But it was perhaps not entirely unexpected that the ongoing power struggle should spread to the judiciary, which shares with the military an authoritarian view of state governance often at odds with democratic standards.Turkey is now getting close to the heart of the battle. How can the government pull out of the current crisis? Appealing to the opposition parties to cooperate on constitutional and judicial reform, more needed than ever, appears pointless.
One doesn’t need to be a lawyer to understand that invoking the law is no longer a solution either, since it is subject to very different interpretations on either side of the dispute. Whether they approve of the HSYK move or on the contrary, they believe that it amounts to hijacking the law, the jurists asked to offer their opinions in the media are all equally convinced that their understanding of the law is the right one.
Since the Ergenekon investigation began, the gap has been widening steadily between those who believe the government is engaged in a necessary clean-up that provides a more suitable ground for democracy to flourish and those who see the arrests, particularly those of military officers, as a form of government retaliation against its opponents.
The HSYK move is partly a replay of the Şemdinli case, when the board had dismissed a prosecutor who had been too thorough in his investigation of the military’s role in a bombing incident. At the time, the government blinked first. The AK Party still believed it could reach accommodation with the powers that be. Since then, the circumstances have changed radically. The e-memorandum in 2007 and the closure case against the party in 2008 demonstrated that these compromises did little to change the state’s perception of the elected government.
With this latest escalation, it has become painfully obvious that no common language or common vision for Turkey’s future remains, if it ever existed. Unfortunately, the current Constitution and the role it attributes to state institutions allows them to block many of the elected government’s moves. With the judicial institutions closing ranks and unlikely to back down, Turkey could be in for a protracted stand off.
Who will referee the dispute?
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently ruled out holding early elections before the government mandate ends in 2011. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinç reiterated this position on Thursday.
But the AK Party may be forced to revise its position, particularly if the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, as is rumored, is preparing to file another case against the ruling party. With the judiciary now hopelessly divided and politicized, it is hard to see how respect and trust for the law can be restored.
Voters are the ultimate referees in a democratic system, and new elections could give the government a new mandate to change the Constitution and embark on a judicial reform. Perhaps the AK Party needs to weigh its options and do some soul-searching. The poll results in July 2007 had given it the public backing it needed to push for change. Instead, it chose to spend its political capital on getting Abdullah Gül elected to the presidency and on lifting the ban on the headscarf.
With hindsight, it is clear that the government’s energy might have been better spent on providing Turkey with a new democratic framework. It would also have allowed the headscarf ban to be lifted as part of a broader push for individual freedoms and would have provided more limited scope for controversy.
Turkey is currently addressing some fundamental questions about its past and its future. Painful as the process is, it appears an unavoidable part of the transition to the new Turkey of the 21st century. But many Turks are tired of endless fights and would like their government to have more time to devote to the pressing issues affecting their daily lives, such as creating jobs or improving the education system. Time is, therefore, of the essence, and the government needs to break this stalemate rapidly.
