[44895] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Specifically designed to be used on any type of concrete, wood, and steel surfaces.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Surface Protection)
Wed Jun 17 14:43:46 2015
To: <mit-talk-mtg@charon.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2015 11:43:39 -0700
From: "Surface Protection" <SurfaceProtection@reurbenesp.in.net>
------=Part.451.9613.1434566619
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Quick and Easy do it yourself Formula
Protect, Coat and Restore any surface!
Garages, Floors, Walls, Roofs, Decks, Stores, Restaurants and More!
Get an Instant Quote now: http://www.reurbenesp.in.net/l/lt13A3749Y65DS/173H236NV524QL157FP13353119H3325522233/qs/?s2=cr-2-list157-mid-3749
Süleyman Demirel, who has died aged 90, was long known as the arch-survivor of Turkish politics. A leading figure among the country’s post-Atatürk second generation of politicians, he was prime minister seven times before succeeding to the presidency in 1993 on the death of Turgut Özal.
Though arguably the intellectual inferior of Bülent Ecevit, with whom he had tussled during the 1960s and 1970s for the premiership, politically he got the upper hand.
More
ON THIS TOPIC
Person in the news Selahattin Demirtas
EM Squared Political threat to FDI in Turkey
Analysis Turkey – Fading factionalism
David Gardner A victory for Turkish democracy
IN OBITUARIES
Kirk Kerkorian, billionaire investor, 1917-2015
Doris Hart, tennis champion, 1925-2015
Ornette Coleman, jazz musician, 1930-2015
Christopher Lee, actor, 1922-2015
A heavy, bullet-shaped man of irrepressible, maverick vigour, he derived his support base from conservative peasants and small businessmen. With some pride, Demirel described himself as a “peasant boy” and his father as “an Anatolian farmer”. He was the first of Turkey’s prime ministers to speak in a peasant’s dialect, and was appreciated as such.
Turks used to refer to the generals, bureaucrats and politicians who ran their affairs, dispensing privileges and favours just as freely as they dispensed punishment and soldierly discipline, as the baba devlet, or daddy state. They called Demirel “baba”.
Then, it was the military that held the reins of power. Like most Turkish politicians of his era, Demirel played by its rules. “He never challenged the army directly, he did not try to develop any movement to seek vengeance against the military,” says Ilter Turan, a professor of international relations at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “He worked within the system.”
At times, the system turned against him. He was ousted by military coups on two occasions, in 1971 and 1980. As an American diplomat once put it: “Demirel has certainly been kicked through the goalposts of life.”
Demirel’s party, True Path, was the heir to the Justice party, which he had headed until it was banned by the military in 1980. It could also be seen as heir to the populist traditions laid down by Adnan Menderes, the prime minister executed by the army in 1961. Demirel was comfortable with the old Menderes legacy: a civilian provincial middle class that accepted Atatürk’s secularism and nationalism but wanted to be able to go to the mosque and have its children taught the Koran without being suspected of treason.
His return from the wilderness in 1991, on a wave of popular euphoria, was one of the great comeback stories of Turkish politics
An old-style populist, Demirel in his political methods often seemed to resemble the consensual traditions of an Arab court rather than the political cut and thrust of European Christian democracy to which True Path was a sort of Islamic counterpart. He was known for his bons mots. A journalist once asked him to describe how Turkey was at the time. “To put it in one word,” he replied, “good.” Looks of disbelief followed. “In two words,” he said, “not good.”
A Keynesian on economic policy, he was instrumental in many of the country’s large infrastructure developments in the 1960s and 1970s. An engineer by background, he took considerable interest in the huge $21bn hydroelectric and irrigation project on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and in his early days was known as the “King of Dams”. His power base was centred on the small towns of the Aegean and the Anatolian interior, where his moderate brand of Turkish nationalism appealed to shopkeepers and artisans.
