When he is elected by the people the president will no longer be impartial... The political majority in the Parliament want to seize not only the political power but also the state’s power...” These words belong to a social scientist, Higher Education Board (YÖK) Chairman Professor Erdoğan Teziç, who heads the universities in Turkey -- assumed to be as much the home of the social sciences as they are of the positive sciences.
“People will elect the president now, in addition to electing the members of Parliament. [Therefore] the people’s sovereignty will start to crumble. This will get Turkey into serious trouble... The president will not say yes to this irresponsibility [people electing the president], it is so obvious. He will return this [constitutional amendment].”
And these are the words of CHP leader Deniz Baykal, who is assumed to rely on the votes he receives from the people (!).
In fact we don’t even need to comment on these words. Everything is so self-evident. Both of them, leaning on an unaccountable state power, articulate a fear with these words: a phobia of the people...
Is it really necessary to discuss how democratic, populist or republican such a mindset, which sees people and their vote as a threat, can be? In order to become a consistent and venerable person, doesn’t Baykal, who keeps reiterating his deep-rooted disbelief in the people and the republic based on its people, have to act upon his disbelief? That is, change the name of his party from the Republican People’s Party to a name that better characterizes his people phobia?
However we should dwell a little on the formulation of “political power” and “the state’s power,” as articulated a few times by Teziç. When the word “power” is mentioned, people everywhere think of “political power.” However in Teziç’s world “power” not only means political power, or government. According to him the state has also a power alongside the political government. Moreover according to Teziç the state’s power is eternal, whereas the political powers govern within a limited period, as allowed by the people. Therefore the essential power is that of the state, which is unaccountable to the people and has no duties or responsibilities toward them.
Being a professor of constitutional law he knows perfectly well himself that the ridiculous concepts of the “state’s power” or the “people’s power” do not and cannot exist. In fact Teziç’s attitude does not stem in the slightest from ignorance; it is just an admission of the reality in Turkey.
With his these words Teziç has, although unwillingly, divulged the ciphers of the state’s power, which he so willingly wants to perpetuate. At this point agreement with political scientist Mümtaz’er Türköne’s analysis, published in Zaman daily, seems inevitable. “What we call the state’s power is nothing but the attempt to create an area of power outside the people’s inspection.”
Türkone writes: “You are aware that a state power and a state system that can on no condition be touched or changed by people, who are the owners of sovereignty, are mentioned, aren’t you? Is this an omnipotent power? Are they mentioning a divine order, a divinely majestic power that transcends our mind and will? Ideologies try to add some makeup and estheticism to petty power and interest conflicts. There is not even this effort in Teziç and Baykal’s simple statements. A constitutional lawyer representing the universities in Turkey is mentioning an area of power that cannot be touched by people; that cannot, and actually should not, be interfered in by the political power that represents it. The statements of the leader of the main opposition are a graver fallacy: He states that there is an utter contradiction between the order of people and the order of the state. It is such an order that its subsistence and survival are based on keeping people outside the door.”
And the questions he asks -- “What are these things called the ‘state’s power’ and the ‘state’s order’? Who owns this power? Why are people excluded from this order? And why are they not allowed to take part in that order?” -- are questions that everyone should really contemplate.
Neither Turkey nor the Turkish nation deserves this mentality that fears them as if they were bogeymen.
