Unfortunately, appointed bureaucrats have never accepted the rule of this country by the elected representatives of the people. Since their interactions with the people and their responsibilities toward the people are so limited, they tend not to give much thought to their expectations and sentiments.Actually, today's crisis is best explained in the words of former Higher Education Board (YÖK) head Erdoğan Teziç, who had challenged the government by saying: "Do not forget that there is also a state power alongside the political power. The political power is transient, but the state power is permanent." The "permanent power," which is defined by Teziç as "state power," is nothing but the bureaucracy. It is Teziç's state power that is waging a life-and-death battle against the elected government, which is considered the legitimate power in a democracy.
The state power in question tends to employ different institutions depending on the circumstances in this struggle against democracy, the people and the elected government. When an institution becomes unable to maintain this struggle, another one comes to the rescue of the state power. Please remember that during the time when a person who was considered "acceptable" by the state power was president, this office filled the basic function of acting as a brake against policies pursued by the government and the people's democratic demands. Personally, I see nothing but this function at work when I look at the presidential terms of Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Süleyman Demirel. There is no doubt that both Sezer and Demirel needed the assistance of -- and were amply aided by -- the military, YÖK and the top judiciary in their execution of the duties of state power.
When, despite the widespread protests provoked and organized under the seemingly civilian demands of certain so-called nongovernmental organizations that are loyal to the deep state, the presidential office and YÖK lost their ability to function as tools of the state power, the state power lost no time in devising new plots. Since the bureaucracy had long ago lost the ability to conduct direct military coups, the top judiciary stepped in to act as an organ to legitimize all kinds of anti-democratic practices. Then the top judiciary started to make decisions in accordance with the whims of the state power, despite the risk of violating the Constitution, its raison d'être.
Ignoring the obvious fact that the actions and duties of the state mechanism, designed to perform services for the people, can only be legitimized by policies formulated by governments elected by the popular will, the bureaucracy has today turned into a Frankenstein and gone completely out of control to wage a war against its legitimate operator. Unfortunately, secularism is used as a pretext for this horrible war.
However, in Turkey, the popular will that makes democracy possible has no problem with secularism. The Turkish nation knows quite well that democracy cannot survive without secularism and vice versa. For this reason, the so-called intellectuals who try to legitimize possible anti-democratic interventions by suggesting that "if democracy is interrupted, it will come back, but if secularism is interrupted, it won't come back" are utterly wrong.
Those who attempt to deceive people by giving the false impression that the people of this country who want nothing but more democracy and universal individual rights and freedoms are threatening secularism tend to see democracy as a dispensable regime. They shamefully write these primitive arguments in their columns. According to these unfortunate writers, democracy can be suspended and law can be violated in order to protect secularism. Sadly, they do not want to see that secularism can never be protected by suspending democracy or damaging the law. They do not want to understand that secularism protected despite the removal of democracy will only lead to repressive minority rule. Perhaps they are well aware of this risk, but they lend support to this misuse of secularism as this fits their interests.
However, as put by political scientist Mümtaz'er Türköne in his column in Zaman on Thursday, democracy is based on three basic principles that can be made possible only through secularism: "First is the principle of political equality, which also makes secularism indispensable. A political system where people are treated differently depending on their beliefs cannot be considered a democracy. Second is the majority's right to rule, which is also derived from the principle of equality. Third is the principle of ensuring that minorities can live as equal individuals under constitutional guarantees. Secularism is also needed for the sake of this third principle, since a state that is not secular cannot protect minorities."
As we stated above, a mentality of secularism that is not democratic will always lead to minority rule. At this point, one cannot agree more with Türköne's argument: "If you pull secularism out of democracy and put it into minority rule, then you will invent an ideology that eliminates the principle of political equality, thereby losing its quality as a legal principle."
Yet there is still room for hope because the state bureaucracy will never win the battle against the people, who constitute its raison d'être in Turkey, as around the globe.
