Below is a very well written article by Claire Berlinski at The American http://www.american.com/archive/2008/july-07-08/turkish-surprise
Turkish Surprise
Friday, August 8, 2008
Filed under: World Watch
ISTANBUL—Last week, Turkey’s Constitutional Court achieved what many here, including me, thought impossible. Since March, when the chief prosecutor launched a case to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for undermining Turkish secularism, Turkey appeared to be possessed by a collective national will to achieve total political self-immolation. The Court’s verdict stopped the juggernaut, leaving the country rubbing its eyes in wonderment and gratitude.
Many had expected the deliberations to go on all summer, prolonging and exacerbating the general state of hysteria. Almost everyone expected the AKP to be closed. Instead, ruling with merciful swiftness and emerging visibly exhausted from their deliberations, the judges came down narrowly—by one vote less than the required majority—against closing the party. Ten of the eleven judges agreed with the prosecutor, however, that the AKP had become a “focal point of activities against secularism.” As a chastisement, they ruled to deprive the AKP of some of its state funding from the state treasury coffers.
While this was largely a symbolic measure—the AKP is awash in money from its wealthy business supporters—it signified the Court’s agreement with the prosecutor’s general sentiments, if not his legal arguments. The decision was meant to be interpreted, in the words of the chief justice, as a “very stern warning.” There is much speculation that the narrow verdict was stitched up in advance to make the message as clear as possible: Turkey is a democracy, not a banana republic, and this court is not in the business of removing elected governments. But don’t push us, you idiots. You may have won the last election with 47 percent of the vote, but that doesn’t mean you get to shove your headscarves down the throats of the other 53 percent.
Turkey has been paralyzed by a power struggle between republican secularists (or crypto-fascists, depending on where you stand) and Muslim conservatives (or crypto-fundamentalists, again depending on where you stand).
Almost every commentator in Turkey, of every political persuasion, has applauded the Court’s verdict as a deliverance. This kind of widespread consensus is visible in Turkey roughly as often as Haley’s Comet. The fact that there is something in the ruling for everyone to like has prompted many observers to reach for the word “Solomonic.” One columnist, Mehmet Ali Birand, declared the verdict so reasonable as to be profoundly un-Turkish. “For the first time,” he wrote, “we did not act like Turks. We found the logical and the sensible way.”
The conventional wisdom is correct. This was the best of all possible verdicts. The Court delivered a condign message, richly deserved, to a prime minister who seemed to have forgotten that he was reelected, not coronated. It indicated that if AKP leaders do want to impose a crypto-fundamentalist agenda by stealth, they will face an uphill battle. And it told those leaders in no uncertain terms that if they enjoy being in power—which clearly they do—they had best start acting like the liberal moderates they claim to be.
But the Court also demonstrated its understanding of the Reality Principle. The gravamen of the prosecutor’s complaint was the AKP’s attempt to lift a 1989 prohibition on headscarves in Turkish universities. Banning a popular, democratically-elected party on such flimsy grounds would have given rise to dangerous instability. Although concerns about the AKP’s commitment to secularism are hardly spurious, the prosecutor’s case was a legal embarrassment and everyone knew it. The brief was called the “Google case,” as it seemed the prosecutor had collected his evidence from a Google search under the term “scary things the AKP is rumored to have done.” For recognizing that the closure of the party on these grounds would have plunged the country into the political and economic abyss, the Court deserves—and has received—a warm round of applause and the gratitude of the Turkish nation.
This is not, however, the end of the story. For months, Turkey has been paralyzed by the case and by the power struggle it represents between republican secularists (or crypto-fascists, depending on where you stand) and Muslim conservatives (or crypto-fundamentalists, again depending on where you stand). The verdict will hardly cause the two sides warmly to embrace each other. The markets were severely spooked by the prospect of the AKP’s closure, and while they reacted to the verdict with euphoria, Turkey’s essential instability has been exposed and investors are not apt to forget it. The country’s bid for membership in the European Union has stalled, and it remains awash in rumors of coups and conspiracies.
Prior to the announcement of the verdict, the atmosphere of polarization, suspicion, and paranoia in Turkey was such that only a week ago I told an American radio host that I could see no way forward. I was wrong. There is now a way forward.
Still, this ruling was only the necessary and not the sufficient condition for Turkey to achieve some kind of long-term equipoise. It should never have come to this point in the first place. A decision that rightly belonged to the electorate was made by eleven unelected judges. That this happened at all is a sign of the profound weakness in Turkey’s political and legal institutions.
The drama of the closure case has for months crowded out any possibility of discussing Turkey’s incoherent constitution or its laws on party closures. The problems that gave rise to this state of affairs—including an irresponsible press, the absence of credible opposition parties, and a political culture that makes autocrats out of politicians—remain untouched by the court’s ruling. (As for autocratic politicians, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is by no means an anomaly, but rather perfectly typical.) Moreover, despite the AKP’s reputation for shrewd economic management, the Turkish economy is far less stable than commonly believed: it is indebted, riven with corruption, and largely operating off the record, meaning that the supposed economic miracle over which the AKP has presided is based on statistics that have little to do with reality.
Two scenarios—one optimistic, one pessimistic—may now be envisioned. In the first, a chastened AKP sets to work immediately on an accelerated liberal reform agenda, having realized that if it wishes to stay in power, it must avoid frightening anyone. This is perfectly possible. Erdoğan is not stupid; he has a long history of learning from his mistakes. Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek has just announced that the party will not immediately try again to end the headscarf ban. This is a good sign. A cabinet reshuffle is expected soon, and if the new cabinet is stacked with members from the AKP’s moderate wing, this would be another encouraging sign, as would the selection of moderate candidates for municipal posts in the local elections to be held next March.
But the pessimistic scenario may also easily be imagined. Having survived yet another assassination attempt, the AKP may now conclude that it is bulletproof. It is possible that party leaders will spend a few months making reassuring noises, then start working to ensure there will be no more disagreeable challenges to their authority. In this scenario, they will make a priority of changing the makeup of the Constitutional Court and expanding their control over the bureaucracy. The AKP’s enemies will in turn go berserk and begin agitating for another closure case or a coup. The evidence for this scenario is the past year: after winning reelection with an increased parliamentary majority in June 2007, the AKP clearly concluded, “They can’t touch us now. To hell with them.”
The Constitutional Court has done everything a court can do for a country. Now it’s up to Turkey’s politicians. Let’s hope they have been inspired by the Court’s decency.
Claire Berlinski is a writer living in Istanbul. Her latest book, “There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters,” will be published in September by Basic Books.
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