There may be good in what we think evil

Of course it is not always so. What we take to be evil is sometimes truly entirely evil, and what we take to be good can be entirely good. However, more often than not we see that what we have lived through as an evil has taken us to a good place.

The complicated situation that emerged after detainees were elected deputies has brought us, both on the constitution and in terms of our general social peace, to a point that does not look very auspicious. Just look: probably the highest-turnout election in our democratic history (87.5 percent) took place, from this election a parliament with perhaps the broadest representative power in our democratic history (95.5 percent) was formed, and the taboos over the Kurdish question and politics disappeared one by one. In contrast, before two weeks had passed since the election, all the morale provided by the parliament with this representative power has begun to be spoiled by successive court rulings. An environment has arisen that everyone would take to be evil. Is there a way to attribute this too to good? Let us see.

The YSK, the new tutelary actor that these elections have put before us or made itself felt through, is without doubt the first-degree party responsible for our having come to this point. For now the YSK is on the agenda only because of its decision regarding Hatip Dicle, yet it took far graver decisions than the Dicle decision quietly and without fuss during this election process. From the voting rights of our citizens abroad to the reduction of provinces' numbers of deputies, the sum of the decisions taken caused at least 30 deputies to pass unjustly from the AK Parti to the others. The fine workmanship in the way the procedures were carried out does not even bring to anyone's mind justice in representation or the "stolen deputies" problem as in the others. In contrast, everyone can say that the YSK, which annulled Dicle's candidacy, worked for the AK Parti and gained it one more deputy. Is there anyone still who does not see that even a contribution of this kind is only harm for the AK Parti?

Yet the only destination that all the YSK's actions in this election process have reached has been to make the parliamentary environment unfavorable for a new constitution. Despite the 50 percent of the vote it received, through desk-top arrangements the AK Parti was prevented from taking the initiative on the constitution alone. Now, by destroying the compromise and political options before it as well, an attempt is being made to wipe out the ground for a new constitution. For this, all three parties other than the AK Parti, by placing detained candidates on their own lists, have made their own contribution to spoiling this ground today.

In the end, as we said before, everyone other than the AK Parti had worked long in advance for the sowing of this crisis that has been born into our hands. Now there is a crisis born into our hands, and there is no longer any point in asking who gave birth to it. Those responsible for the crisis will in any case eventually render account to the people. After a crisis is born, the responsibility for its solution belongs to the government rather than to those who gave birth to it. Truly, whether it likes it or not, what falls to the AK Parti is to try to solve this crisis. The prime minister's instructing his jurists, after receiving information on the legal dimensions of the crisis, to amend the relevant articles as a way out, and then reiterating his insistence on a new constitution, takes place precisely on this ground.

This is the good side of the matter. A crisis that looks like an evil also opens the doors to great opportunities. Earlier we lived through a number of crises centered on the Constitutional Court, the HSYK, the military judiciary, the YÖK. Every crisis lived through enabled all these tutelary institutions to be taken up and drawn onto a more democratic line. It seems our tutelary institutions, when their turn comes, play the leading role in a crisis in order to be reformed. Now it is as though the YSK has lined up. This is the way democratization works in Turkey.

The crisis stones that were probably laid so that no constitution would be made have now begun to form the ground on which all parties can reach agreement. For, on the one hand, even those who gave birth to this crisis are not in a position to want the crisis to continue unresolved, and, on the other hand, as Murat Belge said in his article yesterday, even the CHP, which has carried to parliament those being tried for disregarding the national will, is obliged to emphasize the "national will" in order to bring the deputies it had elected into parliament. Truly this too is no small gain. Is the strengthening of the national-will discourse a bad thing?

Of course not bad. But in doing so, unfortunately, there is also a possibility of spoiling the whole thing. By nominating Ergenekon detainees and getting them elected, they are using to the full the opportunity they have seized for the strategy of diluting the "national will." They have quickly accustomed our ears to a discourse that if the nation has elected, then almost even the murderer, the rapist and the coup-maker must be let go and taken into the Assembly without being tried at all. They are bringing it to the point of saying that the mandate the nation gives for representation will suddenly also acquit the crimes attributed to a person.

Of course, the will of the people, which is the foundation of both legislation and the judiciary, can decide on someone's innocence, can it? Then what need is there for such lengthy trials? Let us ask the people directly, guilty and innocent alike; we would have found a very practical way. Is it necessary to recall why even in the most advanced democracies matters concerning basic rights and freedoms cannot be put to the people? This is, of course, a longer subject, not something to be entered into while finishing a column.