THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 153, June 21, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE CASE AGAINST TURKEY'S RULING PARTY
By Dr. Michael Rubin
THE REBIRTH OF SECULAR GOVERNMENT & CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY IN TURKEY: CONSTITUTIONAL
CHALLENGE TO ILLEGAL ACTIONS TAKEN BY PRIME MINISTER RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN & HIS JUSTICE & DEVELOPMENT
PARTY, A CASE TO BE DECIDED BY THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF TURKEY -- EXPECTED OUTCOME OF THE CASE:
THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT WILL RULE THAT THE PRIME MINISTER & THE AKP VIOLATED THE PRINCIPLES OF A
DEMOCRATIC & SECULAR REPUBLIC WHICH UNDERGIRD THE TURKISH CONSTITUTION -- THE HIGH COURT WILL DISSOLVE
THE AKP & BAN ERDOGAN & HIS CLOSEST AIDES FROM HOLDING GOVERNMENT OFFICE FOR A PERIOD OF AT LEAST FIVE
YEARS
FULL STORY:
Sometime this Summer, Turkey's Constitutional Court will decide whether Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice
and Development Party (AKP) violated the "principles of a democratic and secular republic" that undergird the Turkish
Constitution and should be barred from politics. Across the Turkish political spectrum, most officials expect the Court to
rule against the AKP, thus dissolving the party and banning Erdogan and his closest aides for at least five years.
Although the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, and influential AKP advisers have tried to depict this as the
unjust outgrowth of a dispute over headscarves in public universities — and perhaps even a "judicial coup" — the case
is legitimate.
Erdogan's supporters often point to his embrace of the European Union accession process as proof of his commitment to
constitutional democracy and the rule of law. But Erdogan has used the EU accession process to unravel Turkey's system
of checks and balances. He cares little for EU institutions. When the European Court of Human Rights upheld a ban on
headscarves in public schools — the same ban that the Turkey's own Constitutional Court later upheld — Erdogan
chastised the European justices for applying civil law to a religious matter, declaring, "It is wrong that those who have no
connection to this field [of religion] make such a decision … without consulting religious scholars."
Europe's encouragement of Turkish reforms has been important. In a mature constitutional democracy, the military should
remain aloof from politics. Brussels should be applauded for pressuring Turkey to reform its National Security Council to
give the powerful body a civilian majority, with a civilian head. By failing to encourage the creation of an alternate
check-and-balance mechanism to replace the military's traditional role as guardian of the Constitution, however, the EU
committed diplomatic malpractice. Erdogan seized the opportunity to run roughshod over Turkish secularism and
constitutional democracy.
Indeed, despite its self-description as secular, constitutionalist and democratic, the AKP is quite the opposite. Babacan
ordered Turkish officials to remove references to secularism from Turkey's position paper ahead of EU negotiations over
education policy. Domestically, the AKP has placed religion above the law. Turkey has long regulated supplemental Koran
schools, ensuring instructor qualifications and imposing minimum age requirements to prevent indoctrination. When Saudi
mullahs fanned out across Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia to promote a radical version of Islam, they largely
bypassed Turkey. No longer. Not only did the AKP loosen limits upon the religious schools, but it also eviscerated the
penalties for violations, leading some illegal madrassas to begin advertising openly.
As he consolidates power, Erdogan has become the Turkish Vladimir Putin. Upon taking office, Erdogan sought to lower
the mandatory retirement age for public servants from 65 to 61, which effectively allowed his party to appoint almost half
of the nation's prosecutors and judges. With patronage appointments, the Prime Minister transformed technocratic bodies
such as the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), an entity empowered to seize private businesses and media outlets,
into virtual party wings. The TMSF today is staffed almost entirely by appointees transferred from Saudi-based financial
institutions.
Placement in key ministries and government departments used to depend on success on civil service examinations. Erdogan
imposed a subjective interview process that enabled him to choose political loyalists. The practice spread to state-owned
industries; Turkish Airlines, for example, began quizzing employees on the Koran. Women have suffered the most.
