Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2007, pages 36-37

In Memoriam

Bulent Ecevit (1925-2006): a Turkish Leftist Who Changed With the Times

By Richard H. Curtiss and Donna B. Curtiss

I FIRST MET Bulent Ecevit in 1957, when I was on my third overseas assignment for the U.S. Information Agency. At an American Embassy reception he startled me by confiding that he feared he faced a life sentence should he lose his parliamentary immunity.

It was an unusual way to open a conversation, and it certainly caught my attention. I learned that he was a brand new member of the Republican People’s Party, founded by Kemal Ataturk, and had been voted into the National Assembly that year—thereby becoming the Turkish parliament’s youngest member.

Ecevit’s father, Ahmet Fahri Ecevit, was a professor of medicine at Ankara University. His mother, Fatma Nazli, was one of the first women in Turkey to become a professional artist. Born in 1925, Bulent was their only child.

Ecevit was known for his simple lifestyle and, in his nearly five-decade career, was never accused of corruption. His devotion to his wife, Rahsan Aral, whom he married when they were students, was lifelong, and the couple worked together as a team throughout their marriage.

His English was impeccable because he had studied at American-founded Robert College in Istanbul, the most prestigious secondary school in Turkey, and also had worked in the Turkish Embassy in London for four years. During that period he published several volumes of poetry, and translated into Turkish works of T.S. Eliot, Bernard Lewis and Rabindranath Tagore.

Ecevit then returned to Turkey in 1950 and took a position at Ulus, the government-owned newspaper. During his tenure there he worked as foreign editor, columnist and cultural editor. Remarkably, he never finished his university studies.

In the mid-1950s Ecevit received a U.S. State Department fellowship to work at the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel in North Carolina. While he presumably benefited from the experience of practicing journalism at a U.S. newspaper, he was profoundly shocked by the racism he observed in the American South—something he never got over. Having always supported the underprivileged and those who were unable to fend for themselves, he considered himself a champion of the underdog. Throughout his life, Ecevit supported American Blacks, Turkish workers, the Turkish minority in Cyprus and the Palestinians.

It was from Bulent Ecevit that I learned much about Turkey’s history. In the U.S. press section my Turkish assistant was Ecevit’s sister-in-law, Asade Aral, who told me that although she did not mind working overtime, her brother-in-law would arrive at the same time every day to take her home. So I took it upon myself to engage him in conversation until her work was done. He was urbane and handsome and I greatly enjoyed those talks.

My two-year assignment in Ankara came at a time when the U.S. was courting Turkey. I recall the time I was sent to take Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and a small entourage to an aircraft carrier for maneuvers. Menderes said he was tired, so members of his party were given an opportunity to watch a hit movie starring Marilyn Monroe instead of the training film they had been scheduled to see. As the film began, Menderes suddenly appeared. It was clear that he wanted to see the musical, so the film continued and the group never viewed the training film.

Later in 1960, when Menderes seemed to be abandoning some of the government’s traditions, members of the Turkish general staff took over, and Menderes was deposed and eventually hanged. After three years Turkey was returned to civilian rule.

In 1966 Bulent Ecevit became secretary-general of his party. As a leftist, nationalist, and opponent of religious fundamentalism, he helped maintain Turkey’s position as the world’s most secular Muslim country. For most of his career he opposed proposals to legalize Kurdish-language education or television broadcasting, arguing that it would lead to separation and strife.

Ecevit served as minister of labor from 1961 to 1965. In 1972 he deposed his mentor, IsmetInonu, and assumed leadership of the Republican People’s Party. The following year he was elected prime minister for the first time. In all, Ecevit served as prime minister five times, including once when he was head of a caretaker government.

In 1974 he ordered Turkey’s military intervention in Cyprus following a Greek-backed coup attempt to merge the island with Greece. Many Greeks and Turks were forced to leave their homes in various parts of the island, and the northern third of Cyprus was set up as a separate state—one which, except for Turkey, has never been recognized internationally.

Although Ecevit lost his mandate to govern within a year of the invasion, most Turks still credit him for taking action when it was required, and he became known as “the liberator of Cyprus.”

