FromSabine Mannitz
Following the referendum in favor of political system change, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is presenting himself as the guarantor of his country's strength. However, the divisiveness of Turkish society, the AKP government's rigorous crackdown on political opponents, the suppression of critical reporting and Erdoğan's demonstrative rumblings against Europe and its values suggest the opposite: a further escalation of political conflicts and a relapse of Turkey into unstable times.
According to the official results of the referendum on April 16, 2017, 51.4 percent of Turks eligible to vote voted for the introduction of a presidential system in their country. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose powers are to be expanded on this basis to the considerable detriment of parliamentary and judicial powers,[1] has since sold the result as a victory and also as proof of democratic quality. However, the wafer-thin vote in favor of the proposed constitutional amendments, which according to election observers was not achieved without the help of irregularities during the vote, means the exact opposite: Although the incumbent government has taken advantage of the declared state of emergency since the attempted coup in July 2016 to purge the bureaucracy, judiciary, parliament, education system and security forces of political opponents, silence critical voices from academia, civil society and the media, imprison them and defame them as terrorists, this climate of repression has not deterred half of Turks from opposing the planned constitutional amendment. This is not a political victory, and the claim to democratic legitimacy is mere rhetoric given the circumstances.
Democracy or dictatorship of a wafer-thin majority?
More than 100,000 people have been dismissed from the civil service since the attempted military coup last summer, including several thousand judges and public prosecutors, and a few days ago another 9,000 police officers. The protection rights of the more than 40,000 people who have been imprisoned under the emergency legislation in force since the attempted coup have been restricted. During the state of emergency, they can be held in police custody for up to two weeks and even for years if they are charged. No support that a government enjoys among the majority of the population can relativize such disregard for human rights, which can only be realized through state protection. Hannah Arendt summed up this "aporia of human rights" in her main work, "Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951).
An understanding of democracy that is not committed to the universality of civil rights and the protection of freedoms, including those of political minorities, but is satisfied with the majority principle as a source of legitimacy, is insubstantial.[2] The point here is not to question the majority principle per se, but to determine "tendencies towards its perversion and thus towards the self-cancellation of its legitimizing power"[3]. Functional and structural differentiation is a central feature of modern societies. It must be recognized within the framework of a democratic order: through free space to form and articulate opinions, representation of interests and regulated decision-making.
John Locke's concept of the social contract already identified this condition as elementary, according to which majority decisions are only legitimate if the political body is supported by the will of all and the good of the whole is the obligatory norm. The social and political plurality that also exists in modern Turkey cannot be squeezed into a control scheme of absolute decision-making and legislative power if the claim to a democratic constitution is made. And there can be no question of everyone wanting to change the foundations of the political system if a few thousand voters have an advantage, even if this result was achieved without manipulation. The fact that the Council of Europe will place its member Turkey under observation,[4] as decided this week and promptly commented on by the Turkish Foreign Ministry as shameful, is therefore a correct and extremely important decision: half of the Turkish population is against President Erdoğan, and he shows no willingness to recognize the political will and the right of this half to participate as legitimate.
A deeply divided country is not suitable as an anchor of stability
At the beginning of the AKP government 15 years ago, the current president's zeal for reform gave rise to hopes that Turkey could free itself from the authoritarian legacies of Ottomanism and Kemalism, ease the relationship between the Islamic religion and the democratic constitutional state and use the geostrategic and political potential of a broker with multiple connections in the Levant to transform the ongoing conflicts in the region. Not much has remained of the spirit of optimism, and that is no coincidence. The AKP leadership's tendency, which has become increasingly clear in recent years, to exclude opposing political voices rather than enter into laborious processes of democratic understanding that require it to compromise on its own political objectives, is undermining Turkey's potential and jeopardizing social peace.
Without the willingness and ability to cooperate and reconcile interests, no country can achieve sustainable success in the 21st century, neither in terms of domestic nor foreign policy, let alone economically. In this respect, it is an expression of the normative strength of liberal democratic values that the dispute over the design of Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013 led to a nationwide wave of protests against the government's authoritarian style; that the Turkish economy, which was booming until recently, is experiencing a severe slump because investments and tourists are failing to materialize due to the unpredictable political leadership in Ankara; that the discussion about Turkey's accession to the EU is being linked more resolutely than ever before to the general challenge of effectively enforcing legal standards in the accession and member states. On the other hand, there is little reason to hope that the narrow outcome of the referendum could persuade the Turkish president to open up to consensual processes. The recent wave of arrests proves that Erdoğan wants to continue to be the strong man. However, this will not enable him to overcome the divisions in Turkish society, but will inevitably contribute to the intensification of political confrontations. Instead of assuming the role of a regional anchor of stability and broker , Turkey will become more unstable in the coming years unless the authoritarian course is corrected.
Sources:
[1] For an overview of the constitutional details, see e.g. www.blick.ch/storytelling/2017/tuerkei/orwww.bpb.de/internationales/europa/tuerkei/175312/politik-und-macht
[2] Cf. for example Bernd Guggenberger/Claus Offe (eds.): An den Grenzen der Mehrheitsdemokratie. Politics and Sociology of Majority Rule, Opladen 1984: Westdeutscher Verlag; Hayek, Friedrich von: Economic Freedom and Representative Government, London 1973: Institute of Economic Affairs.
[3] Guggenberger/Offe op. cit. p. 18.
[4] The Council of Europe was founded in 1949 as an intergovernmental European organization to promote democracy, the rule of law and human rights and to monitor their observance. Today it has 47 member states, including Turkey. Cf. www. coe.int/en/web/portal/home