His return from the wilderness in 1991, on a wave of popular euphoria, was one of the great comeback stories of Turkish politics. He promised a policy of openness, a Turkish glasnost — coining the memorable phrase that he would make the police stations out of glass.
Achievements, however, never quite matched the rhetoric. The bitter experience of 1980 overshadowed his later years. As the political mentor of Özal, it was a particular source of grievance that his former chief policy adviser should emerge in the mid-1980s as the darling of the western diplomatic community while Demirel himself was still banned from active politics.
Relations with the generals were even more strained. For the military, Demirel was perceived as inconsistent, unreliable and too eager for popularity. For his part, he often seemed to lack the stomach to take on the military on issues such as reforming the state’s approach to the Kurdish minority in southern Turkey.
Born on November 11924 in the village of Islamköy in Isparta province, in west central Asia Minor, he was the eldest of four children. In 1948 he married a local woman, Nazmiye ?ener. The couple had no children but maintained strong religious and familial ties; she died in 2013.
In his early career he worked in the US and Turkey on 1950s civil engineering projects, notably as head of water control and director of the State Hydraulics Administration. Then his political career took off and he and Ecevit chased each other in and out of office, with Demirel first becoming prime minister in 1965. After his final two-year stint he handed that office in 1993 to Tansu Çiller, Turkey’s first female prime minister.
Like his presidential predecessor, Özal, he believed the economy should become more outward looking. At home, there was deregulation, but also the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. In foreign policy, Demirel had to concern himself with the Balkans, the Kurds (both in Turkey and northern Iraq), and the southern republics of the former Soviet Union. With the end of the cold war, Turkey felt itself less needed by Nato than in the past. Its human rights record remained a barrier to joining the European Union.
A real democracy never runs out of solutions
- Süleyman Demirel
If he and Ecevit had shared responsibility for the 1970s failure of Turkish democracy, Demirel perhaps deserved the greater blame. He turned a blind eye to the violence of the extreme rightwing. He believed that the army had all the necessary powers to deal with terrorism without the need for a military takeover. When the army finally intervened, he was a prime victim. He was twice interned for several months in the early 1980s.
Yet abroad, it was Ecevit rather than he who ordered the invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Demirel always made the right nationalist noises but was generally quite cautious in foreign policy, making a point of sticking close to the US. After his return to power in 1991 he was careful to avoid confrontation with Russia, whether over Azerbaijan or Chechnya.
“As president he transformed into an impartial, father-like figure,” says Mr Turan. “He deviated from his earlier performance, he was very balanced.”
But he was unimaginative about how to advance human rights for the Kurds — a main factor in a legacy that throughout Demirel’s lifetime left his nation at one remove from the embrace of a selectively expanding EU.
Today, following a June 7 parliamentary election that deprived the ruling Justice and Development party of its parliamentary majority, the country faces the prospect of its first coalition government in more than 12 years. Demirel knew that uncertainty well. Of his terms as prime minister, three were at the head of a grouping that extended beyond True Path. The message he might have wanted to pass on was one he was known to repeat regularly. “A real democracy,” he used to say, “never runs out of solutions.”
