Who Cares About Democracy in Turkey?
Posted on May 20th, 2008 by Jenny White
From a column by Sahin Alpay:
The political crisis created by the chief prosecutor’s appeal to the Constitutional Court to ban the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) is surely an indication of the unconsolidated character of the democratic regime in Turkey, despite a history of at least 60 years. The crisis has also provided an opportunity to assess who really cares for the consolidation of democracy in Turkey, in both the domestic and international spheres….
[From Sahin’s column:] In sum, for those who care about democracy in Turkey an extremely worrying scene prevails, whereby a large part of both political and civil society is failing to come out in defense of the principles of democracy and the rule of law.
Is this a version of post-July-2007-election laments we heard from some CHP officials?
Hey Nihat, I missed you in the other topic. Good to ’see’ you too.
I don’t think he means the CHP in particular, but a rather broad group. The mindset here in the non-polarized part of the public, and as far as I can tell, is either one of resignation and indifference (ie AKP gets replaced by BKP and we all laugh), or simple recognition that elected authoritarians are fighting with unelected authoritarians. (Even the AKP insiders’ real positions aren’t clear, check out the last paragraph of this piece by Avni Ozgurel.)
He’s partially right on this:
Even among those who call themselves liberals or democrats, there are many who, rather than defending the principles of democracy and the rule of law, choose to accuse the AKP of having neglected EU reforms, failing to properly address the fears of the “secularists” who feel their lifestyles threatened, etc.
I’ll give you an example. Here’s a pre-closure case critique from a liberal’s (libertarian in the US sense) blog. Here’s some more fun prose about AKP’s track record after they decided to submit a defense. (I believe that blogger voted for AKP, BTW.)
Hi Bulent. Sahin’s ‘extremely worrying scene’ complaint struck me as quite similar to the post-election CHP laments. That’s all. Otherwise, you’re right in that Sahin is complaining about a broader group (though as not as broad as the ‘people’ or the ‘electorate’).
The blog entries you linked to are quite interesting. I am not particularly fond of ‘model’ debates for Turkey (like the French or Anglosaxon models of laicite or secularism), but I have long been thinking that Turkey would benefit greatly from an American-style small-government libertarianism. It’s not like this is a completely alien concept given our ‘golge etme baska birsey istemem’ folk wisdom. Who knows, maybe, the sad contradictions of this era of rule by AKP, the champion of liberal democracy will help raise consciousness on that score. Just take the recent example of the retired teacher from Tunceli getting slapped by a 301 suit for his unguarded comments about prosecutors and smoking. We got rid of our padishah, but kapikulus are still too numerous and still treating us as plain kuls.