But in Turkey we have been occupied with this issue for some time now, even though there are much more important problems to address, such as the Kurdish issue. Furthermore, the way legal cases are handled, as seen by the trial of the suspected generals, displays how serious our problems are as a result of the unsettled issue of democratizing civilian-military relations.
While it is obvious how suspects should be treated, whether they are part of the once-untouchable military or ordinary people -- i.e., they should be treated equally in the eyes of the law -- the Turkish political authority has been prevented from doing so because of centuries-old written and unwritten rules.
The underlying problem in modern Turkey dates back to its establishment in 1923. The newly created secular and nationalist country was put under the guardianship of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), and they were give a central role in preserving a republic that falls short of true democracy. In order to secure secularism it is critical to instill democratic principles in the legal code. However, for democracy to take hold, a nation should not be put under the watch of a guardian, as demonstrated by the fact that the TSK has staged five different sorts of coups that interrupted democracy, rather than allowed it to flourish.
Still, Turkey has recently been moving in the right direction but continues to encounter obstacles on the road towards establishing the supremacy of law.
As Turkey begins to remove these roadblocks, albeit slowly, one of the biggest tasks will be overcoming the modern republic’s handicaps. Doing so will only be possible by democratizing civilian-military relations, which will lead to the acceptance of Kurdish identity and making the necessary amendments to both the Constitution and the law.
The İstanbul-based Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) recently released a very useful study that provides legal recommendation for how to solve the Kurdish problem.
The Turkish Republic, established on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, created a nation-state base on denying the identity of different ethnic groups, mainly the Kurds, according to the report. Turkish legal codes severely restricted the basic rights and freedoms of Kurds and subjected them to discrimination even if Kurds were never explicitly mentioned by name.
In addition to the changes to the Constitution and legal codes, there have been numerous local administrative initiatives that do not require legal measures. These administrative reforms include changing the Turkified names of certain towns or villages to their original names; erasing nationalist slogans written across the mountains of the Kurdish-dominated, war-stricken Southeast; changing the militaristic names given to schools in the Southeast; and appointing civil servants who speak Kurdish to ease the Kurdish population’s access to services.
When it comes to international conventions on human rights, Turkey’s foreign policy is also based on a refusal to extend equal rights and freedoms to non-Muslims, as well as other groups who are not officially recognized as minorities, the TESEV report stresses. Turkey’s 1982 Constitution dictated by the coup leaders of 1980 places strong emphasis on Turkish ethnic identity. The TESEV report suggests that the term “Turkish nation” in both the Constitution and in the legal code should be replaced by the term “citizens of the Turkish Republic.”
The report details changes that should be made to both the Constitution and the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) to help significantly reduce the legal obstacles before a solution to the Kurdish problem. What Turkey lacks are intellectual opposition parties that can lend their support to the ruling party when it comes to speeding up democratic reforms, including legal changes that would ease ethnic tensions. The absence of such an opposition, as well as a shortage of truly democratic secularists, hinders any solution to the Kurdish problem. If weren’t for this, the TESEV recommendations would not be so difficult to implement and would not divide Turkey the way many Turks seem to think they will.
