The Constitutional Court must step aside

The technical surveillance applied to Seyfi Oktay, one of the former justice ministers, has laid bare as plain as day a network of relations that has long been on everyone's lips but that no one has even dared to utter. In an environment where the legal system leaves itself so wide open, where it can take strange decisions while legal texts stand in plain view, where a series of unsolved murders cannot be cleared up despite all the available technical and institutional equipment, and where judges sign decisions that defy reason, there was no way of explanation other than to think that the judges were not acting with their reason and conscience.

It seems that what the technical surveillance caught was precisely those judges' consciences. It was frankly not easy to think that the judges in the trial of Hrant Dink, who interpreted as "insulting Turkishness" a text that anyone with the most basic knowledge of Turkish could understand otherwise, despite the opposing opinions of expert witnesses who were professors of Turkish, were acting on their own.

As a result of the technical surveillance it has also been seen that the terrifying practices which appear to ordinary people more and more as the "supremacy of judges" rather than the supremacy of law were in fact not even the supremacy of judges, but merely the supremacy of a network built upon the appointment and selection of judges.

A structure that perceives the "high judiciary" as "our only remaining fortress" evidently regards itself, within the parenthesis of "we," as superior and privileged compared with the rest of the country, with certain special people, and regards the other people of the country, who are expected to be approached with justice as the requirement of their profession, as "foreigners." The source of the "statist, Kemalist" ideology that determines the mental world of the high judiciary, as revealed in a study by Mithat Sancar, also takes concrete form somewhere here. This mentality, which regards itself as more competent and superior to govern by virtue of its affiliation to the Kemalist ideology, while on one hand building the system that appoints judges who will give whatever result it wants to whatever case it wants, sees no harm on the other hand in also appointing judges who will launder and acquit drug barons who are of their own. So long as the drug baron is "one of us," the oath of loyalty sworn in the name of Kemalism covers all faults anyway.

The establishment of this system was in fact possible only through the relations built with the members of the HSYK. This shows how urgent a need the constitutional amendment, on the Constitutional Court's agenda, providing for a change in the structure of the HSYK, is. The web of dirty relations laid out has proven that the criticism that the HSYK in its present form constitutes a closed caste system was not mere dry criticism. The danger of the judiciary being held captive by such a caste is not something that "may be"; this situation "has in fact come about."

In the cases that are currently continuing, the appointment of judges who can pick a court and give the desired result can be done as audaciously as possible in front of the whole society. That the media is broadcasting everything live, criticisms, the emergence of blatant intentions, in no way prevents this immoderate use of influence over the courts. The judges of the Ergenekon case are being sought to be replaced while everyone is looking on. With this, in fact, a series of murders and intrigues in Turkey that can no longer be covered up are being sought to be covered up. The loopholes that the gaps in the constitution provide them bring this reckless audacity along with them, but however many such gaps the laws allow, the use of powers in this way like an "absolutist property" is also a matter of culture.

With this distortion laid out, it is no longer possible to expect justice from this judiciary. We are speaking of a justice system in which, because of the results it has long produced, those who have business with the high judiciary in particular say "don't hire a good lawyer, hire a good judge." It is inevitable that the latest events have revealed a tremendous distrust of the nature of this system. The loss of trust in justice is among the greatest disasters that can befall a society. That justice is the foundation of dominion is not a saying uttered casually. If the legal system produces this corruption in place of justice, there will be neither dominion nor state in a country…

The HSYK arrangement is indisputably a far more hopeful arrangement for establishing justice, because it brings a system in which more objective criteria will prevail in the selection of judges, preventing precisely this arbitrary selection of judges. Its being blocked by the AYM's, again arbitrary, intervention, although this arrangement is not within its authority, will mean that the constitutional court assumes sole responsibility for all the judicial corruption that has been experienced in the country up to now and will be experienced from now on.

We would like to remind the AYM, which has been considerably worn down by its choices so far, that this time its responsibility is far heavier. Though the responsibility is heavy, what it needs to do is extremely simple and easy: to step aside. This will secure the restoration both of its own dignity and of the dignity of justice in Turkey.