Bülent Ecevit

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Bülent Ecevit, World Economic Forum 2000
Signature of Bülent Ecevit

Mustafa Bülent Ecevit , nickname Bülent Ecevit (born May 28, 1925 in İstanbul , † November 5, 2006 in Ankara ), was a politician of democratic socialism . A journalist and poet by training , he served as Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey five times between 1974 and 2002 .

Origin and early years

His father Ahmet Fahri Ecevit came from the province of Kastamonu . He was Professor of Forensic Medicine at Ankara University and from 1943 to 1950 a member of the Republican People's Party (CHP); his mother Fatma Nazlı was one of the first women in Turkey to work as independent painters.

Until 1944, Bülent Ecevit attended the English-speaking Robert College in Istanbul, an elite institution. He then began a master's degree in law at Ankara University , then in English , but did not complete either. In 1946 he married Rahşan Aral (1923-2020), whom he had met at Robert College.

In 1944, Ecevit began working as a translator for the Press and Information Office. In 1946 he went to the Turkish Embassy in London as a press attaché. After his return in 1950 he became editor of the CHP party newspaper Ulus , and he also wrote for the magazine Forum . In 1955, with the help of a US State Department scholarship, he came to the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel in North Carolina , where he worked as a visiting journalist for a few months. In 1957 he went to the United States for a second time, this time on a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and spent eight months researching the Middle East and social psychology at Harvard University . During this time he met Henry Kissinger , who was then head of the Harvard Center for International Affairs .

Political career

Beginnings and advancement (1957–1972)

In 1955 Ecevit joined the Republican People's Party, once founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk . In the parliamentary elections in 1957 he was elected member of parliament, which he was to remain until 1980 and then again from 1991 to 2002 for a total of 34 years - first for the province of Ankara , then for a long time for Zonguldak , and finally for Istanbul .

In 1961 his mentor İsmet İnönü , the closest companion of the state's founder Ataturk, appointed him Minister of Labor. After the CHP was defeated in the parliamentary elections in 1965 , Ecevit began to write columns for the daily Milliyet , which he continued for several years.

In 1966, Ecevit became secretary general of the CHP. In this function, he made a significant contribution to the fact that the former state party redefined itself as the “left of the center” party. This reorientation followed political convictions, but was also a reaction to the electoral success of the Workers' Party of Turkey (TİP). In the programmatic reorientation, Ecevit avoided the word social democracy ; In no case did he want this to be understood as a departure from Kemalism , but as its further development.

As the first CHP general secretary, Ecevit visited each individual district to get to know the party apparatus and to promote the reorientation. İnönü supported the turn to the left, while the right wing of the party, led by MP Turhan Feyzioğlu , fought against it. At a party congress in April 1967 İnönü and Ecevit prevailed; their internal party opponents left the CHP and founded the Republican Confidence Party (CGP).

After the military coup in March 1971 , Ecevit fell out with his long-time mentor İnönü. This was against the fact that the party should openly oppose the coup and the Erim government installed by the putschists . Ecevit, on the other hand, believed that such an attitude was incompatible with a “center-left” policy. At the party congress in May 1972, İnönü threatened to resign if the party did not follow him. He declared: “Either me or Bülent!” After the party executive, dominated by Ecevit's followers, won the vote of confidence with 507 out of 709 delegate votes, İnönü resigned as party leader. On May 14, 1972, Ecevit was elected as his successor. He was the first politician in Turkish history to emerge victorious from an intra-party power struggle.

Prime Minister and opposition leader (1972–1980)

Ecevit and President Jimmy Carter at the White House , May 31, 1978.

Shortly after his election as party leader, Ecevit founded the magazine Özgür İnsan (“Free Man”), as its chief author he was temporarily active. Until she was hired in 1978, political and intellectual companions worked on the programmatic realignment of the CHP; the authors included Deniz Baykal , Yusuf Kenan Bulutoğlu, Erol Çevikçe, Erhan Işıl, Nusret Fişek , Cahit Kayra, Orhan Koloğlu and Muhittin Taylan .

In the parliamentary elections in October 1973 , the CHP emerged as the strongest party with 33.3 percent of the vote. The coalition negotiations turned out to be difficult; In the end, the CHP agreed to form a government with Necmettin Erbakan's Islamist National Salvation Party (MSP) . On January 26, 1974, Bülent Ecevit was elected Prime Minister for the first time with the votes of the CHP and MSP.

In response to the coup initiated by the Greek military junta in Cyprus , Ecevit sent Turkish troops in July 1974 , who took the north and east of the island with Operation Attila . The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was proclaimed on this territory nine years later , but it did not find international recognition. The presence of Turkish troops continues to the present.

