Reformism as a style of politics

What does it mean that the Chairman of the AK Parti, the President, a party that has been in power for 18 years, governing the country and having signed countless changes and reforms while governing, is speaking today of a new reform period? Does it mean that what needed to be done until now was neglected, that it has been realized that what was done was wrong and that a need has arisen to retreat from it, or is it a continuation of constant reform policies?

Without doubt, an 18-year term in power is a period that can be considered exceptional among the world's democratic governments. There is no party in Europe that has stayed in power by renewing the people's trust five times in a row, and even largely increasing that trust. Let us admit that this is of course due as much to the AK Parti's success as to the absence of an opposition that would challenge it. But the chronic problems of the country, accumulated by the governments before the AK Parti, were so numerous that the reform politics it adopted for solving them has in itself turned into a fuel sufficient to keep the AK Parti in power.

Reformism has always found before it an established order, a status quo, even resistance from those in power. In the face of this resistance, even in the periods when it was governing, the AK Parti worked as the opposition in power. The interesting side of the matter is that the resistance displayed by the main opposition against the government's reform discourse worked like a conservative reflex of those in power. And this, as we have said many times before, means that the AK Parti, like an "opposition in power," has always continued to ensure its more organic relationship with the people.

To overcome Turkey's century-old chronic problems, radical reforms had to be made. Over time, despite the strong resistance in front of it, many of them were made, accompanied by struggles against deep state games and hidden tutelages of power. The reforms made in a short span, especially in the fields of the judiciary and public administration, deserved to be treated under the heading "silent revolution." In 2011 a book gathering these reforms was published under this title.

However, it emerged that some of the loopholes in the highly advanced democratization and legal reforms made at that time were exploited more by FETÖ, which had an extremely insidious organized structure. With an approach that, starting from 2012, sought to all but defile this process of democratization and reform, it led to a transition to a state of emergency period in Turkey. A significant part of the reforms either became defunct because of this series of coup attempts, or the ground of the reform environment was thereby eroded more strongly.

Without doubt it is always useful to remember what FETÖ did in order to understand what kind of sabotage the politics of reform was subjected to. But their unprecedented sabotage at that time could not be regarded as an excuse for giving up reform policies. And it is not regarded so. It is quite clear that they made Turkey lose a long time. Today, in fact, they have taken on the lead in propagandizing all the criticisms directed at Turkey concerning democratization, human rights or freedom of expression. Yet the most important cause of the state of emergency into which Turkey fell on the way from 7 February to 15 July, and which it then rightly applied as a policy, was they themselves.

Be that as it may. For the AK Parti, reform politics was not a single step undertaken once and for all time. It was a style of politics. Sometimes reform can also be a need born of problems that arise within a government's own practice. A period of 18 years is a period in which a government's practice can see that it must make some changes and updates. What matters is being able to see this need, being able to reflect on oneself, being able to see the shortcomings of the system or of oneself.

It must be said that those who have fallen into dreams like a "renewed solution process" from this reform package have, at best, if they are not ill-intentioned, understood nothing of the process we have lived through. And we must say that trying to extract a new and strong premium from this for "Kurdish issue" discourses once again constitutes a separate political opportunism.

In Turkey the Kurdish issue has no fixed existence or definition. Turkey is neither at the place it was in 2002 on the Kurdish matter, nor at the point it was in 2016. Regarding the Kurdish issue that emerged with the denial of the Kurds and the bans on Kurdish or Kurdish identity, the AK Parti has brought it to a solution with the reforms it has made, the policies it has pursued, and its humane and philosophical approach.

It also had the opportunity to show the whole world that the greatest resistance to all the steps it took toward solving the Kurdish issue was displayed by the PKK or the HDP themselves, by clinging more tightly to terror. For the AK Parti the Kurds are not a problem of Turkey but its possibility, its inseparable part, with their identity, language, culture and people. As for those who try to carve out a field of power for themselves from this problem, whether by resorting to terror or by ignoring this violence and dismissing the matter as talk, they are a truly serious problem.

And this problem, it must now be said openly, is not the Kurdish issue but an altogether different problem. We will continue both to talk about that problem more and to try to deal with it.