Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

the securitization of islam and the triumph of the akp 241The political rivalry between Yìlmaz and Çiller opened a new windowof opportunity for the RP. According to the coalition’s rotation agreement,Yìlmaz became prime minister Wrst, and Çiller was to assume the post in January1997. However, Yìlmaz’s main aim was to prevent Çiller from assumingthe premiership, and thus he began to search for evidence of corruptionallegedly carried out by the Çiller family. Hoping either to remove Çiller ashead of the DYP or to divide the DYP, Yìlmaz leaked some of the incriminatingdocuments to the RP, the main opposition party in the Parliament. Butthe RP used these documents not to attack Çiller but rather to assault the coalitiongovernment.There were three main corruption dossiers on Çiller. When the RP broughtthese charges to Parliament to establish a special investigation committee, about30 ANAP deputies voted in favor of launching an inquiry into the scandals. TheWrst inquiry, which opened on April 24, 1996, examined the claims that Çilleras prime minister during 1994–1995 had made money illegally by favoring certainprivate companies during the sell-oV of the state-owned electricity WrmTEDA6. The second investigation, which began on May 10, inquired into allegationsthat she meddled illegally in the bidding for the sale of state shares inTOFA6, a Fiat subsidiary automobile manufacturer. Although the RP broughtthe parliamentary motions to launch the investigations, the allegations againstÇiller originally had been made by the ANAP. During the 1995 election, the latterparty had promised to investigate the allegations of corruption during her tenureand similar allegations against her banker husband, Özer Çiller. Yìlmaz usedhis oYce to expose the “Waterfront Villa Gang” (Yalì çetesi), named after Çiller’sposh villa on the Bosphorus, and to publicize that it had used the governmentfor personal gain. The last blow to the coalition government came when the RPdeputy 6evket Kazan openly charged Çiller of misusing a secret prime ministerialfund by appropriating 500 billion Turkish lira ($6.5 million) before she hadleft oYce in March 1996. Parliament voted to investigate all these charges; hadthe committees found Çiller guilty, the Constitutional Court would have triedher. A guilty verdict in that body would have barred her from assuming theposition of prime minister at the beginning of 1997; she would in eVect be oustedfrom the political scene. During the parliamentary debate over corruption, however,the Constitutional Court ruled that the conWdence vote that had allowedthe Yìlmaz-Çiller coalition to take oYce was invalid. Accordingly, Çiller endedthis government in May 1996 by withdrawing her DYP and forming a new coalitionwith the RP; in return, the RP agreed to support an end to the investigationson the corruption cases in Parliament.On June 28, 1996, for the Wrst time, the Turkish Republic had a primeminister whose political philosophy was based on Islam. This marked a psychologicalturning point for diVerent groups. For conservative Muslims, thiswas the end of their exclusion from the public spaces and recognition of theiridentity by the state. For the Kemalist bloc that controlled economic resources,this was the darkest moment for the Republican project. The Kemalists didnot utilize this historic development as an opportunity to form a new socialcontract based on tolerant secularism, democracy, and the rule of law. Rather,