Is the CHP burning for a dictatorship it will lose?

If the President approves the Constitutional amendment package coming from the TBMM, the referendum we will be going to will be the 3rd referendum held within the last ten years. In the 15th year of the AK Parti in power alone, it is a referendum that will have been put to the direct vote of the people three times, and when approached in good faith it should in fact be read as an important indicator of the democratic level.

If democracy is the name of a regime in which the people's vote is represented in the most direct way, one of its most important indicators is also referendums.

The referendum is the feast of democracy, the stages in which democratic ideals turn into reality. As a matter of fact, solving the great majority of issues that cannot be brought to a resolution within the parliamentary system by taking them to a popular vote is the most effective way, the way that ends the problems and also brings the debate to a close.

In democracy, society grows quite weary of endless debates, chronic problems and states of deadlock that can never be decided.

The referendum is the best way to end these chronic problems.

However, the hidden centers of power, the holders of tutelage, the proprietors of the founding power, which are the source of the existing issues, have made the road to a referendum as difficult as possible.

In fact, even the fact that a referendum depends on the decision of three-fifths of parliament, and that this has to be repeated twice, are obstacles laid on this road.

Why were these obstacles put in place? Why was going to the people's vote made so difficult?

What does this mean other than an obvious fear of the people?

The obstacles on the road make having managed to bring any bill to a referendum a great success. Opening the way for the people, opening a space for the people's vote in the country's future is in itself a great success.

Which way the people will decide on this bill is not important at all at this stage. The people may say "yes," and they may say "no." Both possibilities are inherent in resorting to the people's vote, and whatever the decision, we will have arrived at a moment of "decision" in which the people's decision puts the full stop and brings the debate on a particular subject to a close.

Endless debate may suit left circles that have no responsibility whatsoever, but for those who have the responsibility of governing the country there is a "decision" that must be made in order to advance on the road, to widen and ease the road. Decision is the essence of politics. Those who have no decision, who cannot arrive at a decision, have no hope they can give in politics.

Turkey has been stuck, more than necessary, in the endless fields of debate that condemn problems to being unsolvable within the parliamentary system. Thanks to this resolve, we have left behind the days when many issues in Turkey, from the Kurdish problem to the headscarf problem, from the problem of secularism to the issue of freedom of religion and conscience, from the Cyprus problem to many other problems, were for us "issues going from eternity to eternity."

Even having decided on a referendum is a success big enough, in terms of opening the way for a decision the people will make on this matter, to be received with enthusiasm. Let us admit that such a success is one that has fallen to the lot of our esteemed President

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Özal, Erbakan, Erbakan and Demirel,

who had earlier intended to open the way for this decision, and even, according to some historical records,

Atatürk,

remained with their intentions and wishes that could not be realized on this point.

Despite this, I find it hard to decide where in this history we can write CHP Chairman Kılıçdaroğlu's words "the constitutional amendment is an imposition."

Was not the most important objection to the presidential system from the very beginning based on the ground that parliament would be weakened and that authority and power would be gathered in the President?

So where did this constitutional amendment proposal come from and who adopted it? Was it not the TBMM?

Does this objection not mean begrudging the current parliament a power and authority it is already exercising?

Evidently the CHP leader has no respect even for the authority exercised by the current parliament? In that case, whom can the CHP members convince that they are concerned about the standing of parliament after the constitutional amendment?

In fact, they showed sufficiently that they have not the slightest respect for the standing of Parliament by the "resistance," the "occupation of the rostrum" and their other fits of temper when the bill was passing through parliament. Those they resisted there were other members of parliament like themselves, and they showed them no respect whatsoever. With their own minority numbers, they continued to see the bill adopted by the parliamentary majority as an imposition.

What else was to happen? Should this nation have been subject to the view that their own minority numbers insisted on? Had it not in fact always been like this in practice?

Had the CHP not imposed its own philosophy on the people and nation of this country, although it never had a majority?

In this case, is not the only thing that grieves them that they will no longer be able to impose anything on this nation?

In this respect we see better that the criticisms that the Constitutional amendment will gather more authority in the President than necessary have no substance whatsoever.

In this country where 99 percent of the people are Muslim, was not the ban on the headscarf, one of the emblems of Muslims, enforced within this parliamentary order under the patronage of Presidents?

When the peoples of this country never fully reflected their will in government, when the greatest insults to this nation's beliefs, dreams, ideals and traditions were committed by the hand of the state, there was again a parliamentary regime in this country. Could there be a greater dictatorship than this?

Let no one worry.

From a president who will come to power with the absolute majority of the people's votes in this country, there will never emerge a dictator like those who emerged in the parliamentary period

. Because one who comes to government by taking into account the dreams, hopes, values and expectations of at least half of this country will himself be the one who has carried the nation to power. And there will be no need for anyone to fear him. The rest is idle chatter.