Turgut Özal

Turgut Özal (1986)

Halil Turgut Özal (born October 13, 1927 in Malatya ; † April 17, 1993 in Ankara ) was Prime Minister of Turkey . The six-year term (1983–1989) as Prime Minister with the Anavatan Partisi he founded is considered a phase of liberal economic policy and the cultural re-Islamization of Turkey. Between 1989 and 1993 he was the state president of the country, he died during the term of office.

Life

Özal was born to the civil servant Mehmet Sıddık Özal from Yeşilyurt in Malatya and the teacher Hafize Hanım from Çemişgezek in Tunceli. For professional reasons they often changed their place of residence; Özal attended primary school in Silifke , middle school in Mardin and high school in Kayseri .

education

In 1950 Özal graduated from Istanbul Technical University as an electrical engineer . In the same year he took up a position at the Office for Studies in the Field of Energy Production ( Elektrik İşleri Etüd İdaresi ), a subordinate authority of the Ministry of Energy. Two years later he was sent to the USA for further training ; after his return he worked in the same institution as deputy head of department in the general management.

Career

In 1958 Turgut Özal became head of the secretariat of the newly established state planning commission and helped found the state planning office. During this time he began teaching in 1960 at the Ortadoğu Teknik Üniversitesi (ODTÜ, Middle East Technical University) in Ankara. In 1966 he was appointed technical advisor to the Prime Minister and a year later he was appointed head of the state planning office . After the coup in 1971 , Özal left the state planning office and went to the United States, where he began working as a senior consultant for industrial and mining projects at the World Bank . After returning to Turkey in 1973, he held managerial positions in various private sector companies in the iron and steel, automotive, banking, textile, food and foundry sectors. In 1977 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Employers' Representation of the Metalworking Industry (MESS) and its chairman. In 1979 he became an advisor to the Prime Minister. At the same time he was Vice President of the State Planning Office.

As a member of the Islamic Millî Selamet Partisi , he was elected in the 1977 elections for Izmir, but did not make it to parliament.

Political offices

As a member of the Sufi - Order of the Naqshbandi operational Özal both the economic opening of Turkey as well as their re-Islamization. For Turkey , Özal, from Malatya in Eastern Anatya, was the dominant political figure of the eighties and early nineties, first as prime minister and then as head of state.

After the military coup of September 12, 1980, Özal was Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Bülent Ulusu, responsible for the economy. He was elected chairman of the Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party, ANAP), which he had founded, on May 20, 1983 , and after the elections of November 6, 1983, he was charged with forming the government, which he led as Prime Minister until 1989. In the election on October 29, 1987, the ANAP received 36.3% (minus 8.8 percentage points), but nevertheless received 292 of the 450 seats in parliament because of the 10% hurdle. During his tenure, he repeatedly provoked the Turkish military , which at that time still undisputedly determined the guidelines of politics.

On June 18, 1988, an assassination attempt on Özal at a congress of the ruling party failed. The Grand National Assembly elected Özal President on October 31, 1989 (took office on November 9, 1989).

Cultural Policy and Islamization of the Public

The cultural policy of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis established under the military junta of 1981 was reinforced by Özal. With Özal began a phase of media-effective piety in politics. He appeared with his ministers in mosques, had himself recorded live by a television team during the pilgrimage in Mecca, and organized large public breaking of fasts or circumcision ceremonies in stadiums. The media-oriented approach and the display of piety were taken by secular circles as a signal of a growing Islamism and treated as piety in caricatures.

Özal took a stand in the headscarf debate against the secular establishment and called on the Turkish University Council to allow entry into universities with a headscarf . Despite his piety, his wife did not wear a headscarf, she liked to smoke and drink whiskey in public and both went hand in hand in front of cameras, which was criticized by parts of the conservative electorate. Under Özal, the Diyanet religious authority was greatly expanded, the construction of mosques was further boosted and the number of Koran courses including the number of students rose sharply. His education minister Vehbi Dinçerler called on schools to stop teaching the theory of evolution. For the first time, creationist positions found their way into teaching material.

Turkish private television also began in Özal's time .

