Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
April 10 2010

Turkish Kemalist stalwart Bedri Baykam outspoken in opposition to AKP

Saturday, April 10, 2010
GÃ`L DEMIR – NIKI GAMM
ISTANBUL ‘ Hürriyet Daily News

Kemalist stalwart Baykam: ‘Nobody really wants to understand that
democracy is also a political system that has to protect itself.
Nobody wants to understand that democracy can only exist in a secular
society. Nobody understands that if you don� fight against the mixing
of religion with politics, you cannot have a free society, a free
generation, free art, free press’

Bedri Baykam has been involved in art since he was very young and has
been a supporter of the principles laid down by modern Turkish founder
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk since his early youth. His father, Dr. Suphi
Baykam, was a deputy and spokesman for the Republican People’s Party,
or CHP, which Atatürk established.

Over the years, Baykam has been an outspoken member of the CHP and has
even been a candidate for president of the party. Most recently, he
has prepared a new set of rules and regulations for the CHP that will
be introduced to the party at its congress in May. Despite his heavy
political agenda, however, he is also organizing an exhibition that
opens next week in Paris.

Coming from a Kemalist perspective, Baykam said he was not in favor of
the proposed constitutional amendments from the Justice and
Development Party, or AKP.

`The AKP is not trying to make a Constitution for Turkey. The AKP is
trying to make a constitution for the party that they want to impose
on the country,’ he told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

`This is like a Constitution that would turn [Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip] ErdoÄ?an and [President Abdullah] Gül into almost like a double
dictatorship where they appoint anybody ranging from the `Islamicist
Conservative Council of Television Production’ to the way they now
appoint university deans. They want to appoint all the people in the
law and judiciary system. And they want themselves, or one of them,
the president, to appoint almost all of the constitutional court
members. And they even take the joke as far as saying that if a state
prosecutor is thinking about closing down a party, he should ask
permission to do that of the Parliament. `Can I close you?’ `Do you
want me to close you?”

Declaring the situation amusing, if not tragic, he said: `This is like
the best jokes of Nasrettin Hoca. Even Nasrettin Hoca did not have so
much imagination in preparing jokes like this. And the point is that
this which is like the joke of the century is talked about seriously
in the Turkish press and political arena. People are going to laugh a
hell of a lot when they look back on those years and what the AKP was
trying to do to Turkish democracy. And unfortunately some press people
are scared; unfortunately some press people cannot write freely. Some
of the big press groups have fired some of their most important
writers on the demand of AKP and they thought this would leave them in
peace. But they have seen that this wasn’t the case and they still
have big backlashes even after they fired their most important
writers.’

Baykam said it was incorrect to suggest that the increasing
civilianization of Turkish politics will result in more democracy.
`Well, the AKP has proven that getting more civilians doesn’t mean
getting more democrats. They have made it a so-called more civilian
Turkey that has become a totally Islamo-fascist country so they have
proven that there is no relation between a country that is civilian or
military and the country that is democratic.’

Noting the fear many in Turkey now have of wiretapping, he said:
`[People] are even scared to talk in their own kitchen because
everybody has convinced everybody that those mobile phones can even
record when you’re not talking to each other, even it’s shut, even if
you take out the battery, even if you throw it down the sink.’

`State terrorism’

Declaring the AKP to have a `terrorist-state spirit,’ Baykam said:
`Anybody who buys the joke that this government is democratizing
Turkey is either the stupidest person on earth or the biggest sell
out. I don’t think anybody who has got a regular I.Q. that knows
anything basic about democracy, seeing what the AKP is doing to this
Constitution and to Turkey, seeing how they got in control of the
Sabah and ATV newspaper ¦ and how ridiculous the partisans who bid
were and how so many other things are distributed as wealth and
contracts between the AKP and societies [can believe what’s
happening].’

Baykam further criticized the government’s perceived attacks on the
military, as well as the incarceration of writer Mustafa Balbay, TV
channel owner Tuncay Ã-zkan, a TV owner, Workers’ Party leader DoÄ?u
Perinçek and organ transplant doctor Mehmet Haberal

`The basis of democracy creates a climate against the ruling party. I
am not among those naïve people who would buy that and think they were
doing this for democracy. It’s more than a joke. They want to have
zero control over themselves from the judiciary system like the
separation-of-power system. They want to eliminate this. They want to
control the judiciary system as much as they control this funny thing
[Supreme Board of Radio and Television] RTÃ`K. They keep talking about
the headscarf, about tolerance. We faced with people who have fewer
tolerances on lifestyles, on alcohol, on unity so for them tolerance
is only the name of imposing their own lifestyle. And the funny thing
is that the AKP has called it democracy.’

Baykam said until the `post-modern coup’ of Feb. 28, 1997, which
unseated the Islamist Welfare Party, the government had tried to
install shariah law. `After the famous Feb. 28 decree imposed by the
[military] security council, they changed tactics, especially with the
AKP. This is now their new tactic. They said, `We’re going to do
exactly the same things. We’re going to make a defense of exactly the
same lifestyles, philosophy. We’re going to try to impose the same
Middle-Ages mentality on Turkey but instead of calling it shariah,
we’re going to call it democracy. This is a decision they have taken
and they have been applying. ¦ It’s wonderful. It was a very, very
clever move. The problem is that not everybody swallows that.’

Baykam said the most problematic change being proposed is the
nomination of the Constitutional Court members, 16 of them, by the
president because it would `finish the judiciary.’

He also complained about the government’s proposed changes to the way
political parties are shut down.