If you would no longer like to receive messages from us, please click here: http://www.reurbenesp.in.net/unsFY3749V65A/173H236C524UB157R13353119X3325522233/qs/?s2=cr-2-list157-mid-3749
Or write to: PO Box 515381, Los Angeles, CA 90051-6681
------=Part.451.9613.1434566619
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"
<html><head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-16LE"></head><body style="margin:0px;">
<div style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="410">
<tbody><tr>
<td align="left" height="10" valign="top" width="10"><a href="http://www.reurbenesp.in.net/l/lt1W3749G65CI/173O236LB524LJ157UW13353119M3325522233/qs/?s2=cr-2-list157-mid-3749"><img src="13708_001.jpg" alt="" title="" border="0"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" height="10" valign="top" width="10"><a href="http://www.reurbenesp.in.net/l/lt1G3749Y65NG/173N236YN524JM157FP13353119U3325522233/qs/?s2=cr-2-list157-mid-3749"><img src="13708_002.jpg" alt="" title="" border="0"></a></td>
</tr> <tr>
<td align="left" height="10" valign="top" width="10"><a href="http://www.reurbenesp.in.net/l/lt1H3749B65FC/173U236UR524TA157TT13353119V3325522233/qs/?s2=cr-2-list157-mid-3749"><img src="13708_003.jpg" alt="" title="" border="0"></a></td>
</tr> <tr>
<td align="left" height="10" valign="top" width="10"><a href="http://www.reurbenesp.in.net/l/lt1D3749E65VC/173X236BD524XU157BX13353119N3325522233/qs/?s2=cr-2-list157-mid-3749"><img src="13708_004.jpg" alt="" title="" border="0"></a></td>
</tr> <tr>
<td align="left" height="10" valign="top" width="10"><a href="http://www.reurbenesp.in.net/l/lt1K3749G65OD/173M236CW524NX157YJ13353119Y3325522233/qs/?s2=cr-2-list157-mid-3749"><img src="13708_005.jpg" alt="" title="" border="0"></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
</div><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<table align="center" border="0" width="500">
<tbody><tr>
<td style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; color: #666; text-align: center;">If you would no longer like to receive messages from us, please click <a href="http://www.reurbenesp.in.net/l/lc6Y3749Q65CN/173V236AV524MM157MM13353119F3325522233/qs/?s2=cr-2-list157-mid-3749">here </a>or write to: PO Box 515381, Los Angeles, CA 90051-6681</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<table style="width:100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="background-color:#101321">
Süleyman Demirel, who has died aged 90, was long known as the arch-survivor of Turkish politics. A leading figure among the country’s post-Atatürk second generation of politicians, he was prime minister seven times before succeeding to the presidency in 1993 on the death of Turgut Özal.
Though arguably the intellectual inferior of Bülent Ecevit, with whom he had tussled during the 1960s and 1970s for the premiership, politically he got the upper hand.
More
ON THIS TOPIC
Person in the news Selahattin Demirtas
EM Squared Political threat to FDI in Turkey
Analysis Turkey – Fading factionalism
David Gardner A victory for Turkish democracy
IN OBITUARIES
Kirk Kerkorian, billionaire investor, 1917-2015
Doris Hart, tennis champion, 1925-2015
Ornette Coleman, jazz musician, 1930-2015
Christopher Lee, actor, 1922-2015
A heavy, bullet-shaped man of irrepressible, maverick vigour, he derived his support base from conservative peasants and small businessmen. With some pride, Demirel described himself as a “peasant boy” and his father as “an Anatolian farmer”. He was the first of Turkey’s prime ministers to speak in a peasant’s dialect, and was appreciated as such.
Turks used to refer to the generals, bureaucrats and politicians who ran their affairs, dispensing privileges and favours just as freely as they dispensed punishment and soldierly discipline, as the baba devlet, or daddy state. They called Demirel “baba”.
Then, it was the military that held the reins of power. Like most Turkish politicians of his era, Demirel played by its rules. “He never challenged the army directly, he did not try to develop any movement to seek vengeance against the military,” says Ilter Turan, a professor of international relations at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “He worked within the system.”
At times, the system turned against him. He was ousted by military coups on two occasions, in 1971 and 1980. As an American diplomat once put it: “Demirel has certainly been kicked through the goalposts of life.”
Demirel’s party, True Path, was the heir to the Justice party, which he had headed until it was banned by the military in 1980. It could also be seen as heir to the populist traditions laid down by Adnan Menderes, the prime minister executed by the army in 1961. Demirel was comfortable with the old Menderes legacy: a civilian provincial middle class that accepted Atatürk’s secularism and nationalism but wanted to be able to go to the mosque and have its children taught the Koran without being suspected of treason.
