TurkeyObituaryIsmail Cem
Politician who helped bring Turkey and Greece closer togetherAt Ismail Cem's funeral on January 25, the former Greek foreign minister George Papandreou laid an olive branch from a tree in Greece that he and Cem, who has died of lung cancer aged 66, had planted together in Athens during their work to end the feud between Greece and Turkey. Cem will certainly be remembered for his work in helping the two countries to turn a page on their history. It is a fitting legacy for a man who was widely regarded in Turkey as much too nice ever to have got caught up in politics, but it does less than justice to his long and distinguished career as an author, journalist and politician.
Cem - he discarded Ipekci as his surname - was born to a prominent Istanbul family. One of his cousins was Abdi Ipekci, the country's best-known newspaper editor, murdered in 1979 by Mehmet Ali Agca, the attempted assassin of Pope John Paul II.
He was educated at Istanbul's American high school, Robert College, and then studied law at the University of Lausanne and the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris. When he returned to Turkey, he joined Milliyet newspaper and worked with his cousin Abdi Ipekci, quickly becoming one of the country's most prominent columnists.
He also wrote a series of books about Turkey's social and economic problems. The most famous, A History of Underdevelopment in Turkey (1970), expressed the mood of growing radicalism in the country in the late 1960s.
When the social democrat Bulent Ecevit (obituary, November 7 2006) came to power for the first time in 1973, one of his boldest acts was to appoint Cem to head Turkey's state radio and broadcasting corporation (TRT). Cem strove to improve the quality of TRT's output and introduced documentaries and sophisticated news coverage. After Ecevit fell from power in 1974 and was replaced by a strongly nationalist coalition of the right, Cem fought an unsuccessful legal battle for many months to keep his position. Once ousted, he returned to journalism, until 1980 when a military coup forced him to stop writing.
After civilian rule returned in 1983, he helped set up a new social democratic movement. In 1987, Cem entered the Turkish national assembly for the first time as a deputy for a newly created social democratic party opposed to Ecevit. It was not until 1995, when Cem switched to Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP), that he moved into the front rank of the country's politicians.
The decision to support Ecevit, who had then been in the wilderness for a decade and a half, was courageous but proved to be shrewd. The veteran leader was about to make a remarkable political comeback. Cem quickly obtained ministerial office, first as culture minister, and then from June 1997 as minister of foreign affairs, a post he occupied continuously for the next five years.
Initially a little diffident about high office, Cem grew into the post, becoming, in the opinion of western diplomats, the most successful foreign minister Turkey had seen for years. He took office at a time when relations between Turkey and Greece seemed to be at their lowest ever, with Greece obstructing Turkey's bid to join the European Union. The arrival of George Papandreou as foreign minister in Athens in 1999 was followed by a change in Greek foreign policy to which Cem responded enthusiastically.
Dialogue swiftly turned into cooperation and political friendship and there was progress over both Turkey's EU candidacy and Cyprus, which continued after both men were out of office until brought to a halt in April 2004 by the rejection of the Annan Plan.
After 2000, Ecevit's grasp on power grew increasingly shaky. The prime minister, though in his late 70s and frequently unwell, declined to consider a successor. In July 2002 Cem and other politicians announced that they were leaving the DSP to set up a new party, but they lost the support of their most popular ally, the economics minister, Kemal Dervis, and both the DSP and Cem's new party failed to win a single seat in the 2002 general elections.
An enthusiastic photographer and a supporter of the Galatasaray football team, he is survived by his wife Elchin and their daughter and son.
ยท Ismail Cem (formerly Ipekci), politician, born 1940; died January 24 2007
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