Even if the position is an honourary one with few powers, there are few politicians in Turkey who would not dream of occupying the president's seat in the Çankaya Köşkü, the Republican Palace, in Ankara. The Turkish president is the symbol of the Turkish nation, the guardian of its unity and secular character, and the commander-in-chief of its armed forces. The Kemalist state that arose on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire is now 91 years old, and there have been 11 presidents in the palace to date. Abdullah Gül is the current occupant, but it could well also have been Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the current prime minister. However, massive demonstrations seven years ago forced the latter to put a hold on that dream and to step aside to let the cofounder of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) become president. By some curious twist of fate, it is that friend and companion who has to return the favour today. Gül is expected to step aside to pave the way for Erdogan to become the 12th president of Turkey and, if he has his way, to become the first president to combine in his hands the powers of the two highest executive offices of state, the premiership and the presidency. In other words, Erdogan's ambition is to be the supreme authority of Turkish government. In order better to understand this curious twist of fate that threatens to fuse authoritarianism with democracy, it is useful to take a look at the history of the office on which this former “samit vendor,” the seller of a traditional pretzel-like bread from the Istanbul district of Kasimpasa, has set his sights and his ambitions for absolute power. As the founder of modern Turkey, it was only natural that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk would become the first president of the young Republic. However, as historians of the period stress, Ataturk was not keen to hold all the strings of power. Rather, he wanted a presidency that would be more of a symbolic or honourary office, leaving effective government to the parliament and cabinet. Yet, the reality played out otherwise. Historians have offered numerous explanations for this, one being that the huge popularity that Ataturk enjoyed thrust him into the position of being a leader whose every command would be obeyed and whose ideas would be immediately translated into facts on the ground. If he happened to speak on foreign policy, for example, his aides would transform his words into the rules of Turkish diplomacy or Ankara's positions on regional or international affairs. Within a short period there developed what has been termed the “Kemalist ideology” in the Turkey of that period. In view of Ataturk's charisma and popular appeal, the prime ministers of his time did not grumble about the absolute powers he held but had never aspired to. In early 1938, Turkish prime minister Mustafa Ismet Inönü began to assume some of the powers of the presidency, increasing these as Ataturk's health declined. After Ataturk's death in November of that year, the parliament held an extraordinary session in which Inönü was declared president. As a close companion of the late leader, it may have seemed natural for Inönü to continue to hold both the powers of the premiership and the presidency. However, the new president did not have the aura of the republic's founder, while the world around Turkey was changing radically and the winds of democracy were blowing from Europe. Turkey had its heart set on merging with the West, and it pursued the course of political pluralism with greater vigour. One of the fruits of this was the rise of Mahmut Celaleddin Bayar as the third president, now restricted by constitutional provisions that placed the reins of power in the hands of the elected government of prime minister Adnan Menderes. On 27 May 1960, the army stepped in to quash the unrest that had erupted in the period. The leader of Turkey's first military coup, Cemal Gürsel, became the country's fourth president. His predecessor, Bayar, came within an inch of the hangman's noose, but Inönü, later to make a comeback as the head of the Republican People's Party (CHP), intervened to prevent the execution of a companion and fellow freedom-fighter of Ataturk. In 1964, Gürsel succumbed to a fatal illness and was replaced by retired general Cevdet Sunay. When in 1973 Sunay began preparations to extend his presidential term, the prime minister of the time, Süleyman Demirel, protested the bid on constitutional grounds. There followed a marathon that lasted for 15 parliamentary sessions until the political parties finally managed to settle on another retired general to replace Sunay. Fahri Korutürk thus became Turkey's sixth president, followed by Kenan Evran. Demirel again tried to prevent the presidential ambitions of Turgut Özal. But after serving as prime minister from 1983 to 1989, Özal was elected as the country's eighth president by the parliament in 1989. He had his sights set on another term, this time through direct elections. However, in April 1993 he died of a heart attack while still in office and was replaced by Demirel who became the country's ninth president. Ironically, Demirel's own ambitions to extend his term in office at the turn of the millennium were thwarted by the Motherland Party founded by his predecessor Özal. Ahmet Necdet Sezer, president of the Turkish Constitutional Court from 1998 to 2000, was sworn in as Turkey's tenth president on 16 May 2000. It was he who established the mould of the new presidency, shunning all displays of rank, reducing the budget of the presidency to the bare minimum, and rejecting any notion of increasing the powers of the office beyond those stated in the constitution. In fact, he was willing to reduce those powers in favour of increased powers for the prime minister and parliament. With the rise of the Freedom and Justice Party (AKP) in 2003, the Turkish Republic came to a turning point in its nine-decade history. This began with a constitutional amendment that introduced direct elections for the president, rather than leaving the choice to parliament. Later there was a second measure under which Erdogan would not have to resign as prime minister in order to nominate himself for president. Today, he is fighting for a totally new constitution that would change Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential republic. However, it seems that Erdogan will find it difficult to realise his unbounded ambitions for power, barring a massive electricity outage while the votes are being counted as occurred across many key provinces during the recent municipal elections. For one thing, the spectre of 2007 appears to be rearing its head again. Waves of protest are building up. Barely a week passes without a mass demonstration, while the repercussions of the recent mining tragedy in Soma continue to reverberate throughout the country. On 21 May, for example, 22-year-old Yağur Kurk died from the wounds he had received when taking part in an Istanbul demonstration in solidarity with the victims of the Soma mining disaster.
