News & Propaganda: July 8
Thursday, July 8, 201011:35 am, St. Petersburg time The Turkish Constitutional court has nullified some parts of the ruling AKP's constitutional reform package, but has allowed other parts of the package to proceed towards a referendum scheduled for September 12. |
I am puzzled and have a question on the discourse itself. I quote from the RU's Atilla Yayla piece:
"If this isn't possible, then bureaucratic domination should be addressed, the bureaucratic power should be limited in favor of democracy and the way for new reforms in the future should be opened. In other words, the philosophy constitutional amendment needs to be predicated on and the direction that needs to be followed is evident: Protecting individual rights and freedoms more staunchly and increasing the field of democratic politics at the expense of the bureaucratic power."
This sounds OK at first, but it really isn't. One would expect individual rights and freedoms to be also protected from sources of concentrated power that have democratic support. As far as I can see, the package does nothing for this and can only be supported on the basis outlined if one also buys into the notion that the probable holders of elected power will act in ways to ensure individual liberties. I have seen no convincing evidence of that so far. It isn't clear that the holders of power understand such notions let alone subscribe to the ideals they embody. AY backs this up by some muddled thinking. I quote from elsewhere in the same text:
"Who or what is going to limit the power? Will it be an ideology that believes its has discovered universal truth, a politician or philosopher who is believed to be developing principles and creeds that will strip future generations of the need to use their minds and rationality or a lifestyle believed to be scientific and modern? None of them. None of these can limit power. To the contrary, they will excite it and make it more fierce and absolute. What will limit power is individual rights and freedoms. In other words, the essence of the constitutional government tradition is to restrict the state's power in favor of individual rights and freedoms."
Now, I am no social scientist, but I imagine anyone who's looked at the US constitution will giggle at the attempt to ridicule "universal" principles. (Think "self evident.") Furthermore anyone who knows the publication he writes for is also liable to giggle at the attempt to ascribe to science and modernity what in fact is presently taking place through appeals to Godliness. In fact the entire excerpt is vacuous at best, because we are not told where these individual rights and freedoms are to come from, who understands them and holds them dear.
That prose like this gets produced, published and quoted is itself scary, IMHO. There is neither the wish nor any understanding of the notions of individual liberties among the general populace much less the sources of power. In confounding elected governments' power with one that'd establish individuals' rights, the entire basis of the discourse gets warped. I hope I am imagining things, but if I am not this is not a problem than can be solved by referenda or elections, it'll need to be addressed some other way. No?
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Bulent,
Do you have a link to that piece?
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Here: http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=206320
I should say that, I happen to like some of what Atilla Yayla and his group are doing. A few years ago I have met and had tea with a bunch of 20+ year old enthusiastic 'liberals' (in the Turkish sense) and they seemed to have a pretty firm grip on many of the notions that AY apparently subscribes to. This probably wouldn't have happened w/o AY and his friends' efforts to address that kind of young crowd with publications in Turkish.
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