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axi
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Athens Greece
Sep 1999
time: 07:31
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Turkey is still very far from being a democracy. The current regime was formed after the 1980 junta ceded power to the parliamentary parties, during a process of "democratization". This means that the turkish democracy is tailored to suit the needs of the Kemalist "Deep State" and whenever the people votes for any serious change in the status quo, the military or the high courts intevene to put all reforms "in plaster". This is what happened in Chile and in Spain too: when the junta judged that it was "safe" to restore democracy, it stepped back and handed power to the right-wing parliamentary parties. On the other hand, in Portugal and Greece, the junta was more or less overthrown, which resulted in much more "true" democracies. (Although this is a moot point if one examines it deeply: no capitalist state would ever allow a peaceful progress to socialism organised by an elected socialist party.)
Turkey however is a real basketcase and I will explain why:
Erdogan's party only marginally escaped being declared illegal this time, while Erdogan himself had to wait for a supplementary election in order to get elected and before that, the Prime Minister's seat was held by Abdullah Ghiul, who is currently foreign minister. Erdogan's party has been banned 2 times before that and it had to mutate politically into something much more pro-EU and less islamic that what it originally was. In fact it is a splitter faction of the original islamic party of Netsmedin Erbakan that had been elected and assumed office a few years ago but was consequently overthrown by the President of the Republic and was declared illegal too. The current effort in overthrowing Erdogan is based in declaring illegal the Kurdish party DEHAP (a party that despite the extensive election fraud against it by the turkish state got 7% of the votes), so that it's votes are analogically redistributed to the other parties, thus helping a third party reach the (incredibly high for any democracy) 10% limit for electing representatives, in which case Erdogan's party will lose the 2/3 majority that it has right now, which will reneder them unable to alter the constitution, making it impossible to legislate the reforms that are needed so that the country may be eligible for joining the EU. We should also mention that DEHAP is a reincarnation of HADEP, the pro-curdish party that was banned and had it's 6 representatives jailed a couple of years ago. Also illegal, apart from the PKK of course, are 3 communist parties (DHKP-C, PRG-Rizgari, TKP-ML) that have their members rot in the turkish jails.
So what kind of a "democracy" is this, which has the left, the national minorities and the islamists banned frrom political representation?
Of course, I wonder if the EU does really have any qualms about that kind of undemocratic manipulations. Spain f.e. has recently banned Eru Batasuna but the EU did not react in any way.
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:31
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axi - Turkish democracy is indeed a basket case, but I feel like I should offer a couple of expansions on what you wrote.
First, it's a bit deceptive to suggest that the current regieme has been in place since the end of the 1980 coup. The coup ended with the adoption of the current constitution, which was written by the military and adopted in an undemocratic manner. But since then the country has been ruled by a variety of parties with different political agendas. There hasn't been one twenty-year regieme.
Second, yes -- the 10% margin for entering Parliament is absurdly high, and undemocratic. It was clearly put into place to disempower the Kurdish party and small ultra-left parties. But, in the recent election, it also served to keep out all of the country's establishment parties, and to keep the nationalist right -- the strongest supporters of the military -- from being seated in Parliament. So it's a crazy rule, but there is an attempt to apply it fairly on its own terms.
The case you bring up with Spain and Eru Batasuna is an interesting one, because what it points to is the feeling in Turkey -- largely but not entirely unfair -- that the EU is willing to put up with behavior from European countries that it won't put up with from Turkey -- like banning political parties linked to terrorism.
The history of Turkey since 1980 (to say nothing of before) is a sad one, but I do think things are changing. It may not seem that way if you look at all the attempts to disempower Erdogan's AK Party; if, on the other hand, you look at the way that all those attempts have failed, something different seems to be going on -- I hope.
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Dr Strangelove
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I say go ahead and let them in. Given the current rate of Turkish migration and the sub-replacement level of the birth rates in the nations of Europe, most of the players in the EU will be adopting Sharia law by the end of this century. You might as well be nice to them now or suffer the consequences later.
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07-10-2003 17:51
), when will Greece drop their own little statistics game and do an official census in which minorities will actially get counted?
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