The Verdict: Politically Good, Legally Awful
The PM must have once again realized in the past five months that the safest way out for Turkey from its authoritarian past, and quasi-authoritarian present, is toward the EU.
Yes, Turkey has passed through an acute political crisis and it ended happily. We are outside of the dark tunnel now. The closure case against the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, was an “attempt for a judiciary coup d'etat,” as I have defined it from the very first day. But the attempt failed. As the chief judge of the Constitutional Court, Haşim Kiliç, announced the decision to not to close down the AKP last Wednesday, Turkish democracy survived.
As everybody knows in Turkey, this was more of a political case than a legal one. The AKP's only “crime” was to disagree with the state establishment on the definition of secularism, which has become a religion in itself for that establishment and its devotees in society. Those who opened the case, and the powers that be that supported them, were actually very determined to wipe the AKP off the map. But, at the end of the day, they turned out to be less powerful than they presumed. The AKP's massive support in Turkish society, the dreadful effects of a closure decision and the international support for the democratic process in Turkey turned out to be decisive.
Only Kiliç got it right:
From all those aspects, I have regarded the Constitutional Court's verdict as good news. But from a less political but more legal and principled point of view, the decision is actually very bad. The court did not ban the AKP and its members, but 10 out of 11 judges still found the party “a center of anti-secular activities” and decided to fine it by depriving it half of the assistance it gets from the State Treasury. The main opposition Republican People's Party, or CHP, as you would expect, now emphasizes this fact, and argues that what matters is that their claim that the AKP is “anti-secular” is now confirmed by the highest court.
Yet, as preeminent constitutional legal expert professor Ergun Özbudun said the other day, the whole “anti-secularism” accusation is groundless. The indictment, as he argued, had to be totally rejected. This view is expressed even by some secularist commentators, such as Mehmet Y. Yilmaz, a strong critic of the AKP and a columnist for mainstream secularist daily Hürriyet. “With this unsubstantiated indictment,” Mr. Yilmaz wrote in his column yesterday, “I had actually thought that the AKP should not get any punishment at all.”
For me, the only good verdict came from the very president of the court, Haşim Kiliç, who was the only judge to vote against the indictment altogether. As I explained three months ago in this column, in a piece titled “A Righteous Judge Among The Unrighteous,” Mr. Kiliç is one of the few liberal judges in a court dominated by illiberal ones. Last Wednesday he proved his democratic credentials not only by his vote, but also by the warning he made to the politicians while announcing the decision: He basically asked for legal reforms that will make party closure much more difficult and thus avoid similar cases in the future.
Islamist or atheist?:
Another important character in the Constitutional Court is the rapporteur, Osman Can, who had advised the judges to reject the indictment's demands all together. After Dr. Can made that suggestion about two weeks ago, ultra-secularist commentators started to spread the rumors that he was a member of an Islamic sect, and most probably a “Fethullahçi,” i.e., a follower of the popular Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen. But in an interview he gave to daily Taraf, Dr. Can implied that he was actually an atheist and his life philosophy is nothing but liberalism. To the question, “Which word inspires you the most?” he gave a not-much-Taliban-like answer: “freedom.”
It is no accident that Turkish liberals don't see much problem with AKP's attitude on secularism, while illiberal Turks are horrified by the party's “anti-secular activities.” The dividing line here is the meaning of secularism. Those who are illiberal understand it as the cleansing of the influence of religion from society. Sumru Çörtükoğlu, the former head of the Council of State, one of the bastions of the Kemalist high judiciary, recently defined secularism as “the freeing of law, education and culture from religion.” That does not sound too different from the secularism of the Soviet Union or communist China, whose cultural revolutions aimed at secularizing society by state power.
According to this perspective, all center-right, liberal and conservative parties in Turkey are indeed “anti-secular” because they support religious freedom under the secular state. Moreover, even the European Union and the United States are “anti-secular” because they support the democratic system which allows these “anti-secular” parties to come to power. In a sense, Turkey's ultra-secularists are right to believe that the whole world is against them.
Time for EU:
Since this totalitarian notion of secularism persists among Turkey's elites, it won't be realistic to say that the religion-secularism conflict is over. But it is good that we have avoided creating a national disaster out of that conflict. Now it is time calm down and focus on issues that most of us would agree on. The government should focus on the economy, and, more than anything else, the EU process. I am sure that the prime minister must have once again realized in the past five months that the safest way out for Turkey from its authoritarian past and quasi-authoritarian present is toward the EU.
And I hope that the EU's decision-makers have realized their crucial role in the evolution of Turkish democracy. Some of them might be seeing this extremely complex country as too much of a hassle, but they should also note that the success of the same country, and the message it will give to the world, will be worth it.
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