VZCZCXRO8920
RR RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHNC #0971/01 3451458
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 111458Z DEC 07
FM AMEMBASSY NICOSIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8388
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHAK/AMEMBASSY ANKARA 5081
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 1027
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 NICOSIA 000971 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/04/2017 
TAGS: PGOV PREL TR CY
SUBJECT: AKP AND OP: IS THE AKP GOVERNMENT IN SEARCH OF A 
NEW TURKISH CYPRIOT ADDRESS? 
 
REF: NICOSIA 887 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Ronald L. Schlicher for reasons 1.4 (b) and 1 
.4 (d) 
 
¶1. (C) Summary: Many Turkish Cypriots (T/Cs) consider 
Turkey's AKP the force behind the T/C Freedom and Reform 
Party (OP), the junior "coalition" partner to "TRNC 
President" Mehmet Ali Talat's CTP.  Any doubts regarding 
AKP's support for OP were dispelled recently by the Turkish 
party's high-profile participation at an OP congress, and by 
the allegedly AKP-inspired defection of two opposition DP 
mayors to OP, which infuriated DP leader Serdar Denktash. 
According to both opposition and "government" sources, AKP 
has swung its support to the newfound (September 2006) OP and 
its leader, "Foreign Minister" Turgay Avci, hoping to deliver 
the "settler" (mainland Turkish-origin) vote and thereby 
weaken an increasingly feckless and recalcitrant T/C 
right-wing opposition.  In so doing, AKP also aims to create 
a pliant counterbalance to the dominant (though weakening) 
position of CTP, without harming good relations with that 
party.  AKP meddling reportedly has angered Talat.  In 
contrast to the T/C right-wing parties, most CTP officials 
admit that the loathesome Avci has shone as "FM," and they 
evince little worry at his party,s rise of fortunes.  It 
remains unclear whether OP, even with help from Turkish PM 
Tayyip Erdogan and AKP, can gather enough support to be a 
major, enduring player in T/C politics, however.  End Summary. 
 
--------------------------------------- 
"Support from Ankara vitally important" 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (C) The participation of AKP deputy and foreign policy 
advisor Egemen Bagish at the November 24 Freedom and Reform 
Party (OP) party congress confirmed for many Turkish Cypriots 
the long-standing rumors of AKP support for OP, the junior 
"coalition partner" in the "TRNC."  Bagish, along with AKP 
Antalya mayor Menderes Turel and AKP deputy Mevlut Cagusoglu, 
all spoke at the OP congress, the party,s first since its 
founding in September 2006.  On November 26, Hasan Ercakica, 
"Presidential" spokesman, told us that AKP "seems to be 
supporting OP," given such high-level participation. Usually, 
Ercakica claimed, only low-level Turkish party officials 
attend T/C party congresses. 
 
¶3. (C) AKP hopes its support for OP will deliver the 
"settlers," Turkish migrants who have obtained "TRNC 
citizenship," who number approximately 33,870 and comprise 
roughly twenty-percent of all "TRNC citizens" (Note: An 
additional 77,731 Turkish citizens, about 29.3% of the total 
"TRNC" population, reside in the "TRNC" under some status 
less than citizenship. They include students, guest workers, 
and those Turkish military personnel and their families that 
live off base. End Note). Bulent Aliriza, a scholar at the 
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a 
long-time Embassy contact, told Poloff on December 4 that PM 
Erdogan had inquired why "our people" were not better 
represented in the "TRNC parliament" and "government."  The 
CTP's Salih Usar, the "Public Works and Transport Minister," 
joked with us on November 29 that the Turkish settlers are 
like "little Turkish ambassadors" who take their signals from 
Ankara. 
 
¶4. (C) OP has played up its close connections with Ankara and 
regularly boasts of its admiration of AKP, Erdogan, and 
Turkey (Reftel).  In a December 5 interview with "Kibris," 
the highest-circulation daily in northern Cyprus, Avci said 
that "support from Turkey was vitally important to him." 
(Comment: While such a statement may be a fact for other 
parties as well, Avci,s wording would surely grate on native 
Turkish Cypriot sensitivities given their love-hate 
relationship with Turkey, not blind infatuation. End Comment). 
 
------------------------ 
"AKP game to destroy DP" 
------------------------ 
 
¶5. (SBU) Serdar Denktash, DP leader and former "Foreign 
Minister" before CTP dumped him in September 2006 in favor of 
OP and Avci, declared war on AKP after his party lost another 
two mayors--both Turkish settlers--to OP on the eve of the 
latter's party congress.  At a November 26 press conference 
upon his return from Turkey, where he engaged AKP officials, 
Denktash charged that "the rumors turned out to be true.  AKP 
is behind OP."  He then presented an ultimatum to his own 
 
NICOSIA 00000971  002 OF 003 
 
 
party members: "If there is anyone who says that we will do 
whatever this or that party in Turkey wants, let him resign 
within a week." 
 
