Will Cem Uzan be able to rescue Erdoğan once again?

Cem Uzan had participated the 2002 elections with his ‘Genç Parti’ (Young Party) founded a few months ago and had gained the 7.24% of the votes with its nationalist-populist rhetoric. The search for the new amongst broad sections of the society caused also by the 2001 crisis and in connection with this, the reaction felt towards political parties which formed governments till then figures as important factors in the backdrop to Uzan’s success. Populist pledges such as “Diesel will be 1 lira,” “a salary of 350 liras for the unemployed” and the nationalist-chauvinist rhetoric directed at the Kurdish question had enabled Uzan to emerge as a new ‘hope’ amongst especially jobless-lumpen sections of the young people. Yet more importantly, even though Uzan’s party had not been able to pass the election threshold, it had stopped Çiller’s DYP with its 9.52% of votes and Bahçeli’s MHP with 8.35% of votes from reaching the threshold and had thereby paved the way for AKP to get 365 MPs and form a government on its own with the 34.42% of votes it received.

Uzan, the Genç Parti leader, despite the different intentions he had at the time, had amounted to being one of the midwifes of the AKP rule.

You know the reasons why these are reminded today. A debate is underway in the last few days about the retrial of Cem Uzan who had claimed asylum in France and his return to the country. In a statement made by his solicitor last week, it was reported that Uzan will return to Turkey as soon as the trial is over and that “he is ready to serve his state and nation.” It is important to underline here the words “he is ready to serve his state and nation.” This is because in such trials, we know that the judiciary is not acting independently from the policies of the government based on numerous cases including the Ergenekon, Balyoz, KCK cases. Hence, the referent of “being ready to serve his state and nation” in the run up to the trial actually acquires a meaning of reconciliation with the government and being ready to serve it.

And indeed, having applied for a retrial, Uzan began his “service” by presenting Ali Babacan, who has left AKP and is preparing to found a new party and Abdüllatif Şener, who has left AKP to become a CHP MP as targets. From his Instagram account, he wrote “Those responsible for the conspiracy set against the Uzan family are the thieves Ali Babacan -Abdüllatif Şener.” Leaving aside whether there was a conspiracy as such, while it could not be clearer that the decision taken against Uzan wasn’t/couldn’t have been taken independently from Erdoğan, the prime minister of the time, Uzan’s disregard of this fact to present as targets names which Erdoğan has been critical of at every possible opportunity, reinforces the view that the process concerning Uzan is not one that is independent of the government’s plans for the new period.

And since we are on the subject of thieves, a few reminders for the new generation unfamiliar with Uzan may be in order.

Cem Uzan was one of Özal’s princes at the period of liberal transformation in the aftermath of 1980. Utilising the fortunes of his property developer father, he quickly became one of the richest people in the country. He established the first private TV channel Star with Turgut Özal’s son Ahmet Özal and after the death of the former deposed Ahmet. He had become involved in the energy sector with Berke Dam ve Çukurova Elektrik and had swindled thousands of small investors with the shares of Çukurova ve Kepez Elektrik which he had sold them. Continuing to grow, he had founded Telsim, one of the most important telecommunication monopolies of the country at the time. After this, it was revealed that he had been involved in aggravated fraud through numerous bogus accounts and irregularities in İmar Bank which he owned. In summary, Uzan’s power was rooted in the fact that he had quickly become one of the leading bourgeoises of the country through relentless exploitation in his businesses, state-backed plunder and swindle.

At the time, regarding him as a force which may cause issues for their rule and due also to many grounds existing for him to become a legal target, AKP had confiscated his assets and had purged him.

In accounting for Uzan, there is a need to recall the socially polarising, the anti-Kurdish chauvinist language and rhetoric employed both by him and by the media corporations he owned in relation to the Kurdish question. Especially at the period when Öcalan was brought to Turkey through an international military operation, the Star newspaper which he owned, had featured headlines inviting the public to lynches. The headline carried by this newspaper, “KerKürt” (donkey Kurd), in 2003 for the inauguration ceremony of Abdurrahman Mustafa as the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, was laying bare the dimensions of the enmity toward the Kurds involved. Uzan was defining the Kurdish question as “the question of terror” during his election campaign, and was stating that “nests of terror, inside and outside, will be done away with. The world will be turned to hell for those supporting the terrorists and terror.” It must be observed that the language and rhetoric used by Uzan and his media about the Kurdish question resemble considerably to that used by the current government and its supporters. Hence it is important to note that his approach to the Kurdish question is a subject which nears Uzan to the government quite like Bahçeli and Perinçek.

Let’s pose the following question based on all this: Can Uzan be the saviour for the Erdoğan government again?

At a period when an economic crisis has been deeply impacting the society just like in 2001, it is not a farfetched possibility for the party of the government to now throw the Uzan card in the fray to divide the opposition and to align a section of it behind itself. This is because plans are underway to receive votes from nationalist sections who are in a state of search and are steering towards Meral Akşener’s İP’s as well as partially from the CHP.

Uzan is waiting “ready to serve”!

Yet there is something Uzan and those making plans over Uzan are forgetting. Turkey is no longer the Turkey of 2002. As working-toiling sections of the people from all nations continue to see the anti-labour and anti-democracy face of this government and take to struggle against it, this government and its supporters are also nearing their end just like the ones before.

If perhaps not in relation to its ‘magnitude’ but concerning the intention to get the history to repeat itself, these words by Marx fit perfectly to the case of Uzan: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”*

*The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Karl Marx