BY SUKRU KUCUKSAHIN
HURRIYET- Obviously the sections on secularism will get the most attention in the 98-page defense submitted by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to the Constitutional Court. According to the AKP, the public prosecutor's indictment tendentiously tried to create a difference between the AKP he perceives and the real AKP, and took the same strategy on secularism as well. So how did the defense respond to this?
The defense started by saying that the indictment assumes that Turks fail to do enough to protect the characteristics of the republic and calls into question the nation's loyalty to the state and republic. It called those unfair assumptions unacceptable, saying they amount to denying all the republic's advances and successes.
The defense said that Ataturk believed it would be impossible to maintain the republic's pillars without making the nation adopt them and that he had activated all the principles of the regime established with Parliament's democratic will. The defense added that therefore Parliament and the Turkish nation as a whole are protectors of Ataturk's principles and revolutions and that the process of modernization has reached its aim, in terms of coming together with the nation. It added that Turkey is now closer than ever to Ataturk's aims of modernization, mostly through progress in Turkey's European Union bid. As for the AKP, the defense said that its understanding and stance on secularism are very important for Turkish politics and that the AKP government has not only respected the institutional and practical conditions of secularism within the legal framework, but also contributed to the state's protecting and adopting the secular characteristics. It said that the AKP has succeeded in a very important mission in integrating different sectors of the system and so the AKP is a movement which isn't against secularism, but is socializing it.
The defense said that the indictment painted secularism as a one-dimensional concept and the final stage of societies' intellectual and organizational evolution, adding that this is a strict progressive understanding of the 19th century. The defense argued that on the contrary, the AKP's understanding of secularism is fully in line with modern democratic societies' understanding of libertarian secularism and that it doesn't threaten others' basic rights and freedoms, but envisages that all individuals coexist peacefully with their different beliefs and lifestyles. Then the defense reiterated that the public prosecutor tried to paint the understanding of the AKP as something contrary to secularism and cited as evidence that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said previously that secularism isn't a religion and that it would be a mistake to present it as an alternative to religion and that not the individual, but the state is secular. The defense added that the understanding of modern secularism is a political principle, aiming to accept different religions and beliefs as social realities and to provide their peaceful coexistence, and that's why secularism isn't about the individual, but the state. I wonder if this defense will be enough to dispel the dark cloud over the AKP.