Economic policy

The start of liberal market economic policy in Turkey was the stability program drafted on January 24, 1980 with Özal's cooperation and under the leadership of Demirel's government under pressure from the IMF . The coup in the same year did not detract from the market-liberalizing project. Özal accepted the post of economics minister in the transitional government set up by the military junta and continued the policy in 1983 this time as elected prime minister. The actions of the military against political parties, politicians and trade unions and the emergency legislation made it easier to implement the liberal market reforms. Step by step, for the first time in the history of the republic, foreign exchange restrictions , price and interest rate regulations were lifted, the privatization of state-owned enterprises was pushed and an export-oriented economy was sought. The credit market was opened to foreign investors and foreign direct investments were allowed.

The first export-oriented economic policy relied on export subsidies and a devaluation of the lira. However, in addition to increasing exports, this still led to increasing inflation (30% in 1983 to 80% in 1987). The latter circumstance contributed to an increased dissatisfaction in his electorate, which made itself felt in increasingly declining voting shares in his party.

Shortly after taking office as prime minister, he created the legal framework for Islamic banking in Turkey. The aim was to attract capital from the Gulf states and , on the other hand, to win the capital saved at home by Islamic-conservative sections of the population, which traditionally were critical of the banking system. At that time, however, this form of banking only made up a small proportion of the Turkish banking sector. As part of the socio-economic policy, an Islamic-conservative bourgeoisie gradually formed, which was reflected in the establishment of MÜSIAD in 1990 .

Domestic politics

Özal campaigned for the establishment of a presidential system. He found the parliamentary legislative procedure inhibiting, so that whenever possible he governed by decrees and bypassed parliament.

The topic of the Armenian genocide was part of the agenda of Turgut Özal, whose aim was to reach an agreement with the Armenians and to resolve the problem as quickly as possible through concessions. In 1984, Özal's advisors were hired to work out possible scenarios for how Turkey could compromise with the Armenian diaspora and how it could recognize the genocide. Various projects were intended to bring about a solution to the Armenian question. The so-called "Van Project" was supposed to give Armenians in Van lands back. The Motherland Party (ANAP) , parts of the Turkish military and parts of the Turkish population vehemently opposed Özal's intentions and described these negotiations and projects as unacceptable or unthinkable. After Özal's death, his policy of resolving the conflict over the Armenian genocide was discontinued.

Foreign policy

Turgut Özal's foreign policy work was characterized by the rapprochement between Turkey and the European Community (application for membership in 1987) and an improvement in relations with Greece, for which he appointed the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos as mediator , and progress was made on the Cyprus question .

Increased influence on the Central Asian states after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of relations with the leaders of the Kurdish tribes in northern Iraq followed in the 1990s. After the second Gulf War in 1991 and the flight of hundreds of thousands of Kurds to the Turkish border, Özal campaigned for the creation of an international zone in Iraq to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees. He also opened the dialogue between Ankara and the Kurdish leaders Masud Barzani and Jalal Talabani . In order to defuse the Kurdish problem in his own country as well, he negotiated a ceasefire with the PKK . At the time, he emphasized that his grandmother was a Kurd. During his tenure, he pardoned 21 prisoners.

Foreign policy also focused on Turkish guest workers abroad. In Germany the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion was founded. Worldwide, the number of government-funded imams abroad rose from 270 to 628 during his six-year tenure as Prime Minister.

Death and Posthumous

Turgut Özal died on April 17, 1993. He left behind his wife Semra Özal and three children.

Heart failure was officially given as the cause of death; there was and is the suspicion that he was poisoned because of his Kurdish policy. Özal's widow and son Ahmet also expressed this suspicion.

In a report published in June 2012, special investigators from the Presidential Office described his death as "suspicious". On the day of death there was a “noticeable accumulation of strange circumstances; z. B. the personal physician was not in the presidential palace that day, where there was also a lack of first aid equipment . The ambulance should 'not have been ready for use due to mechanical difficulties. "Unlike usual was not after his death in 1993 autopsy arranged. Özal's doctor claimed at the time that the deceased's family had not requested an autopsy; the family denies this to this day.

In September 2012 - after the special investigators' report was published - the Ankara Public Prosecutor ordered an autopsy. On September 18, 2012, she announced that she was planning to have Özal's body exhumed in order to look for evidence of a poisoning. The exhumation began on October 2nd. On November 2, 2012, the Bugün newspaper reported that during the autopsy of Özal's remains, “traces of strychnine ” were found, including in the body's bone marrow . Even in small doses, the poison strychnine causes rigidity in the muscles; it was also used as a rat poison in the past . The newspaper relied on official sources. In total, the employees of the institute for forensic medicine "Adli Tip Kurumu", which was commissioned with the autopsy, found four toxins in Özal's remains, including a tenfold higher value of the poison DDT and traces of the radioactive substance polonium . However, it was also made clear in the report that the possibility of environmental contamination was also possible and that targeted poisoning at the dose had not been proven. The results of the report were widely discussed.

