A group of eminent Turks, including a number of senior academics, has just given a coded warning that the country’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan should not put his name forward as a presidential candidate when registration opens next month. Though they did not name the prime minister, it is clear that their message was aimed at him. The basis for the warning is that Turkey’s constitution is secular and Erdogan is the leader of the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party. They believe therefore that if he became president, he would seek to undermine the existing constitution in favor of a more Islamic turn.
This initiative is interesting for a number of reasons. For a start, the president who is chosen by a two-thirds majority of Parliament has arguably less influence than the prime minister. In common with many other republican constitutions, he can call new elections, appoint prime ministers, promulgate laws to be considered by Parliament and send back laws that he believes need reconsideration. The day-to-day political power, however, rests with Parliament and the prime minister’s office.
Nor would the current constitution, written after the 1980 military intervention as Turkey plunged into civil disorder, be easy to change. Article 2 reaffirms the secular nature of the state and Article 4 says not only that this provision is irrevocable but that no amendment to Article 2 should be proposed. It is thus hard to see how Erdogan, should he become president, could actually make any substantive changes.
It seems more than likely that this warning message was inspired by the Turkish military. The generals have always seen themselves as the guardians of the modern Turkish state, a creation by the still widely revered Kemal Atatürk. The calculation may have been that a direct admonition from the top brass would have been seen, both domestically and internationally, as provocative.
Many Turks from all shades of the political spectrum will nevertheless feel uncomfortable at this intervention. Turkey is a democracy and the AKP came to power in free and fair elections. If Erdogan could muster the necessary parliamentary votes, there seem to be no clear grounds why he should not assume his country’s highest office. It would be the crown of a not undistinguished political career. In the 1990s as mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan cleaned up widespread corruption, rooted out incompetent officials and began the transformation of the old Ottoman capital into a busy modern city with a widely admired new transport infrastructure. Despite some wayward ideas, his administration was accounted efficient and successful.
He then overcame successive attempts to ban first his party and then himself from the political process and became premier in 2003. His government has proved moderate, stable and financially adroit. If the deeply religious Erdogan has done this well as prime minister, it is hard to see how he could pose any real danger to his nation as president.