His return from the wilderness in 1991, on a wave of popular euphoria, was one of the great comeback stories of Turkish politics
An old-style populist, Demirel in his political methods often seemed to resemble the consensual traditions of an Arab court rather than the political cut and thrust of European Christian democracy to which True Path was a sort of Islamic counterpart. He was known for his bons mots. A journalist once asked him to describe how Turkey was at the time. “To put it in one word,” he replied, “good.” Looks of disbelief followed. “In two words,” he said, “not good.”
A Keynesian on economic policy, he was instrumental in many of the country’s large infrastructure developments in the 1960s and 1970s. An engineer by background, he took considerable interest in the huge $21bn hydroelectric and irrigation project on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and in his early days was known as the “King of Dams”. His power base was centred on the small towns of the Aegean and the Anatolian interior, where his moderate brand of Turkish nationalism appealed to shopkeepers and artisans.
His return from the wilderness in 1991, on a wave of popular euphoria, was one of the great comeback stories of Turkish politics. He promised a policy of openness, a Turkish glasnost — coining the memorable phrase that he would make the police stations out of glass.
Achievements, however, never quite matched the rhetoric. The bitter experience of 1980 overshadowed his later years. As the political mentor of Özal, it was a particular source of grievance that his former chief policy adviser should emerge in the mid-1980s as the darling of the western diplomatic community while Demirel himself was still banned from active politics.
Relations with the generals were even more strained. For the military, Demirel was perceived as inconsistent, unreliable and too eager for popularity. For his part, he often seemed to lack the stomach to take on the military on issues such as reforming the state’s approach to the Kurdish minority in southern Turkey.
Born on November 11924 in the village of Islamköy in Isparta province, in west central Asia Minor, he was the eldest of four children. In 1948 he married a local woman, Nazmiye ?ener. The couple had no children but maintained strong religious and familial ties; she died in 2013.
In his early career he worked in the US and Turkey on 1950s civil engineering projects, notably as head of water control and director of the State Hydraulics Administration. Then his political career took off and he and Ecevit chased each other in and out of office, with Demirel first becoming prime minister in 1965. After his final two-year stint he handed that office in 1993 to Tansu Çiller, Turkey’s first female prime minister.
Like his presidential predecessor, Özal, he believed the economy should become more outward looking. At home, there was deregulation, but also the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. In foreign policy, Demirel had to concern himself with the Balkans, the Kurds (both in Turkey and northern Iraq), and the southern republics of the former Soviet Union. With the end of the cold war, Turkey felt itself less needed by Nato than in the past. Its human rights record remained a barrier to joining the European Union.
A real democracy never runs out of solutions
- Süleyman Demirel
If he and Ecevit had shared responsibility for the 1970s failure of Turkish democracy, Demirel perhaps deserved the greater blame. He turned a blind eye to the violence of the extreme rightwing. He believed that the army had all the necessary powers to deal with terrorism without the need for a military takeover. When the army finally intervened, he was a prime victim. He was twice interned for several months in the early 1980s.
Yet abroad, it was Ecevit rather than he who ordered the invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Demirel always made the right nationalist noises but was generally quite cautious in foreign policy, making a point of sticking close to the US. After his return to power in 1991 he was careful to avoid confrontation with Russia, whether over Azerbaijan or Chechnya.
“As president he transformed into an impartial, father-like figure,” says Mr Turan. “He deviated from his earlier performance, he was very balanced.”
But he was unimaginative about how to advance human rights for the Kurds — a main factor in a legacy that throughout Demirel’s lifetime left his nation at one remove from the embrace of a selectively expanding EU.
Today, following a June 7 parliamentary election that deprived the ruling Justice and Development party of its parliamentary majority, the country faces the prospect of its first coalition government in more than 12 years. Demirel knew that uncertainty well. Of his terms as prime minister, three were at the head of a grouping that extended beyond True Path. The message he might have wanted to pass on was one he was known to repeat regularly. “A real democracy,” he used to say, “never runs out of solutions.”
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body></html>
------=Part.451.9613.1434566619--
