The state and the military are no longer in a position to continue their pressure on the public or to rule society hierarchically," Coşar said at a meeting in Ankara on Sept. 20 (Milliyet, Sept. 24, 2007).
"In parallel to the liberalization policies implemented [in the early 1980s] under [former and late Prime Minister and President Turgut] Özal, an opposition that openly challenges the elitist mentality has emerged. This opposition, which is supported by the people, has paved the way for the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to rule the nation. With the July 22 elections, this opposition reached its peak."
Coşar also recommended an analysis of all the events leading to the outcome of the July 22 elections that gave an overwhelming majority of votes to the AK Party to rule the country for the second time, including the April 27 "e-memorandum" issued by the Turkish General Staff and the decision of the constitutional court that prevented current President Abdullah Gül from election to this post in his earlier attempts, against the background of changes taking place in Turkey since the 1980s, when an open opposition started against the elitist mentality.
"In order to create a strong democracy, those powers that can no longer be controlled and that cannot be ruled from policies imposed from the top should be allowed to act freely. Turkey should be allowed to make policies within its legal boundaries and to overcome its problems by going through them. Thus the new constitution must be designed in a spirit of democracy and freedom," Coşar stated.
In the midst of ongoing arguments that have revealed increased fears among some segments of society over the AK Party -- which was born out of the ruins of the Islamic Virtue Party (FP) that only received about 1 percent of the vote in the last elections -- Coşar's remarks are key in diagnosing Turkey's real problems and in writing a prescription in accordance with this diagnosis.
As Turkey's political systems have been interrupted with almost five military coups and memoranda issued against the related governments by the country's politically powerful military, the addressing of Turkey's core issues -- increased discrepancies between rich and poor, failure to view cultural diversity as an asset and strengthening democracy -- has been neglected.
Policies imposed from the top, accompanied much of the time by fear, have never allowed Turks to freely express their opinions, with too many being imprisoned instead of being able to lead the nation in furthering democracy.
Now attempts by the current government to write a brand new constitution to replace the 1982 military-dictated document, which inflicted a final blow to the progress of the country, have been facing serious opposition, even from those segments who in the past were pioneers in producing very progressive draft constitutions. They include NGOs such as the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (TUSİAD) as well as a majority of the universities, whose opposition to the new constitution centers around the possibility of women being able to attend university wearing a Muslim headscarf.
Ironically, liberalization policies launched in the 1980s in Turkey also encouraged conservative young women to enroll in the universities, but with their heads covered in accordance with Islamic rules. But in the early 1990s, a ban on women with headscarves from attending universities radicalized this segment of society. Some of them associated themselves with political Islam through the turban, the modern version of the headscarf.
Plans by the current government to lift the headscarf ban at the universities through the constitution have raised deep fears in society that this plan will undermine the country's secular character and may compromise the rights of those women who do not cover their heads.
This situation may come to pass, but as Coşar rightly argued, we as Turks should be allowed to overcome our problems by going through them instead of avoiding them through military coups, which have never provided a true remedy in the past and can not do so in the future.
