With this decision, issued last week, the number of political parties closed in Turkish history now stands at 26. This figure itself speaks of a serious problem with democracy in Turkey. The current winner as a result of the highest court’s decision are the hawks, who beat the doves despite the fact that the latter have been working toward a peaceful solution to the country’s Kurdish and general democracy problems.
The Constitutional Court unanimously decided on Friday to ban the pro-Kurdish DTP and to exclude 37 party members from politics for five years. The court ruled that the party had promoted Kurdish separatism and that it had links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Ahmet Türk, a co-chair of the party and a member of Parliament, in addition to Aysel Tuğluk, another member of Parliament, are among the 37 party members banned from politics for five years. Both are known for their peaceful stance, but nonetheless lost their seats in Parliament. The party will also be stripped of its assets by the Treasury.
Constitutional Court President Haşim Kılıç, answering questions from the media last Friday, said the court’s 11 members, including himself, had taken, among other things, the closure of the Spanish Batasuna as an example in their ruling regarding the DTP. Several authoritative Turkish jurists and experts on the issue, however, rule out any similarity between the Batasuna case and that of the DTP.
Batasuna was a Basque nationalist party based mainly in Spain, where it was outlawed in 2003 after a court ruling declared it had been proven that the party was financing the ETA with public money. The Spanish ruling was appealed and was confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights early this year.
Kılıç’s remarks establishing a link between the Batasuna case and that of the DTP are an attempt to block the now-defunct DTP from taking the case to the European court. However, Türk announced on Sunday that the party would take the court decision to the European court. The human rights court has already fined Turkey over the closure cases of previous pro-Kurdish parties, including the People’s Labor Party (HEP), the Democracy Party (DEP) and the Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP).
As a matter of fact, Akin Özçer, a retired Turkish diplomat with several books to his name on the ETA and the Spanish constitutional system, on various occasions ruled out similarities between Batasuna and the DTP. He underlined that Turkey’s problem in general is a problem that has to do with its democracy and the existence of constitutional shortcomings as well as the Law on Political Parties. He told the Yeni Şafak daily in an interview on Sept. 28 that Turkey cannot fight terrorism without a democratization drive, highlighting Turkey’s general and serious democracy problem -- contrary to the situation in Spain. Spain solved its problems by rewriting its constitution, which had been dictated by the military, Özçer said in the same interview.
The closure decision thus once more demonstrated the need to change the Law on Political Parties and rewrite the 1982 Constitution, written by the military, to remedy Turkey’s problems with democracy.
An equally important problem is how to break the power of the deep state, whose power struggle with political authorities has surfaced over the past several years.
In this sense, Türk’s remarks last Saturday displayed Turkey’s paradox. Türk said that while prosecutors affiliated with the Supreme Court of Appeals open closure cases against parties, they do not initiate any proceedings against those who openly support Ergenekon suspects being tried over charges of inciting people to armed conflict in order to unseat the government.
His remarks also made me rethink the link between the deep state and the mentality behind party closures.
