Etyen Mahçupyan
The Turkish original of this article was published as
Başkanlığa zaten geçmedik mi? on 29th December 2015.
Everyone agrees that we have to go through a legitimate and sustainable renovation of our current system of government. Despite the more than a hundred amendments it has received since its inception, or perhaps also because of them, the 1982 Constitution is incapable of carrying Turkey to the future. But nothing would have changed even if all these amendments had been consistent. For present constitution’s greatest handicap is its archaic ideology as reflected in its preamble. When this preamble is further connected with and anchored in the main text, it becomes impossible on this basis to solve any existing problems or to prevent the rise of new ones.
Hence the new constitution and the system of government will have to be taken up together. At this point, yet another de facto situation will have to be taken into account one caused by the “indecent politics” of the opposition’s allergy to the AKP. Recently the president has come to be elected by popular vote, and it looks as if the people have no wish to turn this authority back to parliament. Thus at present we have an over-powerful and non-accountable president. That is, if Erdoğan did want to be a “dictator,” this would be the ideal situation.
However, together with the new constitution the AKP also wants to save the government from its present ambiguity and “solidly anchor” it in a new system. But to accomplish this, you have to come up with a policy capable of rendering this desired system acceptable to the people. And this will not be easy, since, precisely as a result of the raising of democratic norms and standards in our society, it appears that two-thirds of the population will not approve of a governmental system that allows for arbitrariness.
So those who uphold a presidential system in the AKP’s name have to develop arguments capable of “convincing” the public. Instead, what is it that we see? If you ask me, just the opposite. For example, there is this argument to the effect that “we have already adopted a presidential system.” We understand what they are trying to say: when the president began to be elected by popular vote, the basic logic of a parliamentary system was disrupted. But the breakdown of the parliamentary system does not mean that it has automatically become “presidential.” A “presidential system” is not just anything where someone happens to be the “president.” It is a system where legislation and the executive are most sharply separated from each other. In this system, the legitimacy of anyone becoming “president” is based on the existence of such a such a clear-cut separation between legislative and executive powers. In Turkey, however, this separation does not exist at the moment. The AKP has a parliamentary majority, it has formed the government, and it also holds a presidency that is powerful but not accountable. This is clearly a situation of a one-party hegemony, and the material basis of a control-and-supervision system is too weak in practice.
In the face of this situation, if you insist that “we have already adopted a presidential system,” this can only mean that your vision of a presidential system does not extend beyond the “current de facto situation.” This, in turn, not only implies a considerable ignorance about any presidential system, but also creates the impression that what is desired is an uncontrolled one-man régime. For if a presidential system has already been adopted, that is to say if a “presidential” system is what we already have, then no major changes are necessary. You simply modify all existing laws and regulations accordingly, make them permanent, and thereby establish the new system. But this “solution” can be accepted world-wide as a “presidential” system only humorously by a satirical literature.
If you are really going to be promoting a presidential system, the first thing to do is to get serious. What we have now is a “non-descript” system of government. A broken and disrupted kind of parliamentary system. But it has nothing whatsoever in common with a presidential system. This is the first thing the AKP has to grasp and digest before moving forward.