The constitutional amendment and leadership

The constitutional amendment proposal, which will bring the most radical change to Turkey's system of government so far, will begin to be debated in the General Assembly of the Turkish Grand National Assembly today. Throughout these deliberations, which under the Constitution will be held in two rounds and are expected to extend over some 15-20 days, we as a nation will feel together, and live together, the reality that making a constitution is a nation's business.

After all, a constitution is a social contract, and for this contract to be fully felt, it is very important to ensure the greatest possible participation of the people.

Unfortunately, Turkey's constitutional history is one that is foreign to the experience of constitutions made in keeping with the spirit of a "contract."

As contracts, constitutions have generally been put before the people after coups and have served like promissory notes signed after people were persuaded, as it were, at gunpoint or through the tricks of psychological warfare.

For that reason, from the moment the coercion eased a little or the trick was noticed, the consciousness rising about the invalidity of these notes turned after a while into a psychological complex of its own.

For 35 years we have been arguing endlessly about what befell us in 1982, and trying to overcome the complex produced in society by having been compelled to give 92 percent of the vote to such a coup constitution. But it is precisely here that the complex part of the matter makes itself felt. Facing every effort to overcome it, we meet unexpected opponents and resistances, which make the matter even more complex.

One of the most striking examples of this complex matter, for instance, was that the fiercest opposition to the constitutional amendment, which included bringing 12 September and its legacy to account, came from the first-degree victims of 12 September. Certain leftist circles that curse 12 September day and night, once the AK Parti took on the political burden of such a reckoning, almost

threw the tantrum "we will take our own revenge ourselves; was it your place to settle accounts with 12 September?"

and, not content with that, opposed the process in a way that made that reckoning impossible for good.

The constitutional amendment proposal on our agenda is a proposal exclusively about the system of government, and of course not a proposal for an entirely new constitution. Because in the end it was formed with the consensus of two parties. As it stands, that is, the experience of two parties coming together and being able to work together on a text suited to the people's expectations is in itself a gain for the level of Turkey's democracy.

If only common ground could be formed or increased with the other parties too, or a culture of working together could be formed on the common ground that exists. Indeed, everyone should bear a minimum responsibility for developing areas of sensitivity on matters such as opposing coups, terror and external interference, being on the side of democracy, and the survival and benefit of the country.

Unfortunately, if this is absent, one party cannot instill this responsibility in the members of another party. The parties need to evaluate these responsibilities within themselves.

It is the primary responsibility of every party to assess which country's political party it is, which nation it is a part of, and how much its politics looks after the interest of that nation. Indeed, although the textual content of the deputy's oath has a host of problems, its ultimate meaning and substance is precisely this.

All the content of the new presidential system has emerged.

The greatest gain of this system is that the political body integrity of the country will be secured and that harmony and coordination among the organs of this political body will be realized far more strongly. The practical result of this will be the elimination of uncertainty in government and of risks to stability.

Indeed, under AK Parti single-party rule Turkey has so far achieved the stability and certainty part of the job without mishap.

But this has been so largely because of the exceptional acceptance the AK Parti leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan enjoys among the people.

Indeed,

Erdoğan's

persistence as such a leader through so many elections sufficiently shows what the people mean. At the result of every election, the people want a leader who has never deceived them, whom they do not see as separate from themselves, with his stance, resolve, loyalty and humanity, but also with his successful governance, to remain at the helm.

For 15 years the people have extended Erdoğan a credit they have never given any leader before, and implicit in this authorization is also a description of a system of government.

Over 12 elections the people did not merely choose Erdoğan; in choosing Erdoğan they also said, in the clearest and most comprehensible way, what they want on many matters.

Let those who still do not understand this go on floundering in their own ideological obsessions.

A leader who represents and realizes the body integrity of society is the strongest social capital for a society.

Even though there was no presidential system, or a Presidency system in the form now on the agenda, this leader brought the country to this level in this time.

When we think independently of Erdoğan's person as well,

this type of leader does not emerge sufficiently within the parliamentary system, and for that reason Turkey can never put forth a consistent stance and politics in which the state is consistent with its nation and its other organs in body integrity.

If we also read Turkey's century-long political history from this angle, we would encounter hundreds of examples confirming this statement.

To those who say that the proposed presidential system will lead to a kind of unity of powers and will therefore over-strengthen the executive and weaken the parliament, I content myself with first proposing that they confront the question of which "separation of powers" principle the current situation actually realizes.

Is today's system, purely by the nature of the existing parliamentary system, not a system in which legislature and executive are in fact one?

On the contrary, in the presidential system legislature and executive will be completely separated from each other, and the Assembly will concentrate far more on its essential role, that is, its legislative and oversight role.

We have a long process ahead, which we hope will be completed; we shall go on debating the proposal further.