In November 1974 the coalition with the MSP broke up over the further course of action on the Cyprus question as well as an amnesty for the political prisoners of the military coup, which Ecevit decreed against the will of his coalition partner. The successor as Prime Minister was Süleyman Demirel , with whom he would alternate several times in the roles of head of government and opposition leader in the following years. Demirel formed a coalition consisting of his Justice Party (AP), the Islamist MSP, the right-wing extremist Party of the Nationalist Movement (MHP) and the CHP split-off CGP, which went down in Turkish history as the “First Government of the Nationalist Front”.

After the May 1st massacre on Taksim Square in Istanbul, Ecevit spoke of an “act of the counter-guerrilla”. It was the first time that a top Turkish politician spoke of the existence of a deep state .

A few weeks after the massacre in Taksim Square, on May 29, 1977, a murder attack on Ecevit was carried out at Çiğli Airport in Izmir. Since 1973, it had been preceded by six attempted assassinations, two more followed in 1978 and 2000, respectively. But the attack in Çiğli took place under mysterious circumstances: As it turned out, the bullet that was shot at Ecevit did not injure him, but injured one of his companions , a product prepared with poison. The weapon that went with it was only in the possession of the General Staff Office for Special Warfare in Turkey. The assassin, a police officer, was caught but never charged.

Four days later, the CHP had planned its rally to conclude the election on Taksim Square. Prime Minister Demirel advised Ecevit not to hold the rally because security could not be guaranteed. Ecevit then stated that no party member or supporter should come to Taksim Square, but that he and his wife Rahşan would hold the rally as planned. This answer impressed many people; instead of just his wife, he held the rally on June 3, 1977 with several hundred thousand people. The event was peaceful.

In the parliamentary elections two days later, the CHP received 41.4 percent of the vote - the best result it has ever achieved in a free election and at the same time the best result that the Turkish left has ever achieved in its history. However, the CHP was short of eleven seats for a majority in parliament. President Fahri Korutürk instructed Ecevit to form a transitional government, which was in office in June and July. But the attempt to form a minority government failed in parliament at the end of July 1977. Demirel then formed the second "Government of the Nationalist Front".

In December 1977 Ecevit met twelve dissatisfied MPs from Demirel's Justice Party for a secret meeting at the Güneş Motel in Istanbul. He promised them ministerial posts if they supported a vote of no confidence. With this move, later known as the “Güneş Motel Affair”, Ecevit succeeded in overthrowing Demirel. But his reputation as an impeccable politician who was not involved in corruption never fully recovered from this affair. With the parliamentary vote of January 5, 1978, Ecevit became Prime Minister for the third time and remained so until mid-term elections in some provinces were due in November 1979, in which the CHP lost its lead in mandates.

The end of 1978 imposed Ecevit in the mainly Kurdish populated areas in the southeast as well as in Ankara and Istanbul , the laws of war . The occasion was the Kahramanmaraş pogrom , which was directed against the Alevi population and which had been preceded by a series of other bloody political unrest. After the military coup of September 1980 , martial law was extended to the whole country and was not repealed until 1987; in the southeast it continued in the form of the state of emergency until 2002.

With the support of the trade unions, left-wing organizations and intellectuals, Ecevit managed to win two elections in the 1970s. He supported generous social programs, advocated a great influence of the state in the economy and advocated high protective tariffs against dumping imports. With this program, but also with his charisma, he had succeeded in transforming the state party, once founded and led by officers and bureaucrats, into a social democratic party. His nickname "Karaoğlan" ("The Black Boy") was borrowed from a cartoon character and an allusion to his black hair, which he colored into old age. The nickname also expressed a bond with the broader social classes.

Persecution and Return (1980–2002)

After the 1980 coup, Ecevit was first placed under house arrest in Gelibolu County , and finally, like Demirel and the other political leaders of the pre-coup period, arrested. At the beginning of 1981 he was released from prison, but he was banned from leaving the country. In February 1981 he founded the weekly newspaper Arayış ("Search"), which appeared with the logistical help of Milliyet and had a circulation of 100,000 copies. Because of an article in Arayış , Ecevit was arrested again in December 1981 and spent two months in prison; soon afterwards the newspaper was banned. From April to June 1982 Ecevit spent another two months in prison for an interview with the Norwegian daily Aftenposten . The allegation was that he had damaged Turkey's image.

In the draft of a new constitution, the putschists had planned a ten-year political ban for Ecevit and the other party leaders of the 1970s. In the referendum of November 1982 , held under the atmosphere of the coup, the constitution was adopted by a large majority. It was not until 1987 that transitional article 4, which regulated the political bans, was abolished in a new referendum with a narrow majority of 50.2 percent of the vote.

After the ban on activities was lifted, Ecevit took over the chairmanship of the Democratic Left Party (DSP), which his wife Rahşan had founded in 1985. The party was largely dominated by the Ecevit couple. Up to the turn of the millennium, the DSP competed with the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) and, from 1995, with the CHP for the favor of the left-of-center voters. The main reason for this split in the moderate left in the 1980s and 1990s were personal animosities rather than political differences, similar to the split of the moderate right into the Motherland Party (ANAP) and the Party of the Right Way (DYP).

