We also heard Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan comment on the arrest of his former top commander, Gen. İlker Başbuğ, saying he would prefer people were tried on free feet rather than while in jail.
This is a nasty debate that will dominate the domestic scene for the foreseeable future, as it puzzles and unsettles many observers both in the country and abroad. Questions pile up on one another and, as the strain over the already overloaded judiciary increases, some see with justification darkness falling upon the normalization; others, with blind hatred and a rejection of the elected government, continue to dig tunnels into the past, hoping for its restoration. Everyone acts with an agenda.
“So what’s really going on?” asked an esteemed colleague of mine, Semih İdiz, in his column in the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.
He continued: “The answer appears less complicated than government circles would like to present it. What we seem to have is a case of pure ‘revanchism,’ a historic settling of accounts, especially by Islamists who the staunchly Kemalist military opposed and oppressed in the past in ways that still reverberate.
“A government truly sincere about democracy, human rights and freedom of the press, especially one as strong as the AKP [Justice and Development Party or AK Party] is in Parliament, would have long since enacted the laws necessary to prevent the legal oddities we are facing now and giving Turkey a bad name. But it has not.
“For all its talk about ‘advanced democracy,’ it is becoming harder to believe the AKP will make Turkey more democratic. Especially when the appearance is of a party more concerned with settling old scores than laying the ground for a Turkey truly democratic in an advanced way.”
First of all, I am troubled by the description “revanchism.” It necessitates a proper basing of facts and a case-by-case description of what the “historic settling of accounts” is. The danger with such simplistic labeling is that it ends up belittling criminal cases involving political mafia formations, which are of critical importance if Turkey is ever to normalize.
Second, revanchism implies in this case an advanced machinery of getting rid of the adversaries of what İdiz calls Islamists. A more realistic picture would be of growing disarray, divisions in the political management, loss of a moral compass and a scheme that imposes itself on decision-makers getting dangerously comfortable in power.
In other words, I see a mental stalemate that has turned the “post-June 12 elections” pattern into sleepwalking.
It is not revanchism but the notion of “getting halfway” in the transformation, which should be the focus of deliberation. The reform process is full of sticks in lethal beehives, and the probability of a backlash is simply chilling.
One major point missed by İdiz is hidden in today’s opposition. While it may be true that the AK Party is affected by reform fatigue or by the sense that it has come to the end of its capabilities (which still remains to be seen, in my opinion), the acts of its rivals are problematic both in terms of the law and ethics. Certainly, the latest probe into Kılıçdaroğlu’s contempt for the Ergenekon judges is ridiculous because it falls under the domain of free speech. However, nobody in the party seems to be sensible and far-sighted enough to see that unconditionally identifying the main opposition with cases involving undemocratic activity is a constant loser.
Similarly, the same applies to the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). It is hostage to archaic thinking and seems enslaved to totalitarianism. While it has the right to endorse all aspects of Kurdish identity, to fight for speaking Kurdish in public, etc., it continues to praise the armed struggle, does not object to Kurdish youth joining the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and sheds crocodile tears over their deaths.
If İdiz’s revanchism is ever true, and if the AK Party has an undemocratic agenda as he claims, there are things to be told to the CHP and BDP. The CHP must stop being a “Party of the Silivri Suspects” and come out publicly with a democratic package of its own, including the Kurds and all the other minorities. The BDP must rigorously work for a ceasefire of its military wing, the PKK, at least until the constitutional process is over, and commit itself fully to the process.
Unless a powerful shake up happens within those two, all the means and paths for a much more powerful AK Party will remain wide open, simply because scuffling in politics does not bring any credibility to parties. And, sadly, we shall continue to hear fruitless analysis based on revanchism and hidden intentions.
