Reaching consensus in democratization

Consensus has probably become an overrated concept in politics. What lies in the nature of politics is not consensus or reconciliation but debate and conflict. Politics envisages holders of conflicting interests debating one another within a framework whose rules are legitimate and set in advance. Hence the idea that consensus is a prerequisite for any step to be taken tacitly reflects a longing for an authoritarianism that would end all debate and cut and dry the final decision. Today, well-intentioned efforts that put forward consensus as an object of longing often, at best, end up recognizing this claim of authority and handing over a share of power to this imagined (sometimes actually functioning) authority. Yet this authoritarianism is not a legitimate right.

Moreover, the more one concedes consensus as a requirement in politics, the more likely it is that one lends legitimacy to the dictatorships of small minorities who will never join a possible consensus, taking advantage of the situation. Although it is very hard to find a consensus on the scale of a law approved by 411 members of parliament, the absence of a remaining minority from that consensus can prove decisive, and the stance of this minority group is unjustly sanctified. Moreover, what this minority group objected to in the amendments to Articles 10 and 42 of the Constitution is not that some people would gain an extra right but, on the contrary, perhaps only their freedom and equality. That is, matters that should have been conceded and guaranteed from the outset without anyone needing to be asked.

Perhaps expecting political actors to agree on many issues is not in keeping with the nature of politics, but expecting those whose reason for being is democracy to agree at least on democratization is contrary neither to the nature of politics nor to that of democracy. On the contrary, this consensus is a condition that democratic politics particularly must meet.

The Abant Platform is holding its 20th Meeting in Ankara under the title "Democratization for a New Social Consensus." The platform, which until now has met in many places outside Abant, has lately been seen to take extra care to convene in a place suited to the subject it opens for discussion. In this respect, choosing to discuss a democratic consensus in Ankara is in itself a sufficiently meaningful choice. It is necessary to remind Ankara, where state politics has been locked under the pressure of the concept of consensus, of the ethical and ontological conditions of consensus, and thus to activate the legitimate channels through which politics can flow.

On the first day of the meeting, extremely illuminating discussions took place over the presentations that Osman Can, Levent Köker, Tanel Demirel, Ferhat Kentel, Ali Yaşar Sarıbay and Arus Yumul gave in two separate sessions on the structural requirements and cultural foundations of democratization. On this ground, it is understood that democratization has been very widely embraced as a matter of consensus.

In the opening part of the meeting, the model that Saadet Partisi Chairman Numan Kurtulmuş proposed for the formation of a constituent assembly on a new constitution or constitutional amendment was a contribution truly worth discussing. Kurtulmuş proposed that one hundred people, to be elected again by the people under a narrow-district system, be authorized to make a constitution. Osman Can had made a similar proposal earlier. The difference between this kind of "Constituent Assembly" concept and the "assembly in the shadow of the gun barrel" we are used to is that it is formed without interrupting democracy, that is, again by a democratic route, and does not require a military coup. Of course, a constitutional amendment is needed to bring it about.

The proposal is worth discussing, but it is hard to understand Kurtulmuş putting it forward as a condition for supporting any constitutional amendment proposal. Insisting on a wholesale constitutional change or a radical proposal can sometimes serve no purpose other than blocking the possible, necessary changes. Of course such proposals should be welcomed for pointing to a horizon for a more perfect politics, but when the present difficulty of realizing a narrower-scope change is right there, it must also be said that voicing the harder one to the extent of making the possible meaningless is not based on sound political reason. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

The constitution we have today is an extremely bad one, a constitution whose basic priority is to protect and watch over the order established by the coup makers.

Even if we cannot change all of it, there is no sense in holding back from changing its parts that most pierce society, freedoms and rights. That is why constitutional amendments are by no means insignificant and ineffective. Amending, in particular, the provisions concerning the high judiciary so as to remove the most important obstacles in the way of more effective and wider-ranging changes is by no means a small step, and obstructing this step in the name of more distant steps is not politics.