The decision Wednesday by Turkey’s Constitutional Court, the highest judicial authority, not prohibit, the decision AK Party, or Justice and Development, headed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan lodgings, came as a relief for the Liberal Democrats.

The action have never had to before the Constitutional Court, in the first place. He had never forget the day in one of the liberal democracies. Solicitor General Abdurrahman Yalcınkaya the presentation of the charges against the AK Party before the Constitutional Court on 14 March this year, on the grounds that the party in power has had to close because they had become a focal point for anti-secular activity is in general an anti-democratic behaviour and should be a source of concern for the Democrats, in particular in Turkey. It is without doubt also in helping to chauvinistisch the rejection of the European Union, which actively block the accession of Turkey to join the European Union liberal democratic society.

Yalcinkaya the application of the five-year ban of 71 persons or affiliated with members of the AK Party, including the President of the Republic, Abdullah Gül, a former member of the AK Party, Prime Minister Erdogan, eight ministers holders, and 30 members of Parliament, also betrays his anti-democratic instincts, which are more in the management of police states such as South Africa under the apartheid regime to each of the National Party. Then the nationalists had a series of legislation “legitimize” the ban, the House of the judgement and the detention without trial of hundreds of political opponents and so-called liberals.

What an irony apparently secular leader of the prosecutor try the same tactics that the theocratic Iran, certain persons to participate in the presidential and parliamentary elections, or that Burma, which is characterised by a poorly military junta and corruption.

Turks, especially the fundamentalist extremists “laymen” fundamental misunderstanding of the port, which means that the liberal democracy. And unfortunately, is omnipresent in the psyche of the broad strata of Turkish society, more quickly into the powerful army. The guardian of the constitution and democracy is not the armed forces, how many Turks tend to regurgitate ad nauseum, but the Parliament. It is an ethical requirement for a liberal democracy can not be compared. If this is the case, then the country can not be regarded as a liberal democracy and should not claim to be one too.

The political and civil freedoms are the cornerstone of a liberal democracy, and which is in the judiciary and other protective measures politicians speak from time to time, including the governments of Blair and Brown in the United Kingdom and the Bush administration - States. After calling the fight against “Islamic” terrorism, measures against the spirit of democratic liberalism ethics, if we are not against the law of the day, so that the founding fathers of liberal democracy turning in their graves. Turks must take care not to allow the extreme fundamentalists among the elites of crowding out the agenda of secularism, which is perfectly compatible with the political Islam, as the latter is in a democracy. Secularism does not mean anti-religion. So, then the proceedings in the White House, the U.S. Congress and the Senate of the United States, United Kingdom and the Chamber of municipalities not start every morning with the devout prayers, in this case, l ‘(Christian) Lord’s Prayer.

This case, like others before - for example in relation to the election of Abdullah Gül in the presidency - is essentially an event to a war between Turkey traditional elites in the centre of the metropolis cities of Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir, and the emergence of new elites from Anatolia in the centre of Kayseri, Afyon, Malatya, etc.

The bogies and the religious threat of secularism are just smokescreens in this war. Visions of the Islamist AK party, like a Trojan horse into the body’s policy of Turkey is by the soldiers and their supporters to impede the emergence of the new Pacha Anatolia. The United States and Europe consider, rightly, that the increase in Islamist AK Party as the equivalent of his own Christian-democratic political parties. This is in line with its vision of democracy and the Islamic world, and a certain “legitimacy” (in their eyes) for their campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The official mantra is that the status of Turkey is a bridge between Asia and Europe, between East and West, between Islam and Christianity. Unfortunately, the Turks remain at home polarized. Military secularism, which faltered in an authoritarian regime “Father State” Ethics is a legacy of the Kemalist further undermine bridges between the Turks among the elites in Ankara, Izmir and Istanbul and Anatolia emerging countries. What irony that should the AK Party, which aims to liberalise and serve in Turkish politics with the rights and freedoms with the country-21 century.

The last drama Constitutional Court is a battle in this war between the elites. The losers are the Turkish democracy and citizens.

Posted in: genel | | Ağustos 2008