Turkish politics is currently polarized by the debate over a constitutional reform bill. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have jointly proposed a constitutional reform bill to shift Turkey’s parliamentary system towards a presidential system. These two political parties defend the bill by arguing that it will boost Turkey’s democracy. Yet the opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), strongly oppose the bill by claiming that it will lead Turkey into an authoritarian one-man rule.

The opposition contends that the new constitution weakens the parliament to the extent that the presidency amasses all the powers in its hands. This will leave the government without a system of checks and balances and end the rule of law. So it sets forth a regime change, namely the end of Turkey’s republican order. The AK Party and the MHP, in response, propound that the new constitution provides better conditions for reflecting the popular will in the government. So it does not end Turkey’s republican order; on the contrary, it improves the republican order by empowering the society over extra-political forces such as the military and civil bureaucracy.

Indeed, this debate reveals the main fault line in Turkish politics. Turkish politics is primarily determined by the conflict of two historical blocs, the secular middle class and the masses in the periphery. The secular middle class, which constitutes the minority in society, figures that its interests will be best served as long as the parliament holds the central place in politics. The peripheral societal forces, which constitute the majority in society, seek to push the executive to the center in politics. The former believes that the minority will have more say in politics as long as the parliament holds a focal point. The latter thinks that the majority will get its due share in power as long as the executive occupies the central place in the political system.

So we have two competing views of democracy at hand. From a liberal perspective, democracy simply refers to the limitation of power. From a conservative perspective, democracy refers to the rule of the people, namely the concentration of power in people’s hands. While the opposition holds on to the former, namely the negative view of democracy; the AK Party and the MHP sticks to the latter, namely the positive view of democracy.

Parliamentary System under Bureaucratic Oligarchy

To put the matter in a historical perspective, the majority’s choice of positive view of democracy is tenable. The secular middle class organized around the bureaucracy ended the Ottoman monarchic regime in 1922 and established the republic in 1923. This regime change brought about another significant change, it ended the “neutral” state and replaced it with a “total” state. With this transformation of the state, the absolute separation of the state from society came to an end. The state and society, therefore, became enmeshed through political parties. The political parties became the most significant political actors.

Yet, the newly established republic was unable to deal with the disrupting effects of pluralism in society. The state found the solution in strictly separating itself from the society. It kept the parliament at the center of politics but the parliament was restricted to a political party, namely the CHP. The two attempts, one in 1925 and the other in 1930, to install multi-party systems failed.

Hence, the state under the control of the bureaucratic elite formed an oligarchic rule. It single-handedly decided on who should rule and be ruled. The nationalist-secular middle class values drove the line that divided the ruler and the ruled. The political actors with “secular” values were granted the right to rule, whereas the others with “conservative-religious” values were reduced to be ruled. Thus, the state evolved back to a neutral state. The state is off limits to society.

The period of 1950-2002 witnessed a process of controlled opening of the state to society. The bureaucratic oligarchy allowed a multi-party system. The political parties such as the Democrat Party in the 1950s and the Motherland Party (ANAP) in the 1980s dominated the parliament and challenged the hegemony of the bureaucratic elite. The former broke down after the military coup in 1960, whereas the latter collapsed within itself and lost its parliamentary majority after the leadership change.

Besides, from the mid-1960s to the 1980 military coup, the state lost control of the society. The parliament fell short of absorbing pluralism, and this unrestricted ideological polarization unleashed bloody clashes on the street, especially from the mid-1970s till the coup. In the 1990s, with the decline of ANAP, the number of parties in the parliament rose. The parliament absorbed pluralism to an extent, yet it failed to provide a working coalition government to sustain political stability. This weakness of parliament eventually pushed the state to a deep legitimacy crisis in the late 1990s.

Democratization of Parliamentary System

However, after the AK Party came to power in 2002, power has gradually shifted from the secular middle class to the masses in the periphery. This power shift led to two important constitutional reform bills in 2007 and 2010. They were designed to curb the power of the bureaucracy. The constitutional reform in 2007 brought the popular election of the president. The presidential office, which was granted broad powers by the 1982 constitution, used to be elected by the parliament and served as a gate keeper for the bureaucratic oligarchy. The 2010 constitutional reform, on the other hand, reformed the judiciary system by limiting the powers of military courts.

These institutional changes were accompanied by the process of sociological equalization within the society. This change in the distribution of power in society and the loss of power urged the opposition to launch a new political discourse which targeted the AK Party with a negative view of democracy. It constantly criticized the government for establishing an authoritarian rule. In the meantime, the power vacuum in the bureaucracy was filled up by the Gülenists. Starting from 2012, the opposition and the Gülenists began to team up against the AK Party. The Gülenists attempted a coup twice. One through the Judiciary on 17 and 25 December in 2014. The other was through the military on 15 July 2016.

