site.btaTurkey’s Only Female Prime Minister Tansu Ciller May Be Returning to Active Politics

These days Turkish media abound in claims that Tansu Ciller intends to return to the political scene at the head of a new political formation.

Tansu Ciller is Turkey’s first and only female prime minister to date, elected to serve as such in 1993 as leader of the True Path Party founded by the late president Suleyman Demirel.

Thanks to her solid US education, at first the woman politician Ciller was perceived as “Turkey’s new face” both at home and abroad.

However, the economic crisis, the scandalous revelations involving family corruption and particularly the coalition alliance concluded with the first Islamist premier, Necmettin Erbakan, whom the military forced to step down, also led to Ciller’s downfall. In 2002 Tansu Ciller retired from political life.

In the past years, Ciller has appeared publicly only at official events of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (such as marking the anniversary of the failed coup in 2016, for example) in the box of the guests of honour.

This continued until the first days of March, when information that Tansu Ciller was meeting with right party leaders appeared in the media.

The pro-government Sabah and Hurriyet allotted considerable space to Tansu Ciller’s meeting and talks with leaders of right parties close to her once-ruling (in the 1990s) True Path Party, as well as to the Our Party (Bizim Parti) founded in 2020.

“I yearn for my people. One receives as much as one asks for. I am indebted. I have not decided yet, but whatever my decision, it will not be for some office. I will not do it for profit,” Ciller said in an interview for the Haber Global TV channel.

The former prime minister is testing the waters for a possible return to politics. Ciller will not found a new party but will head the Bizim Parti established in 2020 already with a new name, the pro-government media comment.

How true is this and how feasible?

In answer, analyst Mustafa Balbay of the opposition Cumhurriyet is adamant that Tansu Ciller will enter active politics soon.

“She will head a formation called the Great Turkey Party (Buyuk Tukiye Partisi). She plans to complete organization within a couple of months. So far seven chairman of district party chapters have been appointed. A party congress is planned within two months at which Tansu Ciller is to be endorsed as a leader. This will most probably be the sixth party to be approved in the Erdogan-Bahceli People’s Alliance. A pre-election climate could possibly become ripe in June or in the autumn,” he thinks.

Commenting on the claims of Tansu Ciller’s return into active politics, her former deputy (and former interior minister) Meral Askener, who now leads the Good Party which is part of the opposition Nation Alliance, said shortly before the pro-government Hurriyet that when anyone mentioned Tansu Ciller she always recalled Tayyip Erdogan.

It is difficult to say now how right the claims are, but it will not be surprising if at the not-so-distant elections the two Turkish ladies, who left their mark on their country’s political scene in the 1990s, will find themselves in two radically opposed camps.