“Attempts are being made to keep secularism, an inseparable part of Western-type democracies, off the agenda and its definition revised by putting more stress on economic growth and modernization, with conservative parties coming to the fore along with rising radicalism,” said Yalçınkaya, who was the prosecutor who filed a controversial closure case against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) last year. Analysts says Yalçınkaya not only cast a shadow over the neutrality of judiciary but showed that he is far from knowing the fact that strong economic growth is a guarantee of secularism.Star's Eser Karakaş thinks Yalçınkaya's remarks do not befit a prosecutor of a country, no matter which ideology he professes and that it is impossible to make any sense of his remarks. “In my opinion, it is unnecessary to try to make any sense of these statements because there is mere nonsense in question,” he says as he thinks Yalçınkaya is far from understanding a very simple fact: The healthiest way of protecting secularism is to make citizens richer by always holding growth high on the agenda. “I feel pity that someone who holds such a post made such remarks,” said Karakaş.
According to Yeni Şafak's Hakan Albayrak, it would be possible to discuss Yalçınkaya's analyses if he had not been the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals. His remarks could have still been debated if he were talking about a closure case filed against a conservative party, but there is a different issue here, says Albayrak, noting that Yalçınkaya's remarks target all of the conservative parties and a desire to make politics ordinary. In his view, Yalçınkaya is simply saying that conservative parties are bad and that nobody should give them the chance to come to power. Referring to the reaction of some AK Party deputies who try to counter Yalçınkaya's arguments, once again casting a shadow on the neutrality of the judiciary, he says there is only one thing which should be said to Yalçınkaya: Resign.
Another Yeni Şafak columnist, Yasin Aktay, also accuses Yalçınkaya of failing to see that strong economic growth is actually the guarantee of secularism as he notes that Yalçınkaya's remarks are like a confession of the role played by secularism in Turkey for a long time. “This understanding of secularism has turned into a religion of the Middle Ages, a religion with temples, rituals, beliefs and emotions. A religious-like commitment to such an understanding of secularism spoils the sprit of secularism in the first place, let alone the other things,” suggests Aktay.
