BY NURAY MERT
RADIKAL-Columnist Nuray Mert writes about a perceived bureaucratic domination over democratic institutions in Turkey. A summary of her column is as follows:
Evaluating the contours of Turkish politics at the grand opening for a shopping mall over the weekend, our ‘merchant politician’ Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, ‘There’s a bureaucratic oligarchy in Turkey, a group which plays even with politics with the tip of its finger.’ As you may know, our prime minister loves making grandiose statements, and apparently this time, he sincerely believed that what he said was completely novel and groundbreaking. Someone should tell him that the so-called ‘bureaucracy issue’ has been discussed for many years now, and that the progress of the debate is far from being explanatory or sound.
Making bureaucracy the scapegoat for all our country’s problems has been a widely accepted political practice since the time of our late President Turgut Ozal. There are various reasons for this. – Have you gotten yourself into political hot water? Just blame the bureaucracy and let the rest take care of itself! – Let’s remember what our great politician Mesut Yilmaz, who last fall successfully swept away the Motherland Party (ANAP) from the political scene, once said at a group meeting in November 2000: ‘The status quo is ANAP’s greatest enemy.’ Well, I guess that he now consoles himself with thoughts that it was the same status quo that led to the demise of his party.
As I stated above, opposition to ‘the status quo,’ ‘the system,’ ‘bureaucracy’ and ultimately ‘oligarchy’ has been endemic since Ozal. Our ‘great’ Turkish liberals always complain that appointed bureaucrats rule over the elected politicians. However, this is a very shallow analysis of democracy and politics. First of all, depicting bureaucracy as consisting of mere unnecessary formalities is both wrong and deceptive. Criticizing the functions and authority of bureaucracy is one thing; rejecting bureaucracy is another altogether. A preservation of the bureaucratic framework to ensure the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances does not serve to enervate democracies. On the contrary, they are the very grounds upon which healthy democracies function. The barrier to democratization in Turkey is not bureaucratic institutions but rather a lack of mutual understanding among different state positions. As a result, tensions keep cropping up between political institutions.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION