Turkey's body politics and the presidency

It may sound a little strange, but how human beings throughout history managed to come together and form units such as the community, tribe, society, nation or state is still an unsolved mystery for sociologists. Thomas Hobbes, who determined that "men are wolves to one another," has been the subject of much criticism for the gloom he voiced from time to time, yet he is one of those whom those leaning toward more realistic approaches return to again and again, and to whom they are compelled to give his due.

The pessimism he put forward does indeed come across as gloom, and the normative political principle suggested by his findings is a Leviathan-style state authoritarianism that settles debates from above and ends chaos with an iron fist.

In today's societies, where democracy is a great value, a sociological finding that would open the doors to this proposal is naturally questioned, and going back to the beginning, the validity of all its data is canceled. But as one opens up to chaotic environments, Hobbes too is remembered, and the nature of the chaotic pre-societal condition is recalled, and how human beings managed to become a society is again thought over, with astonishment.

Is there an integrating principle, apart from coercive force, that will found society?

Max Weber's answer for this founding principle is somewhat different but, let us admit, concerns the post-societal situation, indeed the state and authority.

The area he concentrates on is leadership and legitimacy.

Legitimacy is the fundamental principle that makes the validity and workability of an authority, a leadership or a state possible, and it is secured in three ways:

The rational, the traditional and the charismatic way.

Although Weber said that the validity of these ways is also somewhat tied to historical periods, today we can witness that all of these ways continue to hold validity at different levels. That is, neither has the time of charismatic authority or legitimacy ended, nor has rational authority anywhere in the world come to prevail so completely that there is no going back again.

Even in environments thought to be the most rational, where institutions perform all their functions, there can be a return to extremely archaic decisions or policies, and the charismatic element can be very decisive in politics.

Society, for its part, by its nature never consists of a homogeneous structure.

Economic differences, ethnic and religious diversities can always be sources of conflicts and tensions within society. The desire to be able to form a unity out of this diversity, to be able to form a nation out of society, is the most fundamental desire of all states. Managing differences and removing the tensions that this difference can produce, bringing social differences to an organic functional division of labor and unity, requires a strong body politics.

The aim of ensuring the integrity of the political body, or of being able to form a societal unity, is the most fundamental body politics of all state structures.

The Ottomans, with the millet system, were able to sustain a huge empire as one great political body in the healthiest manner for centuries. While keeping together countless differences, they were able to establish a meaningful unity of the nation in which each difference could regard itself as a functional organ of a political body. That body had been made possible by a conception and system of the nation defined and sustained on the basis of a strong "justice and respect for differences."

The Sublime Porte, the Ottoman state, constituted the head of that organic diversity and division of labor.

As a result of the World War that took place 100 years ago, that great body was shattered. Efforts were made to produce another nation-body from each of the organs that formed that body. Yet none of these political bodies took anything from the body politics of the Ottomans, of whom they had been a part for years, in regard to the differences within their own purview. On the contrary, especially in the process of nation-building, all of them asserted their existence by moving away from the Ottoman style of body politics. Thus, while a complete organic unrelatedness and disconnection was experienced between the states established in these places and the people, control was achieved by making the differences within society enemies of one another.

The situation was no different in the Republic of Turkey, established as the remnant of the Ottoman political body. Turkey, moving as far away as possible from the Ottoman definition of the nation (political body), pursued a body politics by denying or disregarding differences and melting everyone in a newly created national identity.

The denial of differences naturally brought with it the disregard of the principle of justice from the outset.

Anatolia was now a closed and closed-off field, ruled by one man, in which a single party shaped the whole country with its own identity and ideology.

Economic stratification aside, the new political-social body formed by the suppression of ethnic (especially the Kurdish element) and religious diversity (especially Sunni piety and Alevi identity) under a secularist ideological identity lacked a strong binding agent. When the transition to the parliamentary system was made in this form in particular, it was seen that this forcibly established social unity was exposed to a serious threat in every difficult process. Coalition governments always sounded the alarm with strong warnings about the inadequacy of this binding agent.

Let us not forget that the AK Parti's single-party rule, now in its 14th year, constitutes an exception that cannot always be experienced against the drawbacks that the parliamentary system can produce.

Turkey needs more in order to ensure the integrity of its social body and the health of this body. Turkey needs to integrate as a nation that recognizes and respects all differences and establishes the relations among them on the basis of the principle of justice.

Securing this bodily integrity is possible, first of all, with a strong head.

The presidential system will be precisely the most important stage of the process that will compensate for the dispersion of will and decision and establish the integrity of the social body.