Davutoğlu’s plagiarism of Kuzu
On April 15, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu read out his election manifesto - a manifesto that actually states he will leave his position if he wins the elections.
If you ask whether or not the election manifestos of political parties should be taken seriously, I would say “no.” They write the manifestos, but no voters read them. Later, they are all forgotten.
Just like it did after its 2007 manifesto, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) intends to do exactly the opposite of its new manifesto.
When the prime minister said he personally wrote the section on the presidential system, I got a bit excited. I thought he might be in trouble by writing the system as an academic, likely to draw the rage of President Erdoğan.
But I was worried for nothing. What he had written was a plagiarism of Professor Burhan Kuzu, the AKP deputy known as a strong backer of the presidential system.
Davutoğlu said he wanted the presidential system to avoid a “confusion of power.” This will happen in the form of the proposal that the AKP once submitted to the Parliamentary Constitution Conciliation Committee.
This is the one where the president can rule the country through decrees without any need for a parliament, where he can easily abolish parliament, and where justice is totally dependent on an “elected sultan” system…
It is a freak without any checks and balances. When I learned this, I thought, “What a pity he had to do so much academic study to come to this point…”
Dislike for human rights
In the AKP’s election manifesto, there is also an interesting opinion about the right of individual applications to the Constitutional Court.
It says the individual application right was overburdening the court and damaging its effectiveness. For this reason, the individual’s right to apply would be reviewed.
The introduction of the individual application right to the Constitutional Court for Turkish citizens was made in the famous constitutional referendum.
It was a measure to lower the number of Turkish cases at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and, for the time being, it was one of the apple candies used to increase the number of “liberals” supporting the AKP.
It is obvious why they want to make such a change now: They do not want concepts like law and human rights to block their path. They do not agree with modern individual rights. They want to “close” everything, “arrest” a person without questioning, and keep them there for years.
Retired police of the time
Some 1,150 police chiefs have been made to retire. Next, 2,350 police officers in mid-management positions will be forced to retire. We will see whether this sizable clearance will create any security weaknesses. I can only say that such mass “eliminations” were a thing of the military regimes in our past.
For instance, during the May 27, 1960 coup, around 7,200 military personnel were discharged from the army. They were known as “eminsu,” abbreviated from “emekli inkılap subaylar” meaning a retired revolution officer.
The Sept. 12, 1980 coup leaders did similar clean-ups based on the Martial Law Act No. 1,402. The victims were called the “1,402 guys.” They were 4,891 people but, including voluntary resignations, they amounted to 20,000.
We can say that we are living through a time of a “civilian coup” against the constitutional order and the independence of the judiciary.
An former cabinet minister is able to come out and say, “I don’t recognize the constitution. From the day he was elected, the president does not have to respect the constitution in any way.”
We are witnessing the “clean-up” of a coup era again.
If the retired police form an association, I would like to suggest a name for them: “Emyolpol,” from “emekli yolsuzluk polisleri,” meaning “retired corruption police.”
