“The focus of our Constitution is statism, the statist mindset and the values of the state. Democracy and law stand a close second. This is the point that we can reach with a constitution that is foreign to the will of the public and the law,” he told Today's Zaman in a phone interview. İyimaya said the public's strong will for improvement in democracy could be met through a referendum. “Turkey can achieve its objectives in democracy and the rule of law through a referendum and the adoption of a new constitution,” he added. He went on to state that Turkey has unconsciously entered a referendum process as debates between the ruling and opposition parties have failed to produce a solution. “Political bodies could have provided the right responses to demands by the public if they had understood societal problems correctly. However, different approaches [to problems] have weakened this opportunity,” İyimaya remarked.
İyimaya's views on any referendum were strongly backed by the Taraf daily, which called on Parliament to turn to a referendum for the replacement of the current Constitution, prepared under martial law in 1980, with a more civilian one. “The judiciary and the military tried to block the presidential elections [in 2007]. The military issued an e-memorandum on April 27, 2007. The July 22 [2007] elections were the best response to this memorandum, which removed the military's weight on politics. Now the judiciary is trying the fill the gap left by the military on politics. It is willing to replace the prosecutors conducting the Ergenekon case and the JİTEM probe. Such a move can have only one target: to divert those investigations from their real objective. … An important step now lies before us to find culprits within the state. Parliament may take the draft constitution prepared by Professor Ergun Özbudun to a referendum and head for general elections. The people, who voiced their views to the military through the July 22 elections, will do likewise to the judiciary,” read a statement published on the front page of the Taraf daily on Thursday.
