The judiciary that decides the bus fare

"Upon the rejection of the lawsuit filed for the annulment of the fare hike that the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality put into effect at the start of the year, the appeal made to the Council of State was found justified. Fares on the affiliated EGO and private public buses and minibuses have gone back to six years ago. As of Monday, March 8, the full fare on buses is 90 kuruş, the student fare 60 kuruş, a short distance on minibuses 90 kuruş, and a long distance one lira."

This was, in my view, one of the most interesting events of last week, yet I do not think it was discussed as much as it deserved. The Council of State, evaluating a consumer rights association's objection to a bus fare hike, found the consumer right and decided to return to a practice of six years ago. Minibus and public bus operators received the news in utter astonishment. We are not even counting the mayor, who is the first-degree official responsible for transportation.

The drivers, who do their jobs amid a host of troubles even as things stand, are trying to understand where the blow came from. They are desperately trying to explain that the prices that have actually emerged from the Council of State decision make it impossible for them to carry on with their work.

Of course, one does not need to be a driver to guess that when you put side by side the diesel prices, staff wages and living conditions of six years ago and do the math, no sustainable way can be found. They are trying to guess in what world the judges who made this decision live.

That the Council of State, in the decisions that come before it on executive matters, generally takes an approach of putting the citizen before the state has in fact been only a Council of State Legend for some time now. Truly, up to the late nineties it could be said that the Council of State had such a custom in many cases. What happened, happened after 28 February, and the Council of State experienced an axis shift, particularly in all problems of students or teaching staff with YÖK, always finding YÖK right and working against the citizen. A new axis shift has evidently been experienced now that YÖK's president has changed and YÖK has acquired the citizen-first sensitivity that the Council of State should carry in normal times. This time YÖK thinks of the citizen while the Council of State hits the citizen. There is no doubt that the real determining motive behind these comings and goings of axis at the Council of State is ideological, but what kind of ideology could be hidden in the matter of the bus fare hike we still honestly have not been able to understand. Can hostility toward Melih Gökçek carry such an ideological load sufficiently?

When a court evaluating a consumer right takes a decision that may leave thousands of minibus and bus tradesmen unable to work, does it not bear a responsibility to look after their interests too? To be able to remain so far from such an assessment when even a simple evaluation would show that its decision will lead to complete chaos must be quite an achievement.

Much can of course be said about the disasters that the judiciary's unconcern with the matters it decides can cause upon this decision, but the question that should be asked long before that is by what feat the judiciary was able to step in on determining bus fares at all.

This is in fact a typical example of the uncertainty we have recently been living through regarding the sphere of authority of the high judiciary.

Truthfully, one side of this has to do with our people having embraced the paths of the court far too much as a way to power or profiteering. Baykal's attitude, announcing that he will take the package to the Constitutional Court without knowing what it will contain, expresses a more stereotyped form of it. The more one applies to the court, the more one gives the courts a chance to expand their own spheres of power against the nation. Perhaps one wins that case, but overall every problem the court appears to solve creates a new boundary and a new sphere of power in society.

Fine, the consumer filed a complaint, rightly or wrongly; what is this about the judiciary, on the basis of this complaint, identifying and assigning itself a mission such as setting prices?

Unfortunately our judges seem to have grown very fond of this business. They have thoroughly discovered every case that comes to them as a way of expanding their own sphere of power.

They evidently do not even care that this path is leading society to chaos. Why should they care; their decisions are final and beyond debate anyway, court decisions must be enforced, and they give their decisions in the name of the Turkish nation. There is no possibility of their being held accountable either.

Yet we must by hook or by crook ensure that no authority or institution remains that does not render account, and we must by all means include the high judiciary in this.