But as a party to a case, I have been to courtrooms three times in my life. All of them were related to practical family matters, and once I was a witness. There were no criminal elements, and there were no injured parties in those cases, but I still hated being there.In Turkish we have an expression: to have a face like a court(room) wall. We use this expression for people who are very serious and unsmiling, who put a distance between themselves and others, walking around with knitted brows, and who also have a negative attitude toward others. Well, in the end, in the dominant culture being serious means not smiling and not being friendly.
Not only seeing a courtroom wall but witnessing the attitude of the judges was particularly disturbing; it is true their faces were like a courtroom wall, but more than this, they were not polite either.
Even for practical family matters, they treated the people opposite them as just a part of problem. In the case in which I was a witness, after answering the judge’s questions, I tried to raise some points which had not occurred to him to ask and which were very important to the subject; however, he silenced me. In all three cases, instead of my own sentences, the judges asked the record keepers to write whatever they dictated on my behalf.
Worse, the judges addressed me as “sen,” singular “you,” which is not at all polite when you are addressing strangers, but of course, needless to say, you don’t have any right to reply to them using the singular you.
I have a friend who is dealing with projects to train security forces, public prosecutors and judges on violence against women. Once she told me that despite the male chauvinist structure of the security forces, it is possible to train them and public prosecutors to a certain extent, but judges are an almost hopeless case.
According to her experience, most of the judges in Turkey considered themselves to be “prophets” until the age of 25, and after this age, they considered themselves to be the creators of the world. She added that some of the judges even reacted to the name of the program because it included the word “training,” which cannot be done to a judge, of course, not because of their limited capacity but because there cannot be anyone in this world who could be their masters.
Well, I do not have any social opportunities to check the accuracy of my friend’s anecdote because I don’t know any regular judges that closely. The ones that I know have been exiled from their own community due to their sensitive approach to democracy.
The reason that I’m not on friendly terms with any regular judges is not my fault; on principle, they don’t mix with people, they live in isolated campuses and they are neither the neighbors nor the friends of mortals.
I have heard several times that when candidates are chosen to be future judges, they are told they should keep their distance from ordinary people. They are asked not go to places everybody goes -- they should not carry shopping bags, and they should not bargain when they buy apples. Of course, not only are they learning some manners, they are taught that they are the defenders of the republic, especially secularism.
I really wonder who suggested translating the “rule of law” or “la primauté du droit” into Turkish as the “supremacy of the judiciary” because it turned into a most misused term.
The supremacy of the judiciary in this country is considered and implemented in a way that does not really mean the independence of the judiciary but perceives the judiciary as “above” everything in a hegemonic way. This understanding includes the dominant behavior of judges -- that of pretending they are the inhabitants of Mount Olympus.
Such a great power, such an understanding, which perceives itself to be above everything, when combined with the task of being the guardians of the republic at the expense of democracy naturally brings corruption. Such corruption may not necessarily be financial but can be spiritual. The corruption can be so great as to make the judges forget that their every action should be based on the rule of law and democracy.
Regarding the recent judicial coup, there are too many details, too many questions to be answered. There are many suspicions about almost every name involved with the case, and the public is already bored with these questions, but the wisdom of it says something; judicial reform is a must, and nobody has to see faces like a courtroom wall, especially when they are acting in a hegemonic way.
