Turkey's already bitterly-contested election campaign plunges to new depths as opposition politicians resign after revelations of extramarital affairs, writes Gareth Jenkins Turkey's already fractious election campaign turned nasty last week as six leading members of an opposition party were forced to resign after an Internet website began broadcasting secretly-recorded videos of them engaging in extramarital sexual relations. Opposition parties immediately accused the government of orchestrating a smear campaign against them, charges which were vigorously denied by government officials. The outcome of the Turkish general election, which is scheduled for 12 June, is not in doubt. Everybody expects the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to be re-elected for a third successive term. The only question is how many seats it will win in Turkey's 550-member unicameral parliament. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already announced that the AKP's priority after the election will be the drafting of a new constitution. He has also said that he wants the constitution to include the replacement of Turkey's parliamentary system with one in which virtually all political power is concentrated in the office of the presidency. If he succeeds, Erdogan is then expected to try to have himself elected president and rule for the next decade. But, in order to promulgate a new constitution through parliament, the AKP needs to win at least 367 seats. Alternatively, if it has the support of 330 members of parliament, the AKP can put a new constitution to a referendum. Under Turkey's electoral system, seats in parliament are divided between political parties who win more than 10 per cent of the national vote. The only exception is for individuals standing as independents who perform strongly in their constituency. In practice, the fewer the parties that cross the 10 per cent threshold, the more seats they can expect. For example, when the AKP first came to power in November 2002, it won one-third of the popular vote but nearly two-thirds of the seats because only one other party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), crossed the 10 per cent threshold. Opinion polls currently suggest that the AKP is likely to win around 44-48 per cent, ahead of the CHP with 28-30 per cent, while the Turkish ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) would take 11-13 per cent. If these results were to be repeated in the election on 12 June, the AKP would win a comfortable majority. But, because the seats in parliament would be shared between three parties, it would be impossible for the AKP to win 367 seats and it would find it difficult even to take 330. As a result, in its election campaign, the AKP has been primarily targeting not its nearest rival, the CHP, but the MHP in the hope of preventing it from entering parliament by driving it below 10 per cent. In late April and early May, a website purporting to be run by disgruntled Turkish nationalists broadcast sex tapes involving four leading members of the MHP. All promptly resigned and withdrew as candidates for the election. Last week, the same website threatened to broadcast sex tapes implicating another six named leading members of the MHP unless they tendered their resignations. They refused to do so. Early on Saturday morning, the website broadcast the first sex tape. All six MHP members named by the website immediately resigned and announced that they were no longer running for parliament. The tapes have devastated the higher echelons of the MHP. Within the space of less than a month, the party has lost 10 parliamentary candidates and nine members of its 16- member national executive. Initially, Erdogan exploited the resignations, relentlessly condemning the MHP for what he described as its immorality. However, recently he has begun to try to distance himself from the revelations. On Sunday, Erdogan described the release of the sex tapes as an "ugly game", but he claimed that the tapes were part of a conspiracy within the party to try to undermine the leadership of MHP Chairman Devlet Bahceli, whose famously ascetic lifestyle means that he is immune to being targeted personally. Although there is no evidence to suggest that Erdogan is personally overseeing the scandal, few neutral observers believe that it is being orchestrated from within the MHP. "If these people had been members of the nationalist movement trying to get rid of Bahceli, they would have done all these things months ago to give the party time to recover and go into the elections under a new leader," noted a source close to the party leadership. Erdogan's claims have been further undermined by the fact that the tapes have been recorded using highly sophisticated equipment, including motion-sensitive cameras adjusted for poor lighting conditions, which were expertly hidden in fittings and furniture in hotel rooms and private homes and then removed. Gathering information on who was conducting clandestine sexual relations, where and when would also require lengthy surveillance and intelligence-gathering. Mounting such operations against 10 leading members of the MHP would require considerably more resources and expertise than even the most embittered civilians would be able to muster. Perhaps not surprisingly, most neutral observers have joined the opposition parties in suspecting the involvement of pro- AKP elements in Turkey's now highly politicised police force.
