Turkey moves full throttle toward one-party state

By Ali Bayramoglu for AL Monitor

The political mercury in Turkey is expected to hit record highs in April, when the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) plans to put a crucial constitutional amendment on a referendum. Given the current political and social trends, the electorate is highly likely to approve the amendment and mark Turkey’s transition to an executive presidency regime — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest dream.

To come true directly in parliament, this dream requires support from at least 367 deputies in the 550-member legislature. The AKP, however, holds only 317 seats, which brings up the referendum option. For that, too, the AKP needs support from the opposition since constitutional amendments require the approval of at least 330 lawmakers to be put on a referendum.

For years, the AKP had sought to forge a political alliance to advance the amendment plan. The opportunity finally came in the wake of the July 15 coup attempt in the form of rapprochement with the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). In October, the MHP pledged support for the presidential system provided that its political sensitivities were taken into account. The AKP moved fast to draw up a draft and in mid-November submitted the text to the MHP. The two parties are now expected to jointly finalize the draft.

If materialized, the transition from a parliamentary to presidential regime will have a profound impact, both politically and socially, in Turkey. First and foremost, the country would abandon a system that has meshed with its social structure and political traditions for decades.

Turkish democracy has long been a flawed one, with the state dominating society, tight government control of freedoms, personality cults around leaders and a long-lasting military tutelage. Nevertheless, the country has sustained some sort of representative democracy as a political tradition dating back to Ottoman times. Since 1876, the year the first constitution was proclaimed, this tradition has rested on the parliamentary system. Barring periods of military rule, when the constitution was suspended and parliament temporarily dissolved, the parliamentary system has remained the essential form of governance — and not as some fluke of history, but as a choice grounded on tangible reasons.

In the Ottoman era, the parliamentary system was the means of power-sharing between the Sublime Porte and other social and political powers, ensuring representation for a society of diverse ethnic and religious groups. In Republican times, it became the basis on which a relative balance was sought and partially achieved at the country’s major fault lines — between secular and devout, Alevis and Sunnis, and Turks and Kurds.

The tradition is well rooted, and, in earlier years, the charismatic leaders of the center-right, Suleyman Demirel and Turgut Ozal, who also floated the idea of a presidential system to sustain their power, faced serious resistance and failed to forge ahead.

Today, however, the situation is dıfferent. The combined seats of the AKP and the MHP are enough to take the presidential system to a referendum. Erdogan seems confident that any proposal to that effect will win popular approval, which, given his steady popular support, is very much possible.

Obviously, abandoning the parliamentary system would amount to the burial of a relatively pluralist political tradition in favor of a relatively majoritarian system. This, in turn, is likely to accelerate the authoritarian shift that has been under way in Turkey for some time. In other words, the three main problems plaguing the country today — Erdogan’s personalization of power, tendencies of power concentration and quest to build an authoritarian democracy model — are likely to deepen fast.

The constitutional amendment draft the AKP submitted to the MHP contains ample evidence to that effect. Unlike presidential systems in democratic countries, which are based on the principle of a strict separation of powers, the AKP’s draft rests on the idea of the unity of power, embodied in the president. The president, for instance, is entitled to appoint half of the judges of the Constitutional Court, the Council of State and the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors as well as the chief prosecutor of the Appeals Court. Given Turkey’s partisan traditions and the skewed relationship between judiciary and politics, this means that the top echelons of the judiciary would be shaped under the president’s tutelage.

Under the draft, executive power is naturally transferred to the president. The president, however, is not only entitled to run domestic and foreign politics and approve laws, but is equipped with some super powers that transcend into the legislative realm. The president can issue legislative decrees and even has the authority to dissolve parliament.

Yet, the most critical element that paves the way for a subordinate legislature is the one that allows the president to remain at the helm of a political party, an issue that Erdogan has insistently highlighted and even held as a top priority. Under Turkey’s existing electoral laws, the electorate votes for party tickets with multiple parliamentary candidates in broad electoral districts. The candidate lists are drawn up at party headquarters, mostly by the party leader. So, a president-party leader who has drawn up the list of candidates will inevitably become the political boss of the parliamentary group that emerges from the elections. In other words, the president will be the leader of the majority or at least the biggest party group in parliament and, thus, the de facto leader of the legislature.

All those draft provisions point to a system in which the governing party controls the state, or rather, a political party and the state become one. Back in 1935, Turkey experienced the most rigid version of this model — the legal one-party system — and knows very well what it means.

In sum, the presidential system proposal offers a prospect in which popular approval is seen as the sole source of legitimacy, universal values are played down and the concentration of power in a single hand is embraced as the ideal order. And all this comes as an institutionalized and permanent new structure and not any transient and reversible situation. Ankara’s mounting tensions with the European Union, controversial appeals to reinstate the death penalty and talk of joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization should be all seen in the same context.

From:http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/11/turkey-moves-full-throttle-toward-party-state.html#ixzz4Rn4nQrKQ

Turkey's EU Accession bid unwinding?

The Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern probably used the right words when he called Turkey’s EU accession talks a diplomatic fiction. The clamour stoked by that declaration is only indicative of how thick that delusion had become.  It was however obvious that, as mentioned in our July 17 post, besides not belonging to Europe in any reasonably way- whether geographical, historical, cultural, or political- Turkey had also been drifting steadily away  from European values. With the country now on the fast track to an authoritarian metamorphosis disguised as state of emergency, it seems clear that accession is a no-go. Following the events of Incirlik, will the next step be a withdrawal or expulsion from NATO?  

