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| Europe |
| Turkey's business elite and rulers drift apart |
| 2006-05-23 |
| In the early spring when Turkey's government began to consider its options for the soon-to-be vacant post of central bank governor, a delegation of businessmen travelled from Istanbul to Ankara to lobby for the reappointment of Sureyya Serdengecti. After a day of meetings, including talks with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, other senior politicians and officials, the businessmen had no clear sense of whom the government preferred. The only certainty was that ministers were not intending to renominate the widely admired Mr Serdengecti, who during his five-year stint in office had overseen a successful battle with inflation. The delegation, from Tusiad, Turkey's big-business lobby, left Ankara empty-handed and disappointed. As Mustafa Koc, chairman of the eponymous industrial group and member of the delegation, recalled in a recent interview: "They treated me with great respect, but I realised I had no influence there [with the government]." The Tusiad representatives were not the only people with an interest in the central bank succession whose advice the government rejected. The pleas of bankers who also argued for Mr Serdengecti's renomination were ignored, according to several bankers. The incidents would appear to confirm that, after more than three years of wary cohabitation, Turkey's secular and free-wheeling business establishment, centred in Istanbul, has lost patience with the socially conservative, Islamic-rooted government in Ankara. "A mistake was made," says Erol Sabanci, chairman of Akbank, Turkey's number two privately owned bank. "The government felt it needed a new governor, and we have to respect that. But the handling of the matter was bad, and was not liked by the business community in Istanbul and abroad." The new governor is Durmus Yilmaz, a central bank veteran. But before choosing him, the government nominated one person who runs an Islamic-style bank that shuns interest rates, and left another would-be candidate hanging out to dry as a debate raged about the fact that his wife wears the Muslim headscarf. A straightforward appointment became a battle of wills with investors, bankers and industrialists as the prime minister sought to place a party loyalist at the top of one of Turkey's few truly independent institutions. Mr Erdogan was ultimately unsuccessful, but not before the central bank, a technocratic institution that has established a robust independence of politics, was embroiled in the tensions between Islam and secularism that have beset Turkey for decades. This parting of the ways between the business establishment and Mr Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) may be the most serious consequence of the government's handling of the central bank succession. It reflects a gulf in understanding between Istanbul, Turkey's liberal and energetic business capital, and Ankara, the political capital, where partisanship and ideology can often be rampant. The gulf in perceptions - and self-perceptions - between the two cities, which are only a 45-minute flight apart, is one of the fascinating aspects of modern Turkey. The two cities are both power centres in their own right and compete for influence. Istanbul used to be Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman empire and one of the world's oldest and greatest cities, bestriding Europe and Asia. The former village of Ankara on a mountain top in Anatolia was nominated in the 1920s to be the capital of the new revolutionary republic created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and is the bastion of Turkish republicanism. Erhan Aslanoglu, an economist at Marmara University, says past tensions between the Istanbul business establishment and the Ankara political establishment, while ever present, were mostly technical. This time, he says, the rift is ideological. Tusiad has long considered itself a non-governmental organisation, arguing over many years for Turkey's entry to the European Union, and for the adoption of measures needed to secure it - including social and political reforms that the entrenched bureaucracy in Ankara is only now beginning to address. The AKP, equally self-consciously, presents Turkey's democratic, Muslim face to the world. It is one that can make Turkey's secular elites uncomfortable, because they are not natural supporters of the party and its social policies. After treating each other gingerly since the AKP came to power in late 2002, a clash was perhaps inevitable. "The starting point of Tusiad and the AKP is very different, and the central bank appointment was a crucial moment in their relationship," Prof Aslanoglu says. Others say the rift fits a historical pattern and should not be exaggerated. Ersin Ozince, chief executive of Is Bank, the country's biggest bank, says it may be a simple swing of the pendulum in the love-hate relationship between business and politics. He says the late Turgut Ozal, who as prime minister in the 1980s had a reputation as a liberal but was personally conservative, stuffed his administration with like-minded people, just as Mr Erdogan has sought to do. "It's like a wave that comes and goes," Mr Ozince says. |
| Posted by:ryuge |