STAR- Columnist Omer Celik comments on the political structure and prevailing political understanding in Turkey. A summary of his column is as follows:
The idea of stability constitutes a fundamental foundational criterion of the political mentality in this country. It is perceived as the precondition for the legitimacy of everything. Consequently, every political act or utterance is assessed, from the very first, in terms of its contribution to this state-centric idea of stability. Taking positions this way, a tension emerges between the nature of the political and the idea of stability. The way this tension is managed in Turkey always ends up favoring this idea of stability at expense of democracy. Today, it is widely argued in Turkey that a consolidated stability is best maintained if there exists just two main political parties, with one representing the entire left and the other, the entire right. However, what kind of a political insight these two parties should have remains unaddressed. Thus, this attitude results in the state-centric idea of stability making inroads more and more into the political. At this point, the nut of the problem becomes apparent: In Turkey, the political mentality has failed to produce an idea of stability which would sustain democratic values and the nature of the political. A democratic political mentality is one which can resolve the tension between democratic values and the state-centric idea of stability in favor of the former. That is why political mentality has to rely on a dynamic idea of democratic stability. The precondition for this kind of stability is a balancing out of the reflexes of the institution of the state based on the idea of stability with those of the political based on democracy. The reason why such an attitude cannot be produced in Turkey, neither on the left nor the right, is the prevailing lack sound ideologies. Consequently, political parties have more and more come to identify themselves around the center. The definition of ‘centrist party’ is, by nature, a nonpolitical one. The ‘center’ is always state-centric. However, the political is itself there to politicize the center either on the left or the right. Thus, the more political parties in Turkey locate themselves around the center, the more they internalize the state-centric idea of stability and become its standard bearer and an element of ‘nonpolitical politics.’ The basic problem of the political in Turkey is the lack of a democratic idea of stability and that of political parties to achieve it. If this situation continues, democracy in this country will lose even more ground and become ever more fragile.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION