 1980, they ended left-right bloodshed but bequeathed a constitution weak on human rights.

Laws on banning parties can be changed if the will is there.

Turkey's geopolitical "discomfort" may also be easing.

The triumph of moderates in Iran recently inspired some to suggest the tide had turned in the region. Where once the fear had been of Iranian "fundamentalism" infecting Turkey, now Iran was succumbing to a unique Turkish spirit of Muslim democracy.

Conflict in the mainly Kurdish southeast is ebbing. Separatist rebels are in disarray, their chief sentenced to death.

But exasperated by state inability to tackle their problems, the region voted overwhelmingly last April for HADEP -- the Kurdish party Savas, in seeking a ban, had linked to the rebels.

A ban would effectively exclude thousands who backed HADEP at polls, whether they were misguided in doing so or not. This may dash some hopes of ending a conflict that has killed 30,000.

State surrender of control over the economy over 20 years has helped free forces of independent thought and action.

Nonetheless, the democracy unlike others cannot change overnight. Even in many EU states, liberal roots run quite shallow.

The state may hesitate long, unsure of Turkish political maturity, wary also of the designs of friends and neighbors.

Sooner or later, though, bit by bit, the people, given a little leeway, may win their trust.