Regardless, now that EU accession is finally increasingly off the table, Turkey will have to set its own path- hopefully refraining from blackmail and extortion as it has attempted to do (not without some success) with the EU. As we have observed, Turkey is the heir to a great culture and civilization. Its future course must be inspired by that cultural legacy; it must identify a plausible geographical context to unfold- the most natural being the Middle East; it must rediscover, but obviously reinterpret its history (given the disastrous epilogue of the Ottoman Empire); it must find its own sources and foundations of political legitimacy and good governance, and possibly ones that it can share with its neighbourhood, which could -and perhaps should- include Israel. 

In fact, if these two important states, plus, perhaps, Iran and Egypt, could cooperate to give birth to a Community of the Middle East that would certainly be seen as a positive development. The Europeans should obviously be at the window, hopefully supportive of Turkey's new course, as good and respectful neighbours. 

Access Denied: Turkey in Europe does not belong

Recent developments in Europe-Turkey relations call for an articulate and thorough reflection on the current nature of the relationships and the prospects for its future evolution. This is especially the case as a result of the Brexit, which may suggest the idea to some that admitting Turkey could make up for the loss of Britain. This reflection must take place outside of politically correct clichés or dominant frames.

The bottom line is that while Association or even Enhanced Partnership Agreements are more that welcome, the European Union must under no circumstance admit Turkey as a full member. It simply does not belong in Europe geographically, culturally, historically, and politically. And here is why:

1) Geographically, Turkey is and always has been an Asian country. Its territory, comprising primarily the Anatolian peninsula, lies squarely in Asia, and its borders with Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria simply underscore and reinforce this notion. Even its largest city, Istanbul, the former Constantinople, is really an Asian city. The roughly 5% of Turkish territory lying in Europe (it borders Bulgaria and Greece) is really a non-starter for a discussion on the topic.

2) Culturally, Turkey belongs to an altogether different civilization. Like its Ottoman predecessor, is a Muslim country, steeped in traditionally satrapic political institutions. Europe is and always has been a continent rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and institutionally rooted in Greco-Roman democracy. Europeans should have no concern declaring Turkey's foreignness to both fundamental constitutive elements of European identity. Turkey is the heir of a great and thriving civilization that has always defined itself in antithesis to the European one. To acknowledge this is in no way diminutive or demeaning of Turkey, it merely states the obvious fact that Turkey is 'Other' from Europe. Just as Turks are proud of their civilizational heritage, Europeans should be proud of their.

3) Historically, European empires and kingdoms have had to fight to repel Turkish invasions starting in the 13th Century: the Byzantines, the Bulgars, the Serbs, and the Habsburgs. In fact, the Ottoman threat has been a driver of early European collaboration when the continent's great powers formed the Holy League, in the 17th Century, to reverse territorial gains that the Ottomans had made. In short, Europe and Turkey have always been at odds, with the latter ever attempting to gain access to its more advanced neighbours.

4) Politically, European democracies have evolved to become a model of transnational integration building that highly successful institutional architecture known as the European Union, whose shared values are embodied in the concept of "Aquis communautaire" from which Turkey has been drifting -ever more distant. Ankara is expected to drift ever more toward authoritarianism in the aftermath of the so-called "phony coup" of July 2016.
-The secular and constitutional legacy of Republican reformer Ataturk has been squandered, and the democratic advances the country had achieved between the 1990's and early 2000's have been reversed. The country is now in a process fore-islamization, as the AKP party is transforming itself from centrist religiously-inspired party (roughly equivalent to European Christian-democratic parties) to a more openly Islamic party whose reinvigorated values are being institutionalized in the state.
-National and religious minorities are regularly targeted and repressed.
-Ankara still continues to refuse to acknowledge responsibility in the genocide of the Armenians.
- It is engaging in a shameless racketeering practices by weaponizing refugee flows from the Middle East and beyond to extort economic and political favours from the EU. A practice that is utterly unacceptable and that European leaders like Angela Merkel, should not have even allowed Turkey to entertain.
-Erdogan's ever more pronounced cult of personality has led him, after introducing tight censorship and free speech limitations at home, to de facto export it to Europe itself- consider the episode of the German comedian and other critical commentaries addressed to Erdogan in European countries.
-Turkey is playing an ambiguous if not abetting role in the context of the latest wave of terrorism and radicalism surrounding ISIS and spreading from there.

All this being said, Turkey has its own path to take. This however, knowing that Turkey is different historically and culturally, and even politically, it has chosen a different path. Europe and Turkey must not be enemies, but they are not brothers. They can be business partners respecting one another and acknowledging their respective differences.

Europe has demonized Putin and imposed sanctions on Russia partly in light of developments taking place in Russia, or undertaken by Russia. However, there are surprisingly few nuances distinguishing Erdogan's Turkey from Putin's Russia- whether in its domestic or foreign policy. It would be scarcely justifiable should Bruxelles admit Ankara to the EU club, not to mention the fact that Ankara is increasingly out of place even in the NATO alliance.