However, opposition parties in Parliament not only fail to propose viable alternatives to the current government’s policies but also do everything in their power to block new laws adopted by Parliament by especially relying on a judiciary that has come to the rescue of the ineffectual opposition in safeguarding the status quo. In doing so the judiciary, especially the Constitutional Court, has exceeded its mandate to scrutinize laws enacted by Parliament in form, not in substance. But the high court has adopted the habit of passing judgment, basing its decisions “on the basic characteristics of the republic.”The second source of opposition is the ongoing demonstrations of unemployed workers of state monopolies that have been privatized. Since being laid off, the workers have not accepted the government’s offer to provide them with temporary working status and a raise in their compensation dues. They want permanent jobs with lifetime security against unemployment. Such a guarantee does not exist in the private sector. But under the influence of the established ideology that the state is the provider and the protector, they believe that it is the state’s obligation to keep its word in return for the loyalty it has so far exacted from the citizens. What we are witnessing is a deadlock since the workers’ demands are not economical but in line with the old practices of the patriarchal state that Turkey is trying to leave behind.
However, the massive demonstrations of the workers have gained such momentum and popularity that it is worth examining the phenomenon. In the past decades, a number of trade unions have systematically declined.
The intermediaries of subcontracting firms rather than trade unions have become the providers of the workforce, rendering the workers devoid of protective professional organizations like unions that could struggle for their rights and provide protection against the exploitative methods of employers.
Instead, existing trade or labor unions that are more visible at the state level have become bargaining agencies for wages and fringe benefits. They have forgotten to represent the labor force in politics and to shape public life by defending social justice, equality before law and effective representation that would raise the quality of democracy.
On the other hand the left has lost its role as an agent of change and social democracy. This is mainly due to losing contact with society and losing the ability to grasp the nature of change within. Hence it has lost the chance of playing a powerful role in national politics with new ideas and proposals in shaping daily as well as the future of politics. The left (or those who call themselves the left) have opportunistically seized on the resistance of the unemployed workers of the monopolies together with all other groups who feel victimized by the system or who directly feel victimized by the policies of the incumbent government.
Demonstrations of workers of state monopolies that have now entered into the phase of a hunger strike have attracted nationwide attention and have drawn support from diverse groups ranging from opposition parties to trade unions to Kemalist-statist middle-class cohorts to groups whose basic identity is being “secular.”
This means two things: 1. This country lacks a real opposition. 2. Rather than politics that should embrace different alternatives to the solutions proposed for the nation’s burning problems and meeting the challenge of change, differing groups feel the need to get together as an opposition bloc against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.
However, what we see so far is opposition for the sake of opposition without clear-cut policies to counter the practices of the incumbent government and the ideology of the party behind it.
