ANKARA, Turkey – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hopes of introducing a new constitution to replace the country’s military-drafted charter suffered a setback this week as the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) pulled out of a cross-party commission that had been working for more than two years to write a new guiding document. The development dealt a severe blow to Erdogan’s aspirations to create a more powerful presidency ahead of presidential elections next year, when the Prime Minister, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than a decade now, is expected to relinquish the premiership and run for president, a post he is thought to covet.
The collapse of the Constitution Conciliation Commission occurred when its chairman, Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek, an AKP member, announced at a November 18 meeting of the panel that he was withdrawing from the charter-drafting commission and told his fellow panel members that his decision would be conveyed in a letter to the heads of the parties sitting on the commission.
Following Cicek’s announcement, the AKP, which holds 326 out of the 550 seats in Parliament but lacks the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution, said it had pulled out of the four-party committee, which also includes representatives from the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). The deputy leader of the AKP noted the commission’s inertia, saying it had agreed on just 60 articles in 25 months and that it still had to reach agreement on 112 additional provisions.
Whether a new constitution comes to fruition is of critical importance to the political trajectory of Erdogan, a controversial and polarizing figure who draws his political strength from the pious, socially conservative and more rural Turks that form the electoral base of the Prime Minister’s mildly-Islamist Justice and Development Party.
While Erdogan is loved by this newly ascendant class of pious conservatives from central Anatolia, he is despised and distrusted by urban, secular Turks. For years, these urban, secular elites could count on the support of Turkey’s staunchly-secular military, which staged three coups between 1960 and 1980 and forced an Islamist government out of office in 1997. Following the 1980 coup, the military promulgated a constitution that is still in effect to this day and is the charter that Erdogan is currently trying to amend.
During his more than decade long tenure, Erdogan and his Islamist AKP have taken a number of steps to clip the wings of the staunchly secular military and the equally religiously averse judiciary. In 2010, Erdogan and the AKP ushered through 26 constitutional amendments that, among other things, allow military personnel to be tried in civilian courts and bar civilians from being prosecuted in military ones. The 2010 amendments also give Parliament, dominated by Erdogan’s AKP, more control over appointing judges. The Prime Minister’s government has also presided over the prosecution of a plethora of prosecutions of high-ranking military officers, both serving and retired.
General Ilker Basbug, the chief of the military’s general staff until 2010, was recently sentenced to life in prison in a mass trial that resulted in the conviction of all but 21 of the 275 defendants being tried for allegedly plotting to overthrow Erdogan’s mildly-Islamist government. The idea of high-ranking military officers, let alone the former head of the armed forces, being tried in a court room, let alone a civilian one, is an idea that would be beyond the grasp of most Turk’s less than 10 years ago.
With the Armed Forces now confined to the barracks and firmly under the control of a civilian government, Erdogan has embarked on a quest rewrite a constitution drafted by the military more than three decades ago. This quest is partially motivated by the prime ministers desire to create a more powerful presidency, which he could then occupy after stepping down from the premiership. Erdogan, who is in the midst of this third term as Prime Minister, is banned by his party’s rules from serving a fourth tenure. He is widely reported to be angling for the presidency. Whether he is as successful at obtaining the job covets as he was at corralling the country’s armed forces is a question that has yet to answered.
-Eric Erdahl
Sources: Al Monitor, Hurriyet Daily News, Reuters, The Economist
Photo: USA Today