Spill the beans and relax

It is very easy to understand how much at peace the governing party is with universal law and the principle of separation of powers in democracies and how much it has internalized these ideals. Just look at the reactions shown to the President of the Constitutional Court’s speech; that would be enough.

Deputy Prime Minister Emrullah İşler said, “There is no other power above the will of the nation and the Parliament. Just as we have not allowed other tutelage, we will not allow juristocracy.”

The head of the parliamentary Constitution Committee, and he even has the title of professor in front of his name, he is supposed to be a professor of constitutional law. He addressed the president of the high court: “There is God; bigger than you!”

Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said the head of the court was beating the prime minister, the president and Cabinet ministers with his words. He even gave some rates for the beating; the judge has beaten the prime minister around 70 to 75 percent, and the rest is shared among the others.

I have extracted the most important parts from the speech of the president of the Constitutional Court. Let us read them:

“Those efforts to dominate and influence the opinions, thoughts and decisions of members of the judiciary through neighborhood pressure are not valid for those who believe in the sanctity of justice.

“He has also said it was natural that the verdicts of the Constitutional Court had political consequences because the court was judging whether an action, a practice was in accordance to the Constitution, which is a political document in itself. Accusing the Constitutional Court of having political purposes or of issuing ‘non-national verdicts’ is a shallow accusation,”

“The judiciary is not and should not be a place for setting a trap for the people’s will. The judiciary has recently been confronted with a heavy accusation, being described as a ‘parallel state’ and a gang. It’s not possible for the judiciary to survive as long as this accusation is there,” he said. 

“The strongly worded criticisms of officials do not solve the ongoing issues. This rather simplistic approach should be abandoned and structural problems in the judicial system should be handled,” Kılıç said, adding, “Today, even the simplest court decisions are subject to discussion and confidence in the judiciary is badly damaged,”

These are what the head of the Constitutional Court said and the spokespersons of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have decided from these statements that they have been beaten.

Yes, the part about “the changing of shirts” in the top judge’s speech was an open political polemic and it shouldn’t have been said, but the entire speech was on rule of law and the efforts to harmonize them with universal law and separation of powers.

If you are not at peace with these principles, then or course you would decide that you have been “beaten.”

But then, you should come out and speak honestly and openly: “We do not care about universal law or separation of powers, dude.” And relax.

It must be very exhausting to try to look as if you favor law and democracy and on the other hand are involved in all kinds of anti-democratic affairs.