Their only issue is to get hold of the judiciary

Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Deputy Group Chairman Mahir Ünal recently spoke about the upcoming elections for the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK). Ünal’s words give a clear message on his party’s perception of “democracy”: Democracy is only for their own selves.

When the election for HSYK members, held at the Supreme Court of Appeals (Yargıtay), was not won by the group “formed by the government,” Ünal said the following: “Even if this organized coordination formed by a group to seize the judiciary wins these elections, it will be illegitimate for us. This is because we are a government elected by the nation’s votes, representing the will of the nation. As the representatives of the nation, the government will not allow those who act with tricks and negotiations.”     

Then he explained what would be done if the vote does not come out as the government wishes: “When the Parliament is opened, it will do what's necessary. We'll do whatever needs to be done.”  

What he is saying is crystal clear. If the union formed by the government does not win the HSYK elections, then the law will be amended again, the conditions for the election will be changed. It will go on until the entire judicial system is seized by the AKP.

Actually, we should thank Ünal for his outspokenness. He is saying that any election that turns out to have an unwanted result will be considered illegal by the government. I wonder if the general elections and local elections are also included in that...

It was the AKP that first played a leading role in the seizure of the judiciary by the “community,” which they define as the “parallel structure” today. They may have forgotten that lists were prepared at the Justice Ministry at that time, and that it was the result of a plan from the ministry to take hold of the judiciary, but we remember.

Now, they are making similar calculations, but this time they do not want the community to be involved. Well, we don't want that either.

We don't want the judiciary to be seized either by the community or the government, or those who gather under this or that ideology.

We want the judiciary to be truly independent in this country, where the wiring has gone loose. We want the independent and impartial constitutional powers to reestablish the equilibrium, to make the brake mechanisms function properly again.

The road to this is not declaring any election whose result you don't like as "illegitimate." It is to reorganize the law so that the judiciary is free of all these kinds of groups.

They could start by removing the “list method” in the HSYK elections.


They only have the hijab in their minds

Education Minister Nabi Avcı, upon the debates on the change of regulations allowing very young girls to wear the hijab, said the following: “The media has been focusing too much on education issues for the past two days.”

Obviously, the minister is not reading the papers at all.

In this paper, led by İsmet Berkan, many writers, including me, continuously write on the problems of our education system. There are also stories and analyses written by our education reporters.

It looks as if the minister has never been interested in them. But when the topic is the headscarf, the minister starts reading the stories and comments in the papers.

This is because when “problems in the education system” are mentioned, it is this which comes to their minds: To cover the little girls, to Islamicize the education system, and to force everybody’s child to go to imam hatip schools.