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The direction of the Third Republic

The question of what the direction of the third republic should be lies in the defects and mistakes of the second republic. Therefore, we have a ready guide and compass. A similar situation was experienced at the emergence of the second republic. The second republic had to do the reverse of most things the first republic did and also had to remove them. It actually managed to wipe most of them out.

Let us remember one point in this scope. The republic between the years 1925-45 suppressed the freedoms. The freedom of speech, religion, travel and organization freedom either did not exist or were quite restricted. The media, universities and economic life was totally under the state"s manipulation. The pruning of civil freedoms prevented the civil society from coming out and improving. The area of the civil society was occupied by the state in favor of the political society. The republic was aiming at recreating individuals and the whole society. In other words, the society did not shape the state. Instead, the state was trying to shape the society.

At the time of the first republic, there was no word of political rights or political participation. The people in authority were electing themselves, or more correctly speaking, appointing themselves. The multi-party life was being harmed. There was no right to elect and to be elected. What we call today citizens were at the status of servants or subject at that time. People were deprived of the means to examine the authority. Neither of the two presidents of the first republic was elected by the competitive elections. They got themselves elected.

On the 14th of May in 1950, this political system was substantially overthrown in terms of its structure. The democratic authority type that was elected through competitive, free and fair elections replaced the single party authority. Some fast steps were taken in the field of civil freedoms. Speaking more correctly, the wall in front of civil freedoms had been collapsed. People felt for the first time that they were treated as humans and that they had a word in determining the authority and could get rid of the unlikeable, unsuccessful authorities through the ballot box. Civil society sprouted like flowers. Many civil associations appeared. The media diversified. The economy revived. It was seen that the poverty the statist model of the single-party era created was not their fate and people saw that the human standards could be better off and remarkably cured from three to five years.

Unfortunately, the second republic, which was to reach a certain distance failed. It couldn"t carry its moves further. On one hand, the mistakes of the elected authority; on the other hand the resistance of the first republican"s bureaucratic and civil looking totalitarian elements stopped the progress. With the 1960 and 1980 coups, what the first republican lost in terms of locations, positions were recovered and the parasite on the back of the second republic was reinforced. Against the democratic authority, a restrictive and a bureaucratic political authority was established which appealed to threats, violence when it found it due. After the regulations with the coups in 1960 and 1980, the civil parts of the tutelage system ranging from education to media and university have been reinforced with bureaucratic regulations.

While these were all being undertaken, there were changes that were taking place in the social structure ranging from economic, social, and cultural to academic fields. With the restricted moves in the space, which was left to the democratic authorities by the state authority, these changes definitely modified the ground, which the state authority was founded on. This development process, which began with Menderes, continued with Özal and reached its maturity at the time of Erdogan"s authority. Just as Marxists claimed, the infrastructure was changing. The sequence of these outcomes would necessarily reflect on the superstructure, in other words, on the political system as explicit, diagnosable results.

And as a matter of fact, it happened so. The bureaucratic tutelary system as a whole retreated. This took place in two fields: the official and civil fields. In the official field, the presence of the soldiers in the system diminished. The membership composition of the National Security Board (MGK: Milli Güvenlik Kurulu) was demilitarized. Soldiers were instructed through examples that they would follow the bureaucrats and then it was showed to the public. That the judiciary, which rules with the initiative of the military bureaucracy, applies the party closure decisions has been majorly prevented.

Significant events took place on media and academic life, which were a civil or a seemingly civil field. The bureaucratic tutelage system was contrived to support bureaucratic authority and undercover its faults and yet insult the democratic authority and undo it.

It was demanded from media to be single voiced in the critical times for the sake of the state. The struggle, which Özal began with such a media system, persisted and was expedited at the time of Erdogan partly due to the obligations and stupidity of the media.

Finally, media became pluralized as a medium in which everyone could freely utter their opinion- and not only the opinion of the state- and could find the means to defend the democratic authority, too. The single-voice system was broken in the academic world, too, and a great diversification came to the forefront. There were already Kemalist, nationalist and socialist academics at universities. In addition to those, Islamist, liberalist and conservative academics added up and all different lines of politics could find their space in the academic world.

On August 10, 2014, the presidential seat was entrusted to a politician by the people, which the bureaucratic tutelary system equipped with rights that would be extra-ordinary for a parliamentary system.

This is a phenomenon and considering the ideas and leadership manner of the president, it will cause certain shifts in the system.

In short, an important distance has been passed towards the advance of the third republic. As no one objects to the idea of a republic now, it will simply continue to exist but the question is this: in which direction? The direction is evident. It"s the opposite direction of the first republic against the second republic. The third republic must do the reverse of the many things that the first republic did. And in this direction, it should carry the attempts of the second republic in wiping out the mistakes of the first republic further. As a matter of fact, a democratic republic can only emerge in as much as it removes the non- civil elements and non-democratic elements of an anti- democratic republic.


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