More precisely, for the second time it unanimously put a stop to the implementation of the Higher Education Board’s (YÖK) decision to eliminate the coefficient system. This decision, which means the “continuation of the theft of the right to equality in education” for all vocational high school graduates, including graduates of imam-hatip schools, can also be evaluated as the physical resistance of the high judiciary bureaucracy’s dead soul to waves of deep societal change.To quickly summarize what happened, the İstanbul Bar Association had filed a case with the Council of State to repeal YÖK’s July 21, 2009 decision to lift the system that used different coefficients to calculate university admission exam scores and to suspend the implementation of that decision. The 8th Chamber of the Council of State suspended the implementation of the decision with a unanimous vote. Following this, YÖK decided to implement “different coefficients” for candidates in the university entrance exams on Dec. 17, 2009. As for the İstanbul Bar Association -- also known notoriously as the Coup-Supporters Bar -- it opened a case with the Council of State to cancel and repeal this new system. And the 8th Chamber of the Council of State voted unanimously to stop the implementation of the second, third and fourth articles of YÖK’s new decision. It’s clear that this illegal and unconscionable decision -- which concerns the futures of hundreds of thousands of students and victimizes millions of people, including students and their families, because of the threat it presents to this year’s university selection examination process -- is going to be debated for some time to come.
So why is it that an organ of the high judiciary which should be meting out justice is working so hard to keep in place an illegal and unjust system implemented during a period of military despotism? Why is it trampling on the right to equality in educational opportunity -- which has become a universal principle -- and the sense of justice, the law and the equality of all citizens as enshrined in the Constitution?
It’s clear that in a normal state of law, with everything in the right place, we would find the answer to this question in the concepts of law and justice. I think that, to the contrary, in our case we can find the answer to this question where members of the high judiciary place themselves, ideologically speaking, and in terms of class. I’m certainly aware of what it is I’m saying here. Yes, I’m saying it outright: Just like the Council of State’s previous rulings on this issue, this latest decision is entirely ideological and class-based. After all, vocational high schools are only a preference of poor families and poor families only, allowing an early exit from the cost of putting their children through school and ensuring that their children can begin contributing to the family’s finances from an early age. With its decision, the Council of State turned these family’s preferences into a legal obligation, perpetuating the despotism of Feb. 28 and reducing the chance of their children attending university to zero -- effectively turning a parent’s choice into a life sentence for the children. With this decision, it’s clearly being said to the children of families who are workers, villagers and poor: “What’s studying at university got to do with you? You’re the child of a laborer, pauper or villager, and you must always remain as such.”
So for how long will this unjust, illegal, unconscionable despotism and incomparable seizure of the right to education perpetuated through the vehicle of a high judiciary that is clearly out of line continue? I can say this much, no matter how much the number of victims of this illegality increases every day, there’s not a single reason to be unhopeful about the future. This is because time is moving forward. It can finally be seen clearly that the dead souls borne by withered bodies used as an instrument of despotism by the judiciary will not be able to perpetuate this despotism for much longer in the face of the feelings of respect for the law and justice in society.
I think that Democrat Judiciary Association President Dr. Osman Can wanted to say the same things of this outdated mentality in a two-day piece in the Vatan daily as well as during a TV debate recently with one of the most prominent representatives of this dead spirit, former Supreme Court of Appeals head Sabih Kanadoğlu. Take a look at what Dr. Can says, referencing words attributed to Khrushchev -- “I’ve reached such an age that I have nothing left ahead of me to consume except memories” -- that are represented in Kanadoğlu’s person, and having to do with this antiquated mentality in the high judiciary.
“We must -- taking seriously the statements of these political figures who have nothing ahead of them but memories and have been willingly shaped by past political tradition -- move to our agenda the views of those who have a future, in place of the ideas of those who want to dictate the future. That is to say, you have to leave the future to the new generations, and leave worries over the future to those people who have expectations… What’s dying today is a bureaucratic mechanism, a quest for an order based on a dying dynamic that doesn’t take from society, and claims to modernize by looking down from above… The ability no longer exists for bureaucrats who see themselves as authorized to speak in the name of the state and use its powers from sterile places to control this society and align it according to their own perceptions and ideologies… In the 2000s, the republic is finally starting to become an actual republic. The republic is gaining substance and beginning to mature and belong to the ‘public.’ In Turkey, the republic is an important gain… But the institutional and ideological gains that guarantee the status of the ‘effendis’ has nothing to do with the republic’s gains. There’s a big difference between them… Societal change has come to such a point that you can no longer keep any political process outside the public’s supervision… Developments taking place deep within society are destroying the old political order managed in closed spaces by people in uniforms, in religious robes and with ties on. This political order is coming to an end. Ties, robes and uniforms have ceased to become producing political mechanisms in Turkey.”
I think it’s pretty much impossible not to agree with the analyses of Dr. Can, which I’ve summarized greatly here. It’s for just this reason that while it is absolutely necessary to take seriously these latest attempts at despotism made through the vehicle of the high judiciary, but it’s also important to see that these are the death throes of the dead-spirited, withered-bodied despots of the old order.