As analyst Soner Çagaptay observes in Newsweek, "under the AKP, women are largely excluded from
decision-making positions in government and the workforce, relegated to the confines of their homes."
The AKP has even resorted to wiretapping the conversations of its political rivals. Late last month, Vakit, an Islamist
paper close to the AKP, published a wiretap conversation between the opposition's deputy leader and a governor. This
episode, which the media have called "Turkey's Watergate," has sent chills through the secular elite.
The AKP has also sought to diminish the power of Turkey's independent judiciary. In May, 2005, AKP Co-Founder and
Parliamentary Speaker, Bülent Arinç, said that, if the Constitutional Court continued to declare AKP legislation
unconstitutional, the AKP might simply dissolve it. When the Danistay, the country's supreme administrative court, ruled
against the previous government's seizure of a bank and Erdogan's transfer of its European subsidiary to a political ally, the
Prime Minister ignored the ruling.
Contrary to AKP claims, this Summer's Court decision will not mark the end of Turkish constitutional democracy, but, rather,
its rebirth. Erdogan, too, will begin a new chapter. Even if he is banned from politics, a quirk in Turkish election law would
allow him to seek office as an independent. In other words, Erdogan could conceivably wind up presiding over other AKP
alumni as an independent prime minister.
Here, the issue is less ambition than immunity. When Erdogan leaves Parliament, he will face a multitude of corruption
charges. While compiling his immense wealth, he has refused to give a full financial disclosure. As the clock runs out on his
premiership, Erdogan has dispensed with even the appearance of legality. He has used the AKP's parliamentary majority to
suppress investigation of a recent TMSF deal in which an opposition newspaper and television station were sold to an
Erdogan ally after the Prime Minister interceded illegally. On June 18, 2008, Habertürk's Fatih Altayli reported that the
Austrian energy firm OMV has submitted an affidavit swearing that Erdogan told OMV the way to unfreeze a $3 billion
energy project would be to dump its longtime Turkish partner and work instead with his son-in-law. Perhaps, it should not
be a surprise, then, that Erdogan has used what could be his last weeks as Prime Minister to appoint political loyalists to
the Sayistay, Turkey's supreme court of accounts and audits, which will soon investigate his conduct.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Turkey, the Middle East, & the U.S.A.
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
American Foreign Policy -- Constitutional Democracy:
U.S. Promotion of Constitutional Democracy in Foreign Countries
Middle East: Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY & OTHER POLITICAL REGIMES
Modern Constitutional Democracy:
Fundamental Character & Essential Ingredients
Constitutionalism: The First Essential Ingredient
of Modern Constitutional Democracy
Dictatorship: The Opposite of Constitutionalism
Representative Democracy: The Second Essential Ingredient
of Modern Constitutional Democracy
Direct Democracy & Representative Democracy
Political Culture & Modern Constitutional Democracy
Modern Constitutional Democracy:
Summary & Conclusion
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in The American, June 20, 2008, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1924)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
June 21, 2008
Return to Top of Page
Go to the WEBSITE INDEX
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Public Issues & Political Controversies
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
Most Recent Articles
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Volume X, 2007
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Subject Matter Highlights
Return to POLITICAL EDUCATION Homepage
CONTACT & ACCESS INFORMATION
This is not a commercial website. The sole purpose of the website is to share with interested persons information regarding civics,
civic and social education, political science, government, politics, law, constitutional law and history, public policy, and political
philosophy and history, as well as current and recent political developments, public issues, and political controversies.
POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS
POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE
Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.
Government, Politics, Public Policy, Legal Issues, Constitutional Law, Government & the Economy, Cultural Values, Foreign Affairs,
International Relations, Military Defense & National Security, Geopolitics, Terrorism & Homeland Security, American National Interests,
Political Systems & Processes, Political Institutions, Political Ideologies, & Political Philosophy
INDEX FOR THE ENTIRE WEBSITE
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity