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
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
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