Etyen Mahçupyan
The Turkish original of this article was published as Başkanlık ekonomiyi de ‘düzeltir’ mi? on 3rd January 2016.
Within a rational framework, it can easily be said that a solid and well-thought presidential system would benefit both politics and the country. If, nevertheless, this change of the system of government cannot be achieved, and if Turkey is forced to abide by the constraints of a populist/statist mentality imposed by the parliamentary system, it will be the strategy adopted by the AKP and AKP staff that is most to blame. One of the worst mistakes in this regard is to connect all sorts of other topics of debate with the question of a presidential system to produce a “mishmash” in the belief that this might yield some kind of advantage.
For example, there are those who have trying to force on the agenda a debate on the “central bank” and the “interest rate.” Some people who seem to be seeking popularity for themselves through their political or physical proximity to Erdoğan are trying to come up with arguments to the effect that the interest rate should be reduced, and that the central bank should not be setting out only inflation targets. This is an approach pretending to prioritize growth, but which in reality implies that we can achieve success by goimng against or blocking out the workings of the global economy. Its main argument is that the over the last thirteen years success has been achieved not through economic policies focusing on stability, but “in spite of’” them; that growth has actually been attained and sustained through the AKP’s infrastructure investments. Well, but how did the AKP find the resources for those investments? Through good budget management, which in turn was predicated on an environment of stability for enabling an increase in the primary surplus and permitting a new debt restructuring. In other words, if it were not for that stability, you would not have been able to find no-risk resources for investment.
Defenders of this “pro-growth” position do not hesitate to air some quite interesting ideas. For example, they say that the current situation in the manufacturing industry of the average profit exceeding the cost of financing, that is to say of the industry making net profits, is not sustainable! They interprete the FED’s decision to raise the interest rate as a sign that the crisis is not over! They cannot understand that if it had been unable to increase the interest rate, it would have been that that would really indicate that the crisis was not over. Or they think that it is a mistake for us to keep targeting inflation while other countries are trying to overcome the depression. Without, of course, bothering to ask why we still have inflation rates around 7-8 percent while in those other countries there is a negative inflation rate.
People are free to put forth weak or wrong arguments, and they can even insist on them as much as they like. The further erosion of an already invalid approach is not a social loss. But if such dubious approaches are combined with other agendas, like for example the presidential system debate, then they also dilute and distort that debate, gradually forming an obstacle to change. Whoever wants to do, can argue, with any level of irresponsibility or ignorance, that interest rates can really be lowered by a deliberate, volitional decision in the present world. Whoever wants to, can keep believing, however superficially, that, in the same present world, a country that has yet to solve its problem of inflation can sustain stable growth without having the central bank targeting inflation. But really, no one should be entitled to “integrating” such approaches to the presidential system in order to produce “mishmash.”
Both interest rates and the central bank can of course be discussed within their own proper context. We can also maintain that the institutional setup of the economy is related to the system of governance system. But you cannot connect the current economic “strategy” with another probable governance system. Because that would imply that “the current strategy will change when a presidential system is adopted.” That, in other words, “there will be interventions, with the strategy being decided at the very top.” In that case, you would not be able to prevent a counter-argument that the presidential system might harm the economy’s democratic basis, thereby weakening the legitimacy of your own position.
The presidential system debate is something that has to be taken seriously. Trying to take the easy way out would be tantamount to self-deception.