Abdullah Gul

  'Caution' is a key word in the political dictionary. The leading name of the AK Party years that deserves to be known for that quality should be Abdullah Gul. During his conversation with fishermen on a trip to the Black Sea region, his answer to a journalists' question, "what is your favorite fish?" went to show perfectly how as a politician he never stopped being cautious, even when the topic was just fish: "I like them all."

Cautious does not mean cowardly, or timid. Abdullah Gul has taken many a cautious step, but he has also, when necessary, has taken courageous decisions, including those that have gone into Turkey's history of democracy. Going up against the founder and the eternal leader of the 'National Vision' movement, Necmettin Erbakan, and appearing against Erbakan's nominee to run for the party's general president was perhaps the bravest decision of his political career. At the Fazilet Party Congress on February 14, 2000, Gul managed to run against Erbakan's choice, Recai Kutan, as 'the reformists' nominee.' That congress and that divergence are one of the most important turning points leading to the foundation of the AK Party. Gul did not win that congress, but he had acquired 192 votes, a high enough number to signal future victories. We would never know if Tayyip Erdogan would have been the reformist' nominee against Recai Kutan had he not been in prison at the time, but in any case history had given that role to Gul. That congress was a true turning point. Following the shutting down of Fazilet Party, the reformists never again got together with the old guard. The latter continued on their path with Saadet Party, the latest iteration of the same tradition, while the reformists 'took off the National Vision shirt' and founded their own party. In the next elections, the public showed more trust in Erbakan's children than his brothers-in-arms. AK Party, the party of the reformists, became the single party government winning an unprecedented percentage of the vote. The way history played out, Gul became the first Prime Minister of this new party, which had received an enormous amount of public support in its every first elections. This time Erdogan was not in prison anymore, but he was under a politics ban. Anytime Erdogan was prevented from going on stage, whether because of prison or bans, Gul was up there.

There are two more grand turning points in Gul's political career that he could probably tell his children about with pride. The first one is his stance on the March 2003 parliamentary proposal. Those were the days the US was determined to invade Iraq, and they had asked their ally Turkey's support for this unlawful and unjustified invasion. This would not be any simple support either. Sixty thousand American troops would be stationed in Turkey, with all the country's main airports, including Izmir and Samsun, given up to the use of the invasion forces. At the time, Gul saw at the very thorny seat of the prime minister. He was under heavy pressure from the US, and all of their operatives in Turkey. A newly established party was shouldering state responsibility for the first time, suddenly finding itself face to face with one of the heaviest burdens in history. One of the most significant decisions in the history of the Turkish Republic fell on his shoulders as a newly minted prime minister. Later on, when remembering that period, Gul would say that his hair became white in those days. Gul neither approved the March 1 proposal, neither called on his friends to do so. In the most critical maneuver of those days, he did not make the party take a group vote, leaving each parliamentarian alone with their conscious instead. At the time, making this decision was not easy. He was able to demonstrate this courage as a young prime minister sitting on that thorny chair.

On November 16, 2002, the day he was tasked with forming the government, Robert Deutsche of the American Embassy sent a cable home, writing of Gul that "he has an impeccable understanding of the American mentality and US foreign policy priorities." The March 1 proposal showed, however, that this did not mean he was 'America's guy.' The Parliament's block on the proposal turned Turkey into an object of hatred for the neo-cons in power at the time in the US. While the Americans primarily held the Turkish military responsible, since they had not passed a decision of support through the National Security Council, they also looked at Gul as the responsible figure. Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of Iraq's invasion, said "Gul screwed it up" to a journalist.