Upon these onslaughts against the government, the AK Party and the MHP agreed to embark on a new constitutional reform on 1 December 2016. The 2016 reform aspires to empower the political infrastructure of the country by shifting the government system towards presidentialism. It mainly seeks to shift the center of gravity towards the executive branch within the political system and strengthen democratic politics versus extra-political forces, namely the bureaucracy.

Presidentialism and the Republic

With presidentialism, the government seeks to strike a delicate balance between two opposing forces in society, pluralism and stability. Thus, on the one hand, it seeks to sustain pluralism in society by keeping the state open to the whole society. On the other hand, it struggles to maintain political stability by steering political parties to the center.

Indeed, this has been the basic motivation of the 1982 Constitution. It installed a multi-party parliament while introducing a 10 percent election threshold. More, it split the executive between the president and the council of ministers. The president, who was planned to be elected from the cadres of bureaucracy, was granted more powers and was supposed to keep the government in line with the bureaucracy.

The current constitutional reform shares the same motivation, emphasizing stability at the face of centrifugal societal forces, but with a caveat. First of all, it unites the executive by abolishing the office of prime minister. Second, it separates the presidential election from the parliamentary elections. Third, it deprives the parliament of its power of a vote of confidence. The parliament keeps its other powers that enable it to check and balance the executive, such as calling for new elections, debating and approving the budget, etc.

Thus, the constitutional reform that seeks to shift the government system towards presidentialism abides by the basic democratic norms. Moreover, it may serve to further the democratization of the country and create a better republic. Indeed, a republican order requires two conditions. First of all, it underlines the fact that rule is supposed to be a political rule, namely there should be no categorical difference between the ruler and the ruled. It is the rule by the people for the people. Secondly, the rule is supposed to be based not on power but rational discussion. Having equality and cultural and economic homogeneity among the members of the political community is a sine qua non of a republican order. These measures constitute its genuine and actual basis.

Furthermore, the current constitutional reform may endorse the process of sociological equalization and promotes cultural and economic homogeneity among the citizens without forsaking societal differences and pluralism. This is because it puts a premium on democratic politics in the face of extra-political forces and pushes political parties to address the whole society in order to get elected. In other words, it rules out coalition governments and shifts the center of gravity in the state towards democratic politics. In short, it gives priority to society’s will.

Turkey has achieved, to an extent, the former criterion. Indeed, the 13-years AK Party rule has lifted the semi-official barriers that had produced inequalities among Turkish citizens. Some citizens, especially those of Islamic and Kurdish identity, used to be less equal than others before the law. Their elevation to full citizenship has been accompanied by a wave of sociological equalization; as part of this wave, the large bulk of the lower classes has been upgraded to the middle class. Nevertheless, the second criterion, that of freedom, is yet to be carried out since a well-formed political system with a sound legal system, which is expected to constrain power, does not exist. The AK Party and its supporters highlight the fulfillment of the first criterion, the equalization of Turkish citizens. The opposition, on the other hand, insists that full democracy requires more. That is, the rule of law should be institutionalized in order to protect the rights of all citizens from the excesses of power.

Democracy is a contested concept. It is susceptible to many different articulations. Yet all these articulations share one basic idea: democracy is a form of political rule.

Indeed, the ongoing debate in Turkey’s public sphere over drafting a new constitution and shifting to a presidential system hovers around this democracy problematique. The AK Party asserts that the presidential system will further democracy by securing the equality of Turkish citizens, and best reflecting their will to the administration. The opposition, in contrast, contends that the presidential system will endanger democracy by serving the concentration of power and the infringement of the rule of law.

The process of equalization

The AK Party’s defense of the presidential system cannot be adequately grasped, and indeed, risks being seen as a step back from democracy, when one fails to take into consideration the importance of institutions in sustaining democracy. Ideally, the rationality of political institutions is measured by the quality of interaction that they provide in state-society relations. Hence, institutions are rational so long as they do not allow a gap or alienation between the state and society. Moreover, since society is a dynamic phenomenon, especially when it is a so-called transitional society, those institutions which objectify the power relations in society come under intermittent challenges. The emergent gap at such times reveals the contingent nature of political orders and requires a reorganizing of the political community’s institutional infrastructure.