Bülent Ecevit and George W. Bush , January 16, 2002

After the military intervention of February 1997 , with which the coalition government of Tansu Çiller and Necmettin Erbakan was ousted , Ecevit's DSP joined a government alliance formed by Mesut Yılmaz (ANAP) and renegades from Çiller's DYP in June . Ecevit became Deputy Prime Minister. After the failure of this coalition in January 1999, the DSP formed a minority government led by Ecevit, which led the country temporarily for four months.

From the parliamentary elections in April 1999 , the DSP emerged as the strongest party with 22.2 percent. Ecevit formed a coalition with the ANAP and the far-right MHP and became Prime Minister for the fifth and final time.

Two important political results fell this year: In February, still under the sole government of Ecevit, Öcalan , leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), was caught by Turkish security forces. In November 1999, the Court of Cassation upheld Öcalan's death sentence. In January 2000, following a cabinet meeting, the Ecevit government declared that Öcalan's appeal to the European Court of Human Rights would not have suspensive effect. However, the death sentence was not carried out and eventually, after Parliament passed a constitutional amendment in August 2002 that abolished the death penalty for peacetime, it was converted to life imprisonment.

The abolition of the death penalty had to do with another important result of the last Ecevit government: at the EU summit in Helsinki in December 1999 , Turkey was officially recognized as a candidate country 36 years after the association agreement and twelve years after the membership application . In the 1970s, Ecevit had been skeptical of Turkey joining the EU; now he spoke out in favor of it under certain conditions.

Ecevit's last term of office came to an end on February 7, 2001, when he fell out with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer , whom he himself had promoted to this post two years earlier. The occasion was a heated dispute over the powers of a supervisory authority. Ecevit made this closed dispute public at a press conference, which initially triggered a stock market crash and then a severe economic crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people subsequently lost their jobs, many blaming the Ecevit government for this.

The government failed to get the crisis under control; finally, on July 7, 2002, MHP chairman Devlet Bahçeli declared the coalition to be over. This meant that new elections were due. The following day, Foreign Minister İsmail Cem , a companion since the 1960s, and Deputy Prime Minister Hüsamettin Özkan , who had long been considered Ecevit's right-hand man, announced that they were leaving the party. A number of DSP MPs joined their newly formed New Turkey Party . The former World Bank manager Kemal Derviş , whom Ecevit had brought into the cabinet as crisis manager, also resigned.

In addition to this political and economic crisis, Ecevit was in poor health. Nevertheless, he ran again in the election campaign. During his performances, his poor health was clearly visible.

The parliamentary elections on November 2, 2002 ended with a victory for the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which had run for the first time , while the DSP fell from 22.1 percent to 1.2 percent. The new Prime Minister was Abdullah Gül, and soon afterwards, after his political ban was lifted, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan .

Despite this electoral defeat, Ecevit remained chairman of the DSP and did not resign until July, when he could no longer hold this office permanently for health reasons.

Death and burial

Ecevit's tomb

On May 19, 2006, Ecevit suffered a stroke and was in a coma for over a month. He died on November 5, 2006 in Ankara. He left behind his wife Rahşan, who had stood by him politically for decades. The Ecevit couple remained childless.

At his funeral on November 11, 2006, more than a hundred thousand people said goodbye to Bülent Ecevit. In addition, there were almost a million mourners who remembered him in all 81 provinces. The entire state leadership and leading representatives of the army as well as the parties represented in parliament gathered at his burial in the Ankara State Cemetery. Members of the AKP and Prime Minister Erdoğan were booed at the funeral. Until then, the cemetery was reserved exclusively for the presidents and high-ranking weapons comrade of the republic's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Literary and journalistic work

Ecevit published twelve political non-fiction books, including the programmatic writings Ortanın Solu ("Links der Mitte", 1966) and Bu düzen değişmelidir ("This order must change", 1968). He wrote poems that appeared scattered in magazines and several volumes of poetry. In 2005 his collected poems were published under the title Bir Şeyler Olacak Yarın (“ Something Will Happen Tomorrow”) by Doğan Publishing House.

He has also translated works by TS Eliot , Rabindranath Tagore , Ezra Pound and Bernard Lewis into Turkish.

literature

  • Cüneyt Arcayürek: Bir Özgürlük Tutkunu Bülent Ecevit , Detay Yayınları, Istanbul 2006
  • Can Dündar and Rıdvan Akar: Ecevit ve Gizli Arşivi , İmge Kitap, Istanbul 2006

Web links

Commons : Bülent Ecevit  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Ecevit, Bülent
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ecevit, Mustafa Bülent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish Prime Minister
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 2006
Place of death Ankara