Abdullah Gul's decision, which added at least another ten years to Turkish democracy, was a result of his insistence on the presidential candidacy. Tayyip Erdogan's nomination of "his brother Gul" to the presidency in 2007 was an unprecedented example of selflessness in Turkish political history. Yet it is hard to say that Erdogan stood by this decision all the way through. Following the statement by the military, known as the April 27 memo, Erdogan was understood to be 're-evaluating' the situation. Rather than insisting on Gul, the intention of putting forward another candidate -one with a wife that did not cover her hair- was taking precedence. He would certainly not openly say "we have decided to not nominate Gul," but there were many signs pointing in just that direction. Erdogan likely started to think that the conditions of the time were not ripe for a president with a covered wife. Those were the days the name Vecdi Gonul started to circulate in inside circles as AK Party's new presidential nominee. Gul's attitude, which we just said "added ten years to Turkish democracy," emerged right at this time. Despite messages he received, some concealed and some not, to give up on his candidacy, he persisted. He said, "I can't ignore the public's message," referring to the 47 percent voters' support given to the party at the July 2007 elections. He insisted on his candidacy, and some of the party's leading figures supported him. That is how he remained AK Party's presidential candidate. Both his party and Turkish democracy benefited from his insistence. Later, when reminiscing about that time, he would say, "if I have the moral upper hand, I don't let anything stand in my way." Thanks to his stance, it became obvious that whether a president's wife is covered or not had nothing to do with the system, the regime or secularism, and that these discussions had no place within Turkish democracy. With his insistence, Gul was also blocking a decision of Erdogan's for the second time. In both instances it wasn't his intention to do so, but the result remained the same. Up until assuming the presidency Abdullah Gul could take courageous decisions when necessary, but in the period afterwards he started placing more emphasis on good relations with other leaders. With a few exceptions, he generally confirmed the bills passed on to him from the government. He also took care to consult with the government before a bill came to him.

Since his years in the Welfare Party in the 1990s, he had been the face of the National Vision movement that connected to the West. Links he established in those years were later instrumental in his attitude -and at times silence- in the face of strained relations with the West. He was always a politician who cared about Turkey's relationship with Europe and the US. The problem was that he seemed to find it difficult to dial an appropriate tone when the West was clearly unfair to Turkey, and put immense pressures on the country. He sometimes found it difficult to strike a balance between not severing ties and loudly voicing Turkey's arguments. This was one of the reasons Erdogan started to put some distance between himself and Gul. It could be observed that in the struggle AK Party waged against the bureaucratic oligarchy in Turkey, particular attitudes and remarks by Gul created certain breaks between him and the AK Party leadership, particularly with Erdogan. Some saw Gul's certain positions as 'playing into the other side.' While the Gezi Park events were ongoing, Gul's remarks that "democracy does not only mean elections" nearly traumatized Erdogan and those close to him, playing an important part in the perception that Gul was acting out for the opposite camp.

There were also times when Erdogan acted against Gul in ways we could characterize as "careless" at best. For instance, it is well known that Gul was hurt by the government's bill that barred the sitting president from becoming a candidate again. This updated bill was both unnecessary and had nothing to do with either "fraternity" or "camaraderie." It wasn't even lawful, and indeed was overruled by the Constitutional Court later on.

We could say that the main fault lines in Erdogan's attitude towards Gul emerged over relations with the West and the conflict with the Fethullah Gulen movement. It wouldn't be wrong to claim that in this regard, the decisions and stance Gul did not take were more decisive than those he did. As Erdogan went to war with the Gulen movement, he did not find Gul by his side. This perception never quite went away in the years that followed. Long after the doors of the Prime Minister's Office were closed to this organization, Gulen's people were still being invited to Presidential receptions and managed to get on the President's plane. The "Erdogan factor" was almost always a decisive element in Gul's political life. Indeed, the changes in Erdogan's view of Gul determined the latter's political destiny. After all, Erdogan was the one to nominate him to the presidency. When Gul approached the end of his term, Erdogan was the one to determine if he would serve another term. Perhaps Gul might have returned to the Prime Minister's post, but even though he had once said "I could have returned if I wanted to," he couldn't have as long as Erdogan did not want to see him as PM. If traces of Gul receded first from the Presidency and then gradually from Ankara itself, this was thanks to Erdogan's decisions and actions.

Today it appears that some want Gul to come back to Ankara after 2019. But at least in the spring of 2018, as these lines are written, this kind of adventure does not seem quite probable for a figure as cautious as Abdullah Gul.