When Rifts And Backstabbing Are Afoot, It Must Be Election Season
October 3, 2012 § 1 Comment
Days like today are my favorite kind here at O&Z, when the symmetry of politics in Israel and Turkey allows me to write one blog post that covers both countries simultaneously and satisfy all of my blog constituencies at once. Over the last 48 hours or so the prospect of elections in Israel and Turkey have caused rifts at the top of both countries with fighting and accusations of perfidy, some subtle and some decidedly unsubtle, between top government officials. Genuine friendships and relationships of convenience are both nearing the breaking point, which just goes to show you that democratic politics can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time.
Let’s start with Israel, where the Netanyahu-Barak bromance is now officially over and the fighting is out in the open in a very public and nasty way. Yesterday Netanyahu accused Barak of attempting to sabotage U.S.-Israel relations even further for the purpose of then coming across as the reasonable moderate who could repair damaged ties, a charge that Barak promptly denied (shameless plug #1: if you read O&Z last week, this news will not have surprised you). Amir Mizroch does his usual good job of summing up the situation but the upshot is that I don’t see how these two can continue to work together. I am sure that Barak did indeed try to throw Bibi under the bus while he was doing his tour around the U.S. and I am also sure that Netanyahu is busy trashing Barak behind the scenes to his friends in Likud. Barak is pretty clearly flailing around here in an attempt to increase his vote share before the elections and is just hoping that something will stick, whether it be his potshots at Avigdor Lieberman or his rapid backing away from Netanyahu. Given how little of a threat that Barak poses from a political standpoint, I’m not quite sure why Netanyahu is even engaging him rather than just ignoring him since I don’t see any potential upside for Bibi in getting dragged down into a brawl in the mud. In any event, like I wrote last week, I will be surprised if Barak finishes out his term as defense minister (and friend of O&Z Dov Friedman has one-upped me by predicting that Barak will be fired rather than quit). I should also reiterate that unless this is part of history’s most elaborate and well-executed long con, a strike on Iran is simply not in the cards right now. If it were, there would be zero public daylight between Netanyahu and Barak rather than all too public sniping.
Moving along to Turkey, the impending inaugural direct election for president is causing some interesting backstabbing as well, but in a much less public way that requires some reading between the lines. Prime Minister Erdoğan is widely believed to covet the top post, which will be infused with newfound power after the AKP replaces the current Turkish constitution with a new version, but current president Abdullah Gül has little desire to vacate the spot. Erdoğan is banking on the fact that he remains a popular figure credited with leading Turkey during a time of unprecedented economic growth and global prestige, but he also knows that he needs a way to sideline Gül so that Gül won’t stick around as prime minister. In this vein, he has been promoting his erstwhile ally (and new AKP member) Numan Kurtulmuş, adding him to the party’s Central Decision and Executive Council and is likely to name him deputy chairman as well (shameless plug #2: if you have been reading O&Z for the past few months, this news will not have surprised you). Gül, however, is showing signs that he will not be pushed aside so easily. In his opening address to parliament this week, Gül implicitly criticized Erdoğan without mentioning him by name in castigating the government on the imprisonment of elected BDP deputies, calling for more joint positions and joint contributions across political party lines (which is squarely aimed at what is taking place during the constitutional drafting process), and then taking a clear shot across the bow on the issue of press freedoms:
The reputation of a country grows when its writers, thinkers, opinion leaders are able to share their views without fear. In the same way, it is fundamental that journalists, newsmen and members of the media as a whole should face no obstacle in fulfilling their responsibility for informing the public. No one should be imprisoned because of expressing their views through the media. A clear distinction must be observed between those who incite violence and those who express an opinion.
This is the opening salvo in what I expect will be some more overt tension to come between Erdoğan and Gül. Turkey’s constitution is going to provide for a newly powerful president, and one of these two men is going to get the job. This relationship is a genuine one though of friendship and mutual respect, unlike the one between Netanyahu and Barak, and so the question that remains to be seen is how nasty things are going to get when all is said and done.
The Fate of Ehud Barak and Atzmaut
May 3, 2012 § 2 Comments
Of all the Israeli politicians affected by the call for early elections, the one whose fate is most uncertain is Ehud Barak. While he joined the coalition as defense minister by bringing in the Labor party, he ended up splitting from Labor and forming Atzmaut for the sole purpose of remaining in the government. That move allowed him to stay where he was in the short term, but it might end up costing him big in the long term. The latest polls from the Jerusalem Post, Israel Hayom, Dahaf and Maariv show Atzmaut nowhere to be found and Barak is not going to run on the Likud party list. There is the possibility that Netanyahu appoints him as defense minister anyway, but this would likely prompt a revolt unless Barak is elected to a party that is serving in the next coalition.
On the other hand, there is some evidence that all is not yet lost for Barak. Haaretz cites an unnamed poll showing that Atzmaut now has enough support to meet the Knesset threshold, and Atzmaut MK Shalom Simhon predicts that Atzmaut will four seats alone from the Druze, moshav, and kibbutz vote. In addition, Yediot reports another unnamed poll showing Atzmaut with three seats already, and there is a long time between now and the election so Barak has plenty of time to win over more potential supporters. The drop in support for Kadima over the past month alone should be enough to give Atzmaut supporters comfort in demonstrating how quickly the polls can change.
When all is said and done, I find it difficult to imagine that Atzmaut will not cross the vote threshold to win seats in the Knesset. There are a few factors at work here. First, like I said, four months is a long time, and Atzmaut has plenty of time to organize and drum up support. Barak has certainly been hard at work lately staking out positions on settlements and the Tal Law, and even taking on newcomer Yair Lapid – who might siphon off voters from Barak’s traditional center-left base – by mocking his use of a teleprompter.
Second, despite the fact that Israelis find him to be a slippery character and that his breaking away from Labor was an unpopular gambit, Barak is still a towering figure in Israeli politics. He is a former prime minister, former IDF chief of staff, the most decorated solider in Israel’s history, and is the current defense minister and second most powerful/influential politician in the country next to Bibi. I find it inconceivable that any party led by Barak won’t be able to muster the measly 2% of the vote required to win seats in the Knesset. Playing into this is the fact that Netanyahu desperately needs Barak at his side as long as the possibility of a strike on Iran still exists, and the Israeli public view Barak as a credible defense and security figure, no matter what they think of him as a politician. A new poll shows that only 25% of Israelis agree with Yuval Diskin’s criticism that Netanyahu and Barak are not equipped to deal with Iran, and no doubt Barak is going to spend the next four months reminding Israelis of how important his continued political career is to their safety and security. The last time Israel had an untested defense minister in former labor union leader Amir Peretz it was an unmitigated disaster, and Barak will be the beneficiary of the lingering memory of Peretz’s mishandling of the 2006 war with Hizballah.
So despite the polls, remember that you read this prediction here first: Atzmaut is going to have seats in the next Knesset, will serve in the governing coalition, and Ehud Barak will continue as defense minister.