In April 2013, the Ankara public prosecutor accused ex-general Levent Ersöz of having murdered Özal with poison in 1993. Ersöz was then in custody as a suspected member of the right-wing secret society Ergenekon . On April 16, 2013, a court accepted the lawsuit. The trial ended in an acquittal.

Web links

Commons : Turgut Özal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

• Metin Heper: Islam, Conservatism, and Democracy in Turkey: Comparing Turgut Özal and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Insight Turkey Vol. 15, No. 2, SETA Foundation (Ed.), 2013, pp. 141–156.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} G. Jenkins: Political Islam in Turkey: Running West, Heading East? Springer, 2008, ISBN 978-0-230-61245-7 ( google.de [accessed on May 31, 2017]).
2. ↑ only three parties came to parliament, namely ANAP, SHP and DYP. DSP (8.5%) and RP (7.2%) failed at the 10 percent hurdle.
3. ↑ ^{a b} The late Turkish President Turgut Özal wanted to lead his country into modern times: For the market, modernity and Mohammed . In: ZEIT ONLINE . ( zeit.de [accessed on September 6, 2018]).
4. ↑ Prof. Dr. Aykut Kence: Eğitimde Köktendinci İşbirliği-II . In: Bilim, Eğitim ve Düşünce Dergisi . tape 2 , no. 3 , September 2002, p. 4 (Turkish, universite-toplum.org [accessed June 1, 2017]). Eğitimde Köktendinci İşbirliği-II ( Memento from February 14, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
5. ^ Tamer Çetin, Fuat Oğuz: The Political Economy of Regulation in Turkey . Springer Science & Business Media, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4419-7750-2 ( google.de [accessed June 13, 2017]).
6. ^ P. Blind: Democratic Institutions of Undemocratic Individuals: Privatizations, Labor, and Democracy in Turkey and Argentina . Springer, 2008, ISBN 978-0-230-61789-6 ( google.de [accessed June 13, 2017]).
7. ^ Jacob M. Landau, Metin Heper: Political Parties and Democracy in Turkey . Routledge, 2016, ISBN 978-1-317-24125-6 ( google.de [accessed June 13, 2017]).
8. ↑ ^{a b} Mesut Çevikalp: Late President Turgut Özal worked to solve 'Armenian genocide' dispute. In: Today's Zaman . April 23, 2012, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved August 22, 2013 . 
9. ↑ Turgut Özal'ın gizli plani ortaya çıktı. In: Star . August 28, 2012, archived from the original on February 3, 2014 ; accessed on June 13, 2019 . 
10. ^ List of Sezer amnesty recipients terror-based . In: Today's Zaman . April 4, 2007, archived from the original on May 18, 2015 ; accessed on June 13, 2019 . 
11. ↑ ^{a b} FAZ.net / Michael Martens November 2, 2012: Speculations about Özal's poisoning .
12. ↑ The body of the Turkish ex-president Özal is exhumed . APA report on derstandard.at , September 18, 2012.
13. ↑ Turkish judiciary exhumed the body of ex-President Özal . Austrian Broadcasting Corporation , October 2, 2012; accessed on May 10, 2015.
14. ↑ Pia Heinemann : Poisonous murders: The times of potassium cyanide in pudding are over . Die Welt , December 2, 2012; Retrieved August 21, 2013.
15. ↑ Adli TIPIN Özal raporu tamam . In: Hürriyet . ( com.tr [accessed May 31, 2017]).
16. ^ Susanne Güsten: Case Özal: murder charges against General . Die Presse , April 17, 2013; accessed on May 10, 2015.
17. ↑ Turgut Özal'ın Ölümü Davasında Levent Ersöz'ün Beraatine Onama. In: Hukuk Haber - Yerel, Ulusal ve Uluslararası Hukuk Haberleri. March 22, 2016, archived from the original on June 24, 2016 ; Retrieved June 13, 2019 (Turkish). 
18. ^ Metin Heper: Islam, Conservatism, and Democracy in Turkey: Comparing Turgut Özal and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (PDF; 696 KB) Bilkent Üniversitesi, accessed on June 13, 2019 (English).