The next time Ecevit was prime minister, it was with the help of leftist groups. This was during a chaotic period in Turkey, when domestic politics dominated and many people were assassinated, ending only when the army again took over in 1980.

It was then Ecevit was told that he would be jailed—and that, if he so desired, his wife could go with him as well. Declining the offer, he was allowed to return home after three months—but was forbidden to hold any kind of office. In 1981 he was again imprisoned briefly, after publishing an article criticizing the military rule. During his suspension from politics his wife took over the party’s political affairs and formed the Democratic Left Party on behalf of her husband.

In 1995 Ecevit asked his supporters to “make me prime minister once more before I die,” but few thought his wish would be granted. Just before Ecevit’s interim government was to face the voters, however, Abdullah Ocalan, head of the separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), was captured. The prestige Ecevit gained from that arrest spurred him to victory in April of 1999.

In his final term, he governed in a coalition with a right-wing party, pursuing pro-business policies and maintaining Turkey’s status as a faithful NATO member and ally of the U.S.—this despite his lifelong skepticism of the sincerity of American commitments to democracy and human rights. He abandoned much of his hostility toward private enterprise and, after having helped keep Turkey out of the European Union in the 1970s, came to believe that integration with the West was a good idea.

Not surprisingly, Ecevit’s conversion to free enterprise and close ties to the West horrified many of his former supporters. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that his earlier opposition to Turkey joining the European Union had been an historic error—because turning down a chance for Ankara to apply for EU accession at the same time as Greece thus enabled Athens to use its membership to block Turkey’s EU aspirations for years. Under Ecevit, Turkey was accepted as a candidate for membership in the European Union in 1999. “It is now understood,” he explained, “there can be no Europe without Turkey and no Turkey without Europe.”

During a 2002 visit to Washington, Ecevit discussed the possibility of an invasion of Iraq with public television’s Jim Lehrer. “We wouldn’t even think of a military action,” he explained, “because that would have extremely adverse results for Turkey. After all, we are on the borders. We have a common border with Iraq. And it’s a very sensitive area geopolitically.” Ecevit went on to express Turkish concern “that Iraq should not become a divided country.”

During the years between the two Gulf wars, however, he allowed American planes to use Turkish bases for their patrols over northern Iraq—but sympathized with Iraqi civilians, who, he said, were suffering because of U.N.-imposed economic sanctions.

While he maintained ties with Israel, Ecevit denounced Israel’s attacks on Palestinian refugee camps during its 2002 reinvasion of the West Bank as “genocide.” Criticized for the remark, he said he had meant to accuse both sides.

With his health failing, Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party lost badly in the country’s 2002 elections. Upon leaving office, he devoted himself to writing. One of his poems summed up his heartfelt regret over the poor ties with arch-rival Greece before the 1999 rapprochement between the two countries: “The wild spirit flowing in our veins is the same. We have cursed each other. But there is still love within us,” he wrote.

In May 2006 Evecit suffered a stroke, and died five months later. Rahsan Ecevit postponed her husband’s funeral until working men and women could participate. Along with thousands of other mourners, she marched behind the military hearse for the five miles to the state cemetery—where, as a result of a parliamentary amendment, prime ministers are allowed to be buried alongside presidents. The funeral procession lasted nine hours.

Ecevit was seen as a defender of Turkey’s secular regime. “Turkey is secular and will remain secular,” mourners shouted when the current Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party, arrived at the Kocatepe mosque for funeral prayers.

While Erdogan is supportive of the European Union, his country faces a crucial EU vote. Turkey has offered to open a major seaport and an airport to longtime foe Cyprus in an attempt to keep European Union entry talks on track, Turkish and EU officials said Dec. 7. Calling the step positive but insufficient, the EU decided at its Dec. 11 meeting in Brussels to delay discussions on eight of 35 policy issues. The door thus remains open to EU membership, and Washington urgently hopes that Ankara will continue to make the necessary decisions to keep the negotiations alive and viable.

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

< Prev		Next >