Relationship of ambiguity

Bhutto resented the arnity between Turkey's military leaders and former military ruler Zia ul-Haq who sent her father to the gallows. She became fond of Turkey as it embraced democracy

Turkish-Pakistani friendship is legendary. Almost all members of the press that accompanied Turkish President Abdullah Gül's on his visit to Pakistan last December, reported on the golden bracelet donated by a Turkish girl Esra Yalçın in the aftermath of the 1995 earthquake that left thousands dead in Pakistan. It seems to be one of the most cherished presents in the Pakistani Presidential Palace as the bracelet hangs on one of the most visible walls of the palace.

     “Every Pakistani loves Turks,” said İnal Batu, former Turkish ambassador to Islamabad. “The military and the intellectuals admire us. Turkey is always a model.” Even the “mullah,” Islamic fundamentalists like Turkey although their affection may be less, according to Batu.

   “They like us. This is the general rule,” said Batu, also a former parliamentarian.

  But apparently Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister who was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack was an exception, at least in the beginning. According to Batu, who was posted to Islamabad from 1984-1987, she resented the close relationship between Turkey's leaders and Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator who unseated her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from the prime ministry in a coup in 1977 and sent him to the gallows him two years later.

   “There was extraordinary amity between the military regime of Turkey and Zia ul-Haq,” said Batu. Kenan Evren, former General Chief of Staff who led the military coup in 1980, was elected president of Turkey for a period of seven years in 1982.

  Batu said he once heard Bhutto herself say, “Turkey was very close to the murderer of my father. This has spurned me away from Turkey.” As Turkey's transition to democracy progressed she also started appreciating Turkey, said the former Turkish diplomat.

  “She saw Turkey as an important model with its modern image,” said Bozkurt Aran, who was in Islamabad, from 1998 to 2000. That was the period when she left Pakistan in 1999 to live in Dubai and London. “I would be invited to a dinner of an official from her political party. And all of a sudden she would pop up (or appear) in the room,” said Aran, of his few encounters with her.

  Aged 54, Bhutto was killed in a bomb attack at a political rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. She was back in the country after spending more than eight years of self-imposed exile to avoid corruption charges.

  “She was very charming, very bright and soft-spoken,” said Aran describing Bhutto. “But I doubt if she would have become a politician was she not born to that family,” said Aran, who is now in Geneva, heading the Turkish delegation in the World Trade Organization.

  Bhutto was born in Karachi, to a father who was the founder of one of Pakistan's two major political parties. “She considered her involvement in her country's political life as her natural destiny,” said Aran. Navigating the often-violent world of Pakistani politics was in her eyes part of the family legacy, according to Aran. “She saw it as a duty to tread the path of her family,” he said. “There is no doubt that she knew she would be murdered. She just accepted it,” Aran added.

  “She left the impression on me of a person who will fight for her principles,” said Hikmet Çetin, former speaker of Parliament. “She was a person that would do anything if she had faith in it. She would even take risks for that. And her return to Pakistan despite death threats and her eventual murder proves this trait of her personality,” said Çetin. Çetin accompanied Tansu Çiller and Bhutto on their trips to Sarajevo to draw the world's attention to the tragedy of the civil war in Bosnia. “She came and proposed to go to Sarajevo, as two prime ministers, as two ladies and mothers,” said Çetin, who at that time was foreign minister. “It was a highly risky trip, and this also showed me Bhutto's determination and her nature to take risks,” said Çetin.

  “She was a very down to earth person. She once told me how she had to stick her nose through the bars of a prison cell to smell the scent of his husband,” said Aran. Earning the nickname Mr. Ten Percent, her husband's corruption was probably one of the major drawbacks she suffered from. Asif Ali Zardari, was jailed on charges of corruption. “She could not control her husband or her entourage,” said Aran. “He had a reputation of being a very big thief,” said Batu.

  Bhutto was the first woman to be democratically elected to lead a Muslim country and is survived by her husband, son and two daughters.