Since the early 1950s, Turkey appears to have chosen the road to political pluralism. But free elections, a multiparty system and relatively independent media have not been sufficient to ensure that democracy fully thrives in Turkey. Repeated coups, undemocratic interventions and plots prove that the process of democratization in Turkey remains incomplete.Governments have made little attempt to democratize the way the state machinery works. The focus has been on electoral mechanisms and controlling resources. The true needs of the public -- health, education, industry, communications and cultural and human rights -- have been neglected. Elections have led to changes of government. However, these have brought about no visible results in true democratization, the rule and supremacy of law or cultural and human rights.
Bureaucratic interference, such as was seen in the latest presidential and parliamentary elections, pushes people to pessimism; they see that the future of democracy is not likely to be secured by elections alone. It is therefore high time for Turkey to implement fundamental constitutional and democratic changes and take its place among the advanced industrial democracies. To achieve this, Turkey needs opposition parties that will contribute to its process of democratization.
Opposition parties help in checking corruption, ensuring the accountability of leaders, protecting human rights, institutionalization and providing citizens with information to enable them to vote without spending an inordinate amount of time to reach reasoned decisions.
However, the opposition parties, in particular the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), have no strategies other than blanket obstruction and voting against all the policies proposed by the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Certainly a government’s actions should be affected by the opposition’s response. However, if we look at the opposition’s motives, we must assume that it does not care much about its chances of increasing its share of the vote or winning the next election. In every circumstance, the opposition opposes all government policies, whether good or bad. So, the opposition parties provide no real information either to the government or to the public about the quality of policies and projects. This is best seen in their obstructive response to the latest democratic initiatives for human rights and cultural freedoms. The evaluation of government policy thus falls not to politicians, but to extra-parliamentary groups, such as protectionist special interest groups within the military and judiciary and their associates in the media.
Consensus-building civic initiatives and institutions are attempting to remedy this impasse in opposition within Turkish politics. Recent discussions held by the Abant Platform of the Journalists and Writers Foundation under the title “Democratization for a New Social Consensus” represent an original form of democracy that could point the way forward. This platform, in which individuals from every segment of society and prominent intellectuals participate, concluded, contrary to what the opposition parties advocate, that in order to ensure rights and freedoms, the judiciary should be democratized and its oligarchic structure changed; that the solution to the Kurdish question and the problems of the Alevi community in Turkey are both prerequisites for democratization and at the same time are opportunities to ensure democratization.
People’s ability to meet their own needs is also a prerequisite for democracy. Democracy can really work in Turkey, and its prospects lie in the development of democracy from the grass roots, facilitated by civic initiatives, rather than in the opposition parties that are representatives of the undemocratic, authoritarian exclusivity of the status quo.
The opposition’s bias arises not only from personal failings, but also from a rational calculation of what it gains from cooperating with established interest groups against democratization efforts. As the opposition is not strong enough to stop the passage of an act of Parliament, it seeks ways to block the enactment of policy from outside Parliament, often employing desperate measures, such as urging bureaucratic and even military interference with the legitimate powers of the executive. We, therefore, cannot rely on the opposition to guard against errors made by government, but may have to hope that elections, a new constitution and change to civic-mindedness among all military, judicial and bureaucratic personnel will correct policies. Otherwise, with such an opposition, our democracy will continue to be deficient in the sense that political parties remain rather less stable mechanisms of representation, accountability and structuring, unlike those in advanced industrial democracies.