Indeed, the AK Party itself is a product of such a historical break in Turkey. The Kemalist regime pursued a policy of alienation in state-society relations by closing the gates of the state to the majority of the society. These communities were relegated to the rank of second-class citizens and exposed to a series of procrustean assimilation policies. The institutional form of these socio-political relations was that of single-party rule, during the time period of 1923-1950. No political parties, other than the Kemalist CHP, were allowed in the parliament. After the 1950s, owing to international and societal pressures, the institutional form of rule evolved into a multi-party parliamentary regime under bureaucratic tutelage. However, the institutional instability and its growing legitimacy crisis triggered military intervention into Turkish politics four times in the second half of the twentieth century.

Some citizens, especially those of Islamic and Kurdish identity, used to be less equal than others before the law. Their elevation to full citizenship has been accompanied by a wave of sociological equalization.

The AK party came to power in 2002, when Turkey’s state institutions faced a total collapse. It was the ever-growing gap between the Kemalist regime and Turkish society that produced the AK Party. The AK Party, in return, has steadily enlarged its public support by promising to bridge the residual gap in state-society relations. This promise, in essence, involves reshaping Turkey’s institutional infrastructure in order to end the long-lasting alienation between the state and society. This has involved the dismantling of bureaucratic tutelage over the parliamentary system, and the democratization of civil-military relations. The 2007 reform bill, which brought about the election of a president directly by the people, was the apex of this endeavor. The president had formerly been elected by the parliament, under the direction of the bureaucracy, and, in essence, had served as the regime’s gate keeper in the executive branch of the government.

The rationalization process undertaken by the AK Party has transformed the government system towards presidentialism, the end result being that Turkey now has a directly elected president with considerable political powers. Today, the AK Party strives to finalize this rationalization process by legalizing the de facto situation with a new constitution based on a presidential system.

The warning against power 

Turkish politics is shaped by the clash between competing claims of political community. All of the political camps strategically employ the discourse of “rights” to dislocate the opposing hegemonic formations and open up room for themselves in the socio-political system. The political struggle, then, is not between the defender of “the right” (individual, freedom) and “the good” (society), but rather between contesting claims of the good. The warning that presidentialism will lead to a concentration of power should be thought through in this political context.

Presidentialism is a democratic government system; ideally, it will not allow for the violation of the rule of law. So arguing that presidentialism will inextricably lead to the encroachment of rights is baseless. Why, then, is this objection being raised by the opposition? This is occurring simply because presidentialism figures as a game-changer in Turkish politics. It will, first of all, produce a political context in which the political actor having the backing of the majority of society holds on to power. This means that populism will be the strongest weapon in the system. Secondly, presidentialism will enervate the bureaucracy vis-à-vis the elected politicians in decision-making. This means that society at last will dispense with the bureaucracy for good.

Clearly, the opposition is reluctant to shift to presidentialism since it has been proven that the AK Party is invincible when populism is the only game in town. Moreover, the basic strategy of the main opposition parties (the CHP and the MHP) is to keep the civil-military bureaucracy in politics. This requires crippling civil politics, thereby producing a power vacuum to justify the return of bureaucracy. This will inevitably end up diminishing the role of the elected representatives of the people in decision-making. The CHP’s defense of the parliamentary regime in the face of the presidential system, or, more concretely, the call for undoing the 2007 reform bill which enables the direct popular election of the president, is motivated by this strategy. The Turkish parliamentary system harbors more pitfalls to allow room for bureaucracy in politics.

Quo Vadis?

But should we stop defending rights against power? Turkey should continue to rationalize its political system as Germany did in 1949 with the Basic Law, France in 1958 with the Fifth Republic, and Britain under Tony Blair in the 1990s. These are all examples of attempts to empower the executive vis-à-vis the legislation and extra-political actors, without overstepping democratic politics. So the presidential system in Turkey should abide by the basic rules of developed democracies, namely the separation of powers and the rule of law.

Presidentialism is a democratic government system; ideally, it will not allow for the violation of the rule of law.

Beside this institutional step to protect rights against power, the second move should be to ease the tension between rights and “the good” in politics. Indeed, the primacy of rights exaggerates the subjectivity of individuals, whereas the primacy of the good does the same for the social whole. The slavish defense of rights carries the risk of political instability, which might unintentionally bring greater violation of citizens’ rights. The imprudent tendency to objectify the good leads to turning a blind eye to social injustices and disrespect, which might end up dissolving social ties and tearing down the social whole.

One way to break this deadlock of self-defeating politics may be to center inter-subjectivity in politics, which includes toning down political polarization and initiating a genuine and meaningful discussion of the common good. Unless all the political actors put this goal on their agenda, reason is doomed to fail against power. And then no complaint of power could be justified.