Commitment to history, preservation of the past and protection of cultural assets are major concerns. On the other hand, in such societies, political realignments have been visibly sharp, and revolutionary changes have radically transformed the state's role and position.
Conversely, in a group of countries including Turkey, the field where change is persistent and influential is within the state tradition. The creation of the republic changed the regime but left the state's position vis-à-vis the society unchanged. This led to domination by bureaucratic institutions that played extensive roles, beyond governmental actions, and the state's emergence as the only decision-maker with respect to ideological matters. Those who are familiar with Turkey will know that the military is at the center of executive affairs and that it is backed by a bureaucratic coalition. On the other hand, continuity in society's cultural aspects in Turkey is referred to as a weakness or an obstacle. Forgetting the past and presenting the cultural assets of this country as promoting backwardness are parts of this approach.
What matters is that these processes of continuity and discontinuity complement each other and generate legitimacy. In many Western countries, the legitimacy of great transformations in politics has been sought in the continuity of social grounds, and the cultural fabric has served as an agent of unification. It could be said that the politically reformist character of these countries stems from their cultural conservatism because in a country where social continuity has not been guaranteed, it would be risky to change the nature and character of the state.
The case in Turkey is just the opposite. There has been a stable and unchanged form of relationship and a hard-to-overcome hierarchy between the state and the society. Preservation of this continuity is made possible by discontinuity in the cultural domain. For instance, the traditional majority of society is driven away from politics because of its cultural characteristics.
This is the actual meaning of secularism in Turkey. Secularism introduces a cultural discontinuity while it also restricts the political sphere for both the actors and their demands, ensuring the continuity of pro-state elitism. As a natural extension of this, the Turkish bureaucracy based its politics on this cultural discontinuity, and even law was used to achieve this goal.
The interplay between political continuity/discontinuity has become the only source of legitimacy for politics. Nationalism reinforces this because as the entity called a nation transcends the people, its interests are protected by the state.
The important point is that the problems as to who will do politics and how have become tangled in such a complicated combination. In other words, politics has been done with reference to the question of who, while the question of how has become irrelevant. The official ideology has picked those entitled to rule; consequently, this has created a protective wall around this elitist class, and nobody dared to question how they have ruled.
For this reason, the coups staged in this country were never prosecuted; those who broke the law were never brought to trial. On the other hand, considering that the judicial mechanism is part of the bureaucratic-elitist bureaucracy where the military plays the lead role, it is not difficult to understand why the law has been dysfunctional.
This suggests that Turkey is not a democracy and is governed by a superior executive body outside the democratic mechanism. Therefore, the only significant reform in this country will be elimination of this mindset. And this will be possible only when this tradition has become illegitimate.
However, declaring this tradition illegitimate requires different grounds for legitimacy. This is exactly what has been happening in Turkey. The European Union bid and the transformation within the conservative segments in the last 15 years have generated these grounds. The Ergenekon case, which implies that coup attempts are actually prosecutable, has become possible by virtue of this background. This investigation questions the continuity and legitimacy of the elitist bureaucratic rule for the first time.
Therefore, for the first time, the questions of who and how are detached from each other within the context of Turkish politics. We are now exploring politics that revolves around the question of how, and a real democracy is being created in this way.
This is the greatest transformation of the republican era. There is, of course, strong resistance. There is the media, trying to keep the issue around the question of who, and judicial circles, prone to distort the law because it addresses the who. However, both the government and society know "how" to act.
