PRO-AKP LIBERALS: USEFUL IDIOTS?
Mustafa Akyol

Hurriyet
March 23 2010
Turkey

For the Kemalists, the liberals are either ‘useful idiots,’ as Lenin
described Soviet sympathizers in Western countries, or they are
‘sold out’ pens who simply get paid by the AKP

One of the much-debated issues in current Turkish politics is the
alliance between secular liberals and religious conservatives. The
former is a tiny group of pundits, and their popular support is quite
small, but their intellectual firepower is strong. The religious
conservatives, on the other hand, have a much broader public base,
but they need to articulate their demands for broader religious
freedom in a more global language, which the liberals do speak.

The practical implication of this alliance is the support that most
secular liberals have given to the Justice and Development Party,
or AKP, government since 2002. This is not an unconditional and
steady support, though. In fact, most liberals strongly criticize
the government and the Prime Minister when they take nationalist or
illiberal stances. Erdogan’s recent blunder about "expelling illegal
Armenian immigrants," for example, was heavily bashed by these
pundits. But they continue to think that the AKP is still better
than its alternatives, and that it has indeed taken the right steps
on several important issues.

The Turkish history of liberty

The Kemalists, however, always see something rotten in this alliance.

For them, the liberals are either "useful idiots," as Lenin described
Soviet sympathizers in Western countries, or they are "sold out" pens
who simply get paid by the AKP or somehow benefit from its ascendance.

The common Kemalist mind simply can’t imagine how secular people would
otherwise deviate from the noble path of the country’s archetypal
secularism.

But Kemalism has its own intellectual firepower as well. This mainly
works by focusing on the problems within the AKP, and showing them as
if they were the only political trouble that Turkey has. The Kemalists,
in other words, deliberately overlook the fact that for decades Turkey
has been ruled by an authoritarian system dominated by the military
and judiciary. Then they speak as if the AKP is simply a power-hungry
government which tries to dominate an otherwise perfectly fine system.

One of the illustrations of this line of thinking was a piece which
appeared in these pages yesterday. Its writer was criticizing the
liberals for not opposing the AKP’s new package of constitutional
amendments. Two of these amendments were about giving the President
and Parliament the right to appoint a minimal number of the members
of the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors, or HSYK, and the
Constitutional Court – as it is the case in many EU countries. But,
according to our writer, this would have increased the power of the
executive, and it should have been opposed by anyone who wants more
liberty. He was also quoting former US President, Woodrow Wilson,
who said:

"The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history
of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power,
not the increase of it."

Wilson was absolutely right. But he was speaking in a slightly
different context. For in the U.S., the government is the only
centralized political power that can threaten freedom. In Turkey,
however, there is always something higher than the government: the
state. While the government is elected by the people, the state is
made up of self-appointing bureaucrats, such as generals and judges,
who rule the country according to their ideology, and allow the
elected governments only a minimal authority on serious matters.

Moreover, history has shown that the main obstacle to Turkey’s
liberalization has been the state, and not elected governments. Just
look at the past decade and you will see how the state has, with or
without success, blocked liberal reforms on almost every political
issue — from the freedom of the markets to that of expression,
from the rights of the Kurds to those of Christians.

That’s why Wilson’s quote needs to be little adjusted to fit into
Turkey: The history of liberty here is a history of the limitation
of first state power, and then governmental power.

And if you are focusing only on the latter, but totally overlooking
the first one, your self-description as a liberal will hardly be
convincing.

A self-appointing caste

The constitutional amendment package needs to be seen within the
same perspective. The problem is not that the government wants to
"dominate the judiciary." It is rather that the higher judiciary is
a self-appointing ideological caste. The three main bodies, the HSYK,
the Council of State, and the Court of Appeals, simply elect members of
each other. The government wants the replace this co-optation system
with a more democratic and pluralist one, in which all judges in the
whole country will have a say.

Most Turkish liberals see that, and therefore it won’t be surprising
to see them vouch for "yes" in the probable referendum on the
constitutional amendment package.

The alliance between them and the religious conservatives, after all,
is neither unprincipled nor accidental. It is the natural outcome of
the history of liberty in this country.