If one doubts the nature of the “democratic initiative,” one cannot find a better example of the changing character of politics than this. Of course, it would equally serve democracy and the spirit of legal equality to prosecute deputies serving in Parliament and civil servants without due permission of their superiors (or the consent of Parliament in the former case) as much as to prosecute army personnel for crimes and attempted crimes other than their professional deeds by civilian judicial authorities.Not long ago, former Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt issued strong statements regarding the grave danger that the republic was faced with, to the extent that these dangers were never before encountered since the founding of the republic. He later proudly announced that it was he who wrote the memorandum of April 27, 2007 that threatened the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) not to lean on religion too much and its efforts to get Mr. Abdullah Gül to be elected president. This was the last direct attempt of the military to influence and direct politics.
When put to public choice through a referendum, people voted for the election of the president of the republic by popular vote, unlike in previous elections, in which Parliament itself elected the president. Following elections on July 22, 2007, which ended in a landslide victory for the AKP after it won 46.66 percent of the vote, people demonstrated a clear determination to have a civilian authority manage their affairs, not an unaccountable and despotic military. Then came documents revealing plots to overthrow the AKP government pouring out of clandestine military sources and maps of weapons caches buried in various places to be used in such unfortunate initiatives.
It is only after limiting the power of the military on politics that the incumbent government dared initiate reforms such as changing the military-made 1982 Constitution and attempting to resolve the Kurdish problem (through the democratic initiative). It is now time to reinforce the institutions and empower civil society to boost the government’s efforts. The first steps should be to amend the Law on Political Parties and the Election Code, which contains one of the most undemocratic limitations: the 10 percent election threshold. The third must be limiting legislative protection to only speeches delivered in Parliament, not to common crimes of deputies serving in Parliament.
The Law on Political Parties and its ensuing bylaws allow the party leader to remain in office for life. This unchangeable fixture of political parties handpicks local party delegates, who in turn elect him/her to the “throne” of the party. This vicious circle neither allows for competition of the better nor the penetration of new ideas and agendas into the party edifice. Stagnation of political parties ossifies the political system and disables Turkish politics to feel the change within and without and to manage it.
The high election threshold creates a large gap in fair representation and effective participation of minority opinion and interests. Although all parties promise to lower it before elections, they fail to do so once they are elected and enjoy disproportional representation. However, the mother of all political ills is the existing Constitution, which protects the state and state officials from the people. It guarantees the tutelage of the state and the army at its core over the society. Rule of law is sacrificed to executive power and the principle of separation of powers has never been realized. It is also this Constitution that places citizenship on ethnicity despite rhetoric to the contrary.
Unless these issues are seen and handled as a whole, what started as the “Kurdish initiative” will never grow into a “democratic initiative,” which in turn will allow the solution of the Kurdish problem. The country direly needs to become a developed democracy and guarantee its stability with the free will of its citizens rather than coercion from above, which no longer works.