¶6. (C) In a November 30 meeting with Embassy officers, 
Denktash related that AKP,s "game is to destroy DP," 
allegedly over support that his father, long-time "TRNC 
President" Rauf Denktash, gave to the National Action Party 
(MHP) during recent Turkish parliamentary elections.  He 
claimed that Egemen Bagish had "confessed" this in Ankara. 
He also alleged that AKP deputies had taken one of his 
defecting mayors to Turkey and made promises of financial 
support, both to his municipality and to the mayor 
personally.  Denktash added that the present Turkish 
"ambassador" had kept out of the fray.  (Note: Another cause 
of friction between DP and AKP is the former's 14-month 
boycott of "Parliament," in which the main right-wing 
opposition group, the National Unity Party (UBP), also 
participates.  The two parties are protesting OP,s unethical 
entry into "Parliament."  The AKP, Erdogan, and Turkish 
President Abdullah Gul repeatedly have urged them to return 
to the "legislature."  End Note) 
 
--------------------------------------- 
Tensions rising between Avci and Talat? 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶7. (C) AKP-inspired friction between Avci and Talat dominated 
the front page of "Kibrisli" on November 30.  The paper 
charged that AKP interference had exacerbated political 
tension between them.  Aliriza confirmed the 
usually-sensationalist "Kibrisli report, telling Poloff that 
Talat, whom he had met in Cyprus days earlier, was unhappy 
that "Turkey's ruling party (AKP) was involved in Turkish 
Cypriot politics."  The CSIS analyst added that the 
"President" and "FM" had met one-on-one for thirty minutes on 
November 25.  One topic of conversation may have been Avci's 
increasing free-lancing; "Prime Ministerial" adviser (and 
reported former Talat squeeze) Yonca Senyigit complained to 
us November 26 that she had learned of several of Avci,s 
trips from the newspapers. 
 
¶8. (C) Oddly, while most in CTP are contemptuous of Avci, 
they grudgingly admit he has succeeded in raising the 
"TRNC's" international profile and, as far as they know, has 
kept on the CTP's pro-solution message.  The votes he steals 
come mainly from the right wing, they assert, not CTP's 
left-of-center base.  Kutlay Erk, CTP's unofficial foreign 
policy guru, told Poloff on November 19 that Avci "was not 
doing a bad job as 'FM' and should travel even more." 
"Presidential" spokesman Ercakica complained of Avci,s 
nepotism and penchant for corruption, although he admitted 
that OP might be a convenient coalition partner for CTP in 
the future. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
Comment: "What does the AKP government really want?" 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
 
¶9. (C) Comment:  Every ruling party in Turkey has played 
favorites on Cyprus, from ANAP developing close ties to UBP, 
to CHP and MHP cozying up to Rauf Denktash.  If indeed AKP is 
trying to build its "own" party in the TRNC--and there 
definitely are signs to that effect--we question the choice 
of OP and its focus on mainlanders.  Settler parties have 
coalesced in the past, but did not take root mainly because 
of migrants' disparate political leanings, a degree of T/C 
prejudice and suspicion toward newcomers, and the 
difficulties any new party faces in the north's entrenched 
electoral system.  Even if OP were to squeak past the 
five-percent barrier for "parliamentary" representation in 
the next scheduled elections, it would need at least double 
the minimum to really matter--a much taller order.  Further, 
AKP must build up OP without souring relations with CTP, 
still the T/C community's strongest party and the only major 
one professing the same bizonal, bicommunal, federal Cyprus 
solution that Erdogan has espoused publicly. 
 
¶10. (C) Conflicting reports regarding AKP,s view on early 
"parliamentary" elections here further confuse the picture. 
According to Ercakica, Egeman Bagish told "President" Talat 
in late November that AKP wants the CTP-OP government to 
endure.  If true, that "demand" would put OP in a far 
stronger position to contest regularly scheduled 2010 
elections and drive UBP and DP, who seek elections in 2008, 
even further into their self-imposed, boycott-driven "exile." 
 
NICOSIA 00000971  003 OF 003 
 
 
 Aliriza, however, reports that Turkish Deputy Prime Minister 
Cemal Cicek, who has the Cyprus portfolio, is so annoyed by 
the boycott and by T/C political squabbling that he is 
pressing for early elections in 2008 to clean the political 
slate here.  Such an outcome would benefit UBP and DP, and 
put OP in the tough spot of contesting elections barely 
eighteen months after its founding.  It would also undermine 
CTP, which has steadfastly opposed 2008 elections in favor of 
a vote in late 2009.  Early elections falling in 2008 also 
would harm hopes for a restart of Cyprus Problem 
negotiations, already in a de facto holding pattern because 
of the February 2008 Republic of Cyprus presidential vote. 
End Comment. 
SCHLICHER