In April 1993, President Turgut Ozal died from a heart attack in the Presidential Palace in Ankara, and Turkey took a severe turn downwards after his death. I had the pleasure of not only knowing Ozal but was able to develop a valuable relationship with him because of his time at the World Bank in Washington during my youth and our families were friends as a result. So, he would ask about my situation in Istanbul after I moved back in 1984 and from time to time, I had the opportunity to visit with him when he visited Istanbul. My Istanbul home was right across the Turkish Army base in Harbiye which he liked to use frequently. He invited me during the 1991 Gulf War, when there was international coalition building that he personally pushed for and helped the Americans win probably the swiftest war in the American history. This fact has worked very much against American wars of Afghanistan and Iraq – forever wars dubbed by Trump for obvious reasons. Now Ukraine is the U.S. forever war created once again for at least a decade of demise. Nobody cares in Washington DC about Ukraine and the future of that part of the world. Everyone is busy making money as usual in war games. Biden left $80 billion of war goods in Afghanistan – no problem you can produce more and sell quickly to Ukraine and friends – which happened very quickly. Taliban seemed thrilled for being gifted these war goods after 20 years knowing the United States would eventually leave just like Vietnam.
Everyone around the world reads US History except Americans studying in liberal schools despising US history. Perfect time for the world to deface everything stamped the United States. 3 sections will remain U.S. controlled hemisphere and Europe trying to distance itself from US power as much as possible and the rest of the world basically anti-American. Nobody in Washington DC understands this fact or even cares this is happening.. it used to be Russia and China messing up the world balance by their presence in different institutions like the UN which does not exist today in my view – Bush Jr destroyed this with Collin Powell being forced to lie to the world during Iraq invasion.. mushroom clouds did not occur in Iraq like Rice was threatening on TV. Not even close as everything in Iraq was archaic due to its not having spare parts for any kind of continued war machine.. Powell’s political career went up in smoke in one afternoon which was pretty difficult for him personally.
Turgut Ozal was the one who gave the order for 200.000 Turkish soldiers to mass Iraq’s northern flank and border, and this forced Saddam Hussein to plan for a Turkish invasion as well as an American led invasion from Kuwait. During one of his interviews with CNN during these times, he asked me to watch CNN, take notes and give him a report, when he was finished with his international interviews that he was doing. This kind of human touch and clear vision for the country empowered young people like me during that time and I was proud to be asked to be in that position. After his death, I joined his party – Motherland Party – in July 1993 with the leadership of Erdal Aksoy, who was the Istanbul Provincial head and without even going to the Party Congress, I was appointed to General Secretary of the Discipline Committee, a powerful position that everyone wanted apparently. With his leadership and empowerment of me personally, I found myself rather quickly in the inner circle of Mesut Yilmaz and the senior party officials. I was 30 years old, and I took everything seriously and worked harder than anyone imagined. I knew Turkey was lacking leaders, lacking vision and was in deep trouble politically. Still, I decided that I was in an excellent position to create positive change and I started forming my movement during the later stage of 1993 several months after Ozal’s death. We officially announced our name ARI in June/1994. From June / 1994 until 1998 we collaborated with ANAP. Everything ARI produced was presented at ANAP meetings.
Everything I said or wrote between 1993 and 2011 turned out to be true before it happened. ARI created a very unique political mindset – information based politics – which I taught to everyone in the Movement. If you have proper information on an issue then you can take a stand and make your case based on information – not conspiracies Turkey lived on daily. I always adhered to this trying to be a leader to young people based on this. If I had information on some issue that I cared about I would a take a position – then build step by step on that position. If not then I would not touch any subject without knowledge.
In 1994, I was asked by the late Mesut Yilmaz to go to Washington DC to the American-Turkish Council meeting on behalf of Ilhan Kesici, who had been invited to speak but was in the thick of his campaign to become Mayor of Istanbul against Erdogan. This March 1994 election between Kesici and Erdogan is the event that marked the process of Türkiye's political transformation. Everything in Türkiye changed on with this specific election. I was fully involved as Kesici's advisor and took off from my bank for a hundred days to join him all over Istanbul to help his campaign. He was supposed to get 35 percent of the vote and easily become Mayor as Mr. Erdogan was not even close in the original polls.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller brought Bedrettin Dalan to her party who had no base in Istanbul traditionally as DYP. He was able to garner a 10 percent or so plus, as he was considering Yilmaz as an enemy and wanted the Motherland Party to be destroyed because Ozal did not hand the party to him as the successful Istanbul Mayor throughout the 80's who transformed Istanbul. And Zulfu Livaneli, who is a singer and a journalist for Sabah Newspaper, was recruited by the social democrats who again did not have a base beyond 10 percent, and he got around 17 percent. And Bulent Ecevit brought in one of his old, respected ministers who only cut into the divisions even more. After midnight of the vote count, Mr. Kesici was comfortably ahead of Mr. Erdogan – 26 percent in comparison to 19 percent - and Yilmaz prematurely phoned Kesici at the campaign headquarters on speaker phone for all of us to hear and congratulated Mr. Kesici on his victory. Kesici said this was too early to celebrate and they needed to wait until the outskirts of Istanbul came in and was counted and Erdogan had been projected to do well there. By 5 AM, Mr. Erdogan had close to 25 percent and Kesici fell to close to 22 percent, thus losing the most critical election in Turkish history. Terrible political people and extremely corrupt media representatives had successfully prevented Yilmaz's party from winning in Istanbul. This is the reason Kesici lost and Turkey’s fateful transformation had begun.