These actions are sure to have an impact on the presidential election, but the true influence will be felt in the politics and democracy practiced in Turkey. The Turkish political establishment will not allow any linguistic and/or representational diversity that subverts the nature of a system that is not pluralistic by nature. Politicians, and to some degree the international community, constantly complain about the deadlocks within the parties and the negative impact of this on Turkish democracy. In reality, the impact of unregistered politics is greater than the intra-party fractures, and this not only weakens politics itself but also transforms the political parties into institutions whose very functions are limited. The factor that makes the parties ineffective and inferior in the eyes of the public is the invisible power of shadow politics over the parties. If an old party like the Republican People’s Party (CHP) fails to come to power and represent the views of the public, then part of the reason is its inability to rid itself of its image as the party of the state and the centralized bureaucracy. The same bureaucratic center also requests the same obedience from other parties. The only plausible explanation for what happened to the two formerly strongest parties on the political landscape, the Motherland Party (then-ANAP, ANAVATAN) and the True Path Party (DYP), is that their alleged guardian relationship with the bureaucratic center was soundly rejected.
From this perspective, it is possible that this situation is also preferred by party leaders. Pluralism is regarded as a weakness of our nation’s political parties, it is expected that decisions will be taken by the center in the absence of intra-party democracy. The leadership abilities of a party head aren’t measured by any talent in supervising the whole, but by the compliance of party members to their requests. This attitude eventually leads to the indifference to politics felt by competent intellectuals.
In a democracy different social interest groups express themselves through a preset framework of consensus; this is the essence of democracy. Similarly the political environment should be such that factions within a political party can air opposition or dissent. The democratic idea that the ruled, and civil society as a whole, should have a say in decision making’s mechanisms and processes is based on this premise. However, because a difference expressed a deputy or differing opinions between ministers are considered weaknesses by the parties, the party leaders have had to impose bans on speech by the dissenters. Seemingly this imposes party discipline, but in practice it soon becomes an obstacle to the development of politics through the dismissal of the negotiation and discussion processes.
The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and others seen as extensions of the Milli Görüş (National View) movement could have developed the concept of “negotiated politics” in order to maintain some level of pluralism. However, they failed to attach importance to the concept, the AK Party (which is based on such a tradition) avoided negotiated politics in its distancing of itself from its past. It opted to embrace the process of being a center party and some of its members even asserted that the state should have an established ideology. The purification of the state from an official ideology and the acknowledgement of linguistic and representational diversity should, in reality, have been viewed as benefiting general politics and the development of their party.
The cultural internalization of the negotiated politics would have taken society’s democratic participation and civic politics firmly to a position counter to postmodern interventions and helped in the positive outcome through the willingness of people to make politics. The AK Party is far from being a candidate for such an endeavor. More accurately, it has fallen victim to pressures not to do so; to the unregistered politics that so weakens democratic politics.