`They said, `Well, a party can be shut down only if it uses
terrorism.’ This is more than ridiculous. This is a law for a marginal
party that would be an ethnic party so they could say before they
close it down that they have relations with a terrorist group, etc.
But what if we’re talking about state terrorism? What if we’re talking
about a party in power that uses its own legal strength as police and
law mixed in one and if they use it in a terrorist way and get rid of
democracy and human rights and eliminate all their opposition through
so-called legal means? Who is going to fight against that? You’re not
going to call this terrorism. You’re going to say we’re doing it with
the police. This is wrong; this is the state doing it. They don’t want
anyone to stop them on that issue,’ he said.

`So they want a government that operates without any limits, without
any danger of being closed down no matter how much they would abuse
the Constitution and there would be no judiciary system to stop them
and no military to stop them nor any press to stop them because the
press is also paralyzed. So they want a one-party system where they
control the law, the press, the military, the universities, the youth
and where they even control your reservations in heaven or hell,’ he
said.

Reiterating his objection to the entire constitutional package in
general, Baykam said the documents should not go to a referendum at
all given the abuse of power the amendments represent.

`But talking in general, when you make a constitutional change like
this, every law should be voted on separately. It is ridiculous. They
want to impose some good things mixed with all the worst and terrible
ones and they want to put them in the same package so just by putting
the light on the positive elements they want to make it pass. Like
every other move they have done, they think that they are very shrewd.
So of course it should be voted separately, talking in general, but if
you ask me, this should not be voted at all.’

`Killing democracy in Turkey’

Arguing that the package is the final stroke in the AKP’s plan to
`kill democracy in Turkey,’ he said: `The AKP has made many moves and
they have taken control of the Parliament and of most of the
municipalities. Now they’re in control of more than half of the press
and now they’re trying to kill the judiciary system and later their
next move is to kill the CHP.’

For Baykam, it is evident that the AKP is trying to grossly violate
the principles of secularism. `I can see all these moves as the person
who has been warning society for 25 years against the mixing of Islam
with politics and if AKP was a legal party in a country in which
secularism is a must in the Constitution and in the political parties
law, then the foreign press would not have been talking about the
Islamist government in Turkey. ¦ This proves how much they have mixed
politics with religion and how unconstitutional that is and how
ridiculous that is and how illegal that is and now that they can’t
behave according to the Constitution, they want to make the
Constitution that fits them.’

Transforming the CHP

`So for democratizing Turkey we want to change the way that political
parties are handled. I’m trying to make a big move in the CHP to
democratize CHP at the May 22 congress,’ Baykam said.

`We have held many panel discussions with a variety of people so I’m
really putting the pressure on the CHP to democratize it. Now [party
leader] Deniz Baykal has started talking in the last month, `Maybe
we’ll open the doors to women and youth.’ Well actually no. I say this
shouldn’t just be window dressing. You must give quotas to women, to
youth in Parliament. You must give 25 percent to women; you must give
25 percent to youth. You must let people choose their own Parliament
members and not appoint them yourself. So I’m trying to impose
democratization on the CHP so they become the first party in Turkey to
become a democratic party.’

Baykam, however, said other parties instead of the CHP are beginning
to copy his ideas. `The funny thing is that Baykal is not listening to
me. But [Å?iÅ?li Mayor and Turkey Movement for Change Chairman] Mustafa
Sarıgül is busy copying my ideas. Those were the ideas I cared the
most about when I was a candidate for the presidency of the CHP in
2003. But now I’ve turned them into rules for the CHP constitution.
Baykal doesn’t want to see this preparation but Sarigül and [Democrat
Party Chairman] Husamettin Cindoruk are getting more influenced by
it.’

He further criticized the government on its failure to remove the
current election threshold. `This [10 percent threshold] is very
undemocratic and sad. If you ask me any party that gets 2 percent
should be represented, even 1 percent. If it’s not to have a seat, it
should at least be represented. We should go back to what was called
the `Milli-yi Vakia’ [needs explanation] in the 1960s.’

Criticizing those who say this would open the way for instability,
Baykam said: `You call this stability, the AKP controlling everything
and trying to kill the parliamentary system and the constitution and
democracy? I’m sorry. I prefer the worst coalition than having this
one single-party offensive on democracy.’

Arguing that the AKP does not want to enter Europe, Baykam said: `It’s
a big lie. They pretend to want to enter Europe so the army does not
move against them. Moreover, the European Union does not want to take
Turkey either. They have pretended to want to take Turkey into the EU
just so that they would have a bigger market. Even [former French
President] Jacques Chirac said we could talk 20 years and we won’t
know if we would have free circulation rights. And only one single
country vetoing Turkey ` on Armenian issues, Cyprus issues, Turkey
issues ` is enough for a refusal.’

Noting the exaggerated celebrations for the beginning of Turkey’s EU
negotiations, he said: `In 20 years we don’t even know if Europe will
exist. If you don’t see the hawks in this relation on both sides,
you’re more than naïve. On the other hand, Europe understands
absolutely nothing of Turkish politics if they really believe that the
AKP is like a conservative Christian party who wants to democratize
Turkey, they’re really not following at all what’s happening in this
country. They’d better come and assist the court cases of Ergenekon
and follow them and what we write about Turkey so that they can really
have a grasp of what’s going on in Turkey.’

In conclusion, Baykam said: `This is only a beginning. Everybody talks
about democracy. Nobody really cares about it. Nobody tries to
construct it really. Nobody wants to give the power to the people.
Nobody really wants to understand that democracy is also a political
system that has to protect itself. Nobody wants to understand that
democracy can only exist in a secular society. Nobody understands that
if you don’t fight against the mixing of religion with politics, you
cannot have a free society, a free generation, free art, free press
and you cannot even have a respectful religion because all these
people are using the weaknesses of democracy and the weakness of
people’s love for God or religion and turning it into money and power
for themselves. Anybody who cannot see what’s happening will be liable
in front of history and in front of.’