The right to withhold for 15 days and the "rule of arbitrariness"

The President did what was expected of him. He treated the 15-day review period granted to him by law as a "right to delay for 15 days" and utilized this right until its very last day.

In fact, the 15-day period is granted for necessary examination under potential circumstances. Everyone knows that the President did not need 15 days to exercise his discretion in this direction. In all probability, he viewed waiting 15 days to announce this decision, which he had made from the outset, as a right, and used this right to the final day. He knows very well that using this period would not make the government's work easier, but rather complicate it.

It is a situation that everyone has witnessed and by now taken for granted: throughout his term of office, Mr. Sezer conducted all his relations with the government single-handedly like an opposition party.

He saw no need for any legal flaw to exist in a bill coming from the government in order to veto it. He considered it almost sufficient for the CHP to have opposed that bill in some way. Beyond that, it was merely a matter of fitting a pretext to the outcome.

The President, who did not hesitate to openly turn the twisting and bending of the law in any desired direction into a routine path—reducing it to a "nothingness" that allows for all kinds of extreme interpretations—being of legal background formed a distinct dimension of the incident that dealt the deepest blow to the sense of justice.

The legally trained President's most significant contribution to the legal system in Turkey has been recorded as the "rule of arbitrariness."

Arbitrariness in law is a condition where rules are applied "ad hoc" once and according to the person involved. Western sociologists, such as Max Weber, when claiming that Ottoman law was dominated by a typology of "kadı-justice characterized by arbitrariness," are generally accused of being orientalist due to these perspectives. Whether there was truly the kind of "arbitrariness" in the Ottoman Empire that Western sociologists criticized is a separate debate, but the arbitrariness to which the law is subjected today is our bitter reality.

The law, YÖK (the Council of Higher Education), the armed forces, and the Presidency are perceived as properties that whoever captures them can use to the fullest extent with all their means, rights, and powers.

This authority is questioned only when political power, the national will, is being exercised. It is said that "the national will is not everything." How strange it is to oppose the national will's claim to be everything in a place where it has no standing whatsoever to begin with!

Recall the President's veto justification regarding the arrangement in the recent constitutional package concerning the election of the President by the people. It is argued that because a president drawing power from the people would hold too much political power, popular sovereignty would be damaged.

Good heavens!.. What will someone who does not know the issue and hears it for the first time assume now? Will they assume how modest the current presidential powers or the current president's exercise of authority are? Or that governments have virtually established dictatorships because they derive their power from the people? What will they assume?

Or does the current President actually find the powers he possesses in their present form insufficient? May God protect us from worse, but will a president who comes to office through popular election truly be worse than this?

The President, who questions the legitimacy of the decisions of a parliament serving out its legal term, does not hesitate to sign decisions that will shape Turkey's destiny during his extended term of office, which is far more controversial due to the ambiguous text of the Constitution.

Which appointment, veto, or action made by Mr. Sezer—who was not elected by the people—could he explain to the public and receive the approval of a reasonable segment of the population?

Undoubtedly, a political authority accountable to the people would never dare to exercise such boundless, irresponsible, and arbitrary power. The fears mentioned are absurd fears that treat the public as fools.

Let no one doubt it. A president elected by the people will never possess an arbitrary power as absolute as today's. Knowing that one will ultimately face the arbitration of the public and be held accountable renders power somewhat more modest. The President has staged the maximum opposition he could against going to the people. Taking the package to a referendum for now and immediately applying to the Constitutional Court for its annulment was the highest point of this opposition. Beyond this point, if it does not get stuck in Court, it is up to the people. May it be beneficial.