When the action is flawed and directly targets a person

The summoning of MİT members to testify by the Istanbul Prosecutor's Office handling the KCK case, and even its subsequent issuing of an arrest warrant, has created an extraordinary situation in our political life. That this extraordinary situation is possible, and that it cannot be remedied at once, stems from the fact that the "special authority" held by the courts in question can also constitute a "special power." We are perhaps facing an ideal application of the principle of separation of powers. The judiciary operates so autonomously, according to its own rules and its own internal causality, that one is led to say this is too much. Because beyond a certain point it moves into the field of politics like a bull into a china shop.

We of course cannot take lightly what we call "the field of politics"; it is society itself, society's will to organize its own sphere of life with reason and conscience and according to certain rules. Law is not entirely independent of this field either. When it acts purely with its own mechanisms, it does not consider itself obliged to bear the trouble of evaluating the consequences. Yet it justifies everything it does by acting "in the name of the nation."

The history of our democracy is full of countless examples of the rule of law being understood and applied as the "rule of the jurist." In more recent times we have lived through many crises in which jurists were the actors. In the way jurists used their areas of authority in these crises, even if at times deep conspiracies were assumed in the background, at other times, with no actual conspiracy at all, there was nothing but the jurist's mental world.

Nuh Mete Yüksel, formerly Chief Prosecutor of the Ankara State Security Court, recently published in a book titled "Nuh'un Gemisi" (Noah's Ark) his memoirs about the investigations he conducted. When I listened to what he told Belkıs Kılıçkaya, on whose Habertürk TV show he appeared to promote the book, you see how naive the jurist's mentality can become, and how dangerous it becomes the more naive it gets. The title he chose for his book should be enough to express this naivety. Just look: he thought that he had put on "Noah's Ark" all the people whose lives he darkened with his investigations. So much so that even today, after all that has happened, he has not been seized by the slightest doubt about his belief that everything he did was necessary.

We also know that jurists in Turkey have for some time been doing much better. The law's bond with the nation has improved considerably, especially with the constitutional amendments of the last referendum. Serious distances have been covered toward the real realization of the independence and supremacy of law. But this does not mean that all problems regarding the law have been solved.

There is no very simple way out of the problem here. On one side of the problem there is, of course, a terror problem that continues and that, since it began, nobody has had the power to stop. We have almost reached a social consensus that we cannot solve this problem by dying and killing. That is why the Oslo talks between MİT representatives and PKK representatives, contrary to the aim of those who leaked them, were not met with great outrage. On the contrary, an extremely broad field of credit has been opened in society for every kind of initiative that will end violence.

By contrast, it has also almost become the routine of this affair that against every will that sets out to solve this problem, an obstructing move is set in motion each time. As soon as a will to solve this problem emerges, it becomes a matter of moments before we face a provocation that will deepen the problem further.

In fact, while looking at where this process too would be undermined, what was interesting was that this time the first sabotage was carried out by the PKK against Abdullah Öcalan himself. Öcalan, who in July was giving messages toward ending the war, was officially sidelined as a result of the PKK's inexplicable attacks. From this it became clear that the authority granted to Öcalan is an authority valid only to the extent that he continues the war. It became clear that he has no authority to decide on peace, and when he happened to make an attempt in that direction, he was sidelined at once.

On the Turkish side, we see that serial steps have been taken to disrupt the will displayed toward ending the climate of conflict and solving the problem. Starting from the Reşadiye attack, through the Silvan attack, then the leaking of the Oslo meeting and up to the Uludere attacks, you will see that all these moves serve the same purpose and target the government's peaceful orientation in the person of Hakan Fidan.

There is also a dimension of the affair related to the nature of MİT. Frankly, Hakan Fidan's having been brought to the head of MİT will of course not suffice to absolve the institution's entire dubious record of the past. While so many coups or coup attempts were taking place in the country, while the country was being turned into a lake of blood during all these attempts, MİT is an institution that, alongside everyone, from politicians to soldiers, from police to academics, who are being tried today for their roles in the events, has had the greatest role in this kind of business.

While all these events were taking place, did MİT merely watch? Or did it take part in the planning and execution of all these events? We still do not know exactly what MİT's role and knowledge were in these, but everyone knows that MİT knows far more than anyone. Of course, it is unthinkable for MİT to be exempt from the judiciary and accountability in this process of cleansing.

It seems that the greatest resistance to Fidan's taking over MİT came from within MİT itself. Probably all these documents that make Fidan the target of criticism are also leaking from inside the institution in order to put him in a difficult position. Because Fidan, as a concept, is in a reform approach that tries to shift MİT toward the field of foreign intelligence rather than domestic intelligence, and this disturbs many people at MİT. Moreover, Fidan is in an approach that tries to bring MİT within the limits of the laws, and he is being tried to be struck precisely at that point.

In an environment where it is said that everyone can be tried, there is of course no need to demand an exemption for the MİT director or officials either. However, this move is quite flawed and directly aimed at the person.