The current dispute over the future of the Turkish Constitution should not threaten to polarize the political establishment in the way that it has. Labeling the rival camps “secularist” and “Islamist” does not help. There are reasonable arguments for and against the changes proposed by the government of Tayyip Erdogan but one of them is certainly not that the constitution is immutable.
Two early articles forbid amendments to the way in which the president is elected by Parliament and also to the secular nature of the Turkish state. It is these clauses which may cause the Constitutional Court to strike down president Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s decision to call a referendum on the Erdogan government’s proposed changes. These include the direct election of the president by voters and the replacement of a single seven-year presidential term of office with a maximum of two five-year terms.
Sezer vetoed the bill encompassing these changes when it came to him but when Parliament passed it again, his only recourse, apart from signing the bill into law, was to call a referendum. Erdogan has welcomed this and wants the vote on the changes to take place at the same time as the general election in July which he brought forward from November. It appears, however, that for procedural reasons, a referendum vote could not be held until October. The complexities must be addressed but in a spirit of openness and fairness. They must not be used, as some Kemalist opponents seem intent on doing, to delay and scupper the whole idea of constitutional change. No constitution is writ in stone. Indeed, the present Turkish document, though largely following the original of the republic’s founder, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, was amended by the military in 1981 before they ended their last coup and handed power back to civilians.
Most Turks remain intensely proud of the Ataturk legacy but if the popular mood has been judged correctly, they also have much sympathy with the Erdogan proposals. It also looks at the moment as if the premier’s AK party, with its moderate Islamist agenda, is likely to be returned to power, perhaps once again with a handsome majority. Erdogan’s opponents include political parties whose own periods in power have often been characterized by vicious infighting, incompetence and corruption. They have failed to deliver. By contrast, the AK party has turned the economy around, cut down corruption and delivered on some of its social promises. Electors are therefore likely to be impatient with opposition charges that the planned changes would usher in an Islamic state and destroy Turkey’s secular status, something which Erdogan and his ministers vigorously deny.
There is nonetheless a far more important point which the constitution’s defenders ignore. That is that within a democracy, the constitution must serve the voters, not the voters the constitution. If there is an overwhelming will for change, then it should be allowed to be registered and the change made.
