Baykal loves Kenan Evren

This is not the concluding sentence of a fortune-telling. It is the open and clear picture that has emerged in the latest state of affairs on the constitutional amendment.

Not many, only a few months ago, Baykal proposed to the government to remove provisional Article 15 of the constitution, thereby making the arrangement that would allow the prosecution of those who carried out the 12 September coup. He has already declared that he will reject, without even seeing its content, a constitutional amendment proposal that includes the removal of Article 15, and that he will take to the constitutional court every arrangement that is to be made, without looking at whether it carries a possibility of unconstitutionality. But let us give credit where due: the CHP members also said that if Article 15 were removed from the 23-article amendment proposal and brought separately, they could support it.

The removal of Article 15 means lifting the obstacle to the prosecution of those who carried out 12 September. Was Baykal saying this earlier? Frankly we do not remember at all, but probably, supposing that the ruling party would not dare do this, he announced such a proposal some time ago in an air of challenge. At midnight the AK Parti, with a law passed in the parliament that soldiers could be tried in civilian courts, not only responded positively to Baykal's call but in fact gave more. When it passed through the Assembly a law making it possible to try not only those who carried out 12 September but also all those who might in any way attempt a coup from now on, the CHP members headed for the Constitutional Court with a request for its annulment. That they asked for the annulment of this law although they had proposed the removal of Article 15 amounted to saying this: carrying out a coup is every soldier's most natural right. If we are going to try it, let us try it 30 years later. Now let us look at the case of thirty years ago.

Do the CHP and Baykal really want Article 15 removed? In fact we can guess that the government's separating that article from the package and bringing it separately to the assembly would leave the CHP members in considerable difficulty. Because Baykal's wanting the removal of Article 15 is evidently nothing but a bluff. Otherwise, while demanding the prosecution of the 12 September coup-makers by asking for the removal of Article 15, forming a kind of shield of immunity for the constitution, the greatest swindle the 12 September people pulled on this society, are not reconcilable behaviors. If you tried to prosecute the 12 September people for the coup they carried out today, or for the climate of torture and repression they caused during it, all of them could run up against the statute of limitations. But the constitution, which has not been time-barred and still stands like a dagger plunged into the bosom of society, exerts all its effect. If you are going to prosecute, you must first of all prosecute for condemning this country to such a constitution.

And for God's sake, by what handle will you prosecute the 12 September people? Will you have retired generals, the youngest of whom is now 92, tried and thrown in prison? When no formula has been found to keep coup-makers still in their sixties in Silivri, will you develop a more original prison model for Kenan Evren?

Is the removal of Article 15 the only counterpart in the constitution of settling accounts with 12 September? Today, within the scope of the constitutional amendment, the high judiciary is the most solid institution that established the 12 September order and made it permanent, and while on the one hand proposing to prosecute the 12 September people, Baykal on the other hand stands by the present state of the high judiciary as the most solid institution they established. He sanctifies and salutes this judicial system, far behind the world's legal standards in every respect, as the most solid and untouchable institution of the republic.

Never mind his inviting prosecution. He knows very well that he owes, if not its existence, then its present power in large measure to the order they established. It is of course no coincidence that the high judiciary and the CHP are conducting political opposition with the same mouth. Baykal sees the high judiciary, with its Court of Cassation, its Council of State, its Constitutional Court, its HSYK, as his own "backyard," and knows very well that the 12 September people allotted this garden to him and that the constitution, in this form, continues to water and feed this garden constantly.

12 September is Baykal's benefactor. Baykal is trying not to show it, but it is evident from his every move: he loves Kenan Evren and the 12 September people very much.