Is democracy the only game in town?

For Adam Przeworski democracy is consolidated when it “becomes the only game in town, when no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions when all the losers want to do is to try again within the same institutions under which they have just lost.”

Sixty years since the first free and fair elections, 10 years after becoming an EU-candidate country and almost five years since the opening of accession negotiations with the EU, democracy still is not the only game in our town. There are powerful people and institutions searching for a regime other than a liberal democracy.

We have main opposition parties that oppose all kinds of democratic reforms including the Kurdish initiative, the opening of the Halki monastery, a new constitution, reforming the judiciary, and so on. As they keep losing elections they look to the military and the judiciary to do something against their political opponents. So they support the cases of political party closures by the Constitutional Court and were jubilant when the closure case against the AK Party was opened.

The military’s involvement, even intervention, in politics is welcomed by these politicians. Deniz Baykal, more than once, expressed his expectations from the military to defend “secularism” not with words but deeds. Instead of trying again within the system, our main opposition parties call in the military and the judiciary to intervene and eliminate their opponents for them. Democracy is not recognized as the only game in town even by secularist and nationalist political parties. For them, democracy is a game that they constantly lose. So they look for some other avenues to power instead of the people’s mandate. On the other hand, the military is heavily laden with officers with political ambitions.

All these show that Turkey does not have a consolidated democratic regime but is in a process of democratization which is not a stable state of affairs free of tensions and conflicts. On the contrary, the very nature of democratization carries instabilities, tensions and the lack of societal and institutional consensus. While democracy is a regime with the stability of democratic institutions, a high level of consensus on the norms and the rules of political struggle, democratization is essentially a destabilizing process.

This is so because democratization means a transition of power and the establishment of rules and norms inspired by the democratic principles of legitimacy. As such, democratization challenges the beneficiaries of the “ancient regime” who are unwilling to give up their power and privileges gained in their authoritarian political system.

Thus the process of democratization prompts resistance among the forces of the “ancient regime” fearful of losing their monopoly on power in due course. They invoke secularism, unity of the state and the nation-state to block the process. The end result of this resistance is the societal tension that is currently appearing, political harshness and inter-institutional conflict.


28 December 2009, Monday

Where the state and the PKK meet

The Constitutional Court decision to close down the Democratic Society Party (DTP) once again proved who has the ultimate power to shape the political sphere in Turkey. Tutelage of extra-political forces, be it the military or the judiciary, continues to reign in Ankara.

The fate of political parties is not decided at the ballot box but in Ankara. No matter how many votes a political party may have, a few self-guardians of the regime on top of the bureaucracy may decide to silence it.

No doubt this is a decision to block progress in the Kurdish initiative. It is yet another example of bureaucratic resistance to political reform and democratization. The defense of the decision by the president of the court is not at all convincing. The court does not rule according to written rules, as has been argued; to the contrary, it is the most politicized institution and in close alignment with other pro-status quo forces inside and outside the bureaucracy.

By closing down the DTP, the court left the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as the only representative of the nationalist Kurdish constituency, eliminating democratic representatives of Kurdish demands. They know perfectly well that it is impossible for any government to negotiate a solution with the PKK. Thus, the decision to close down the DTP struck at the very heart of the democratic initiative process. It is hard to believe that the Constitutional Court was neutral and passed a judgment in accordance with the law. The closure was a political choice.

Closing the DTP hit not only the DTP but also Parliament. A power outside Parliament ended the terms of representatives of one political party out of four currently in Parliament. As a result, the representative character of Parliament was damaged. This is an intervention in the supremacy of the national will and sovereignty and, as such, an ultimate disrespect to the will of the people, not only to the people who voted for the DTP -- amounting to 2.5 million -- but also to people at large because it presumes the bureaucracy has the right to correct wrongs arising from the national will.

Those who shut the DTP down believe sovereignty belongs to vanguard institutions and their bureaucratic leaders, not to the people.

The court’s decision was in line with the expectations and wishes of the PKK and the radical wing of the DTP. They know the closure will give them an easier way to explain to Kurds just how “limited” political methods really are and why it is that “violence” always needs to be maintained as a possible measure. The closure of the DTP offered party radicals a powerful tool with which to weaken the “defenders of political means” within the Kurdish movement.

No doubt the closure of the DTP means the “elimination of moderates.” It appears now that the “state,” including of course the Constitutional Court, prefers not moderates but hawks with whom it will find impossible to resolve the Kurdish question. In the end, the decision of the Constitutional Court revealed that the “state” does not wish to see the Kurdish problem solved.

14 December 2009, Monday