What matters is the system

It is now crystal clear that there is preparation going on in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) about the presidential system.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan want to legitimize his current situation since everything he does is in violation of the constitution.

According to Mustafa Şentop, a high level AKP delegate, the whole constitution needs to change. He says, “It is not sufficient to expand only fundamental rights and freedoms. If you do not arrange the structure of the state with more freedoms, there is no meaning to single handedly expanding rights and freedoms.”

I do not think anyone can object to Şentop’s statements.

He says something quite right and I hope he will remember his own statements when work on the constitution will start in the parliament.

But the debates originating from the AKP are not in consistency with these statements

Because we cannot arrive at a constitution based on more liberties with the presidential system devoid of its checks and balances which they advocated during the term of the previous parliament. A constitution based on freedoms has nothing to do with the systems. You can have a more democratic constitution within the parliamentary system as well as presidential system. What are important are the arrangements that will secure the separation of powers and the mechanisms of checks and balances.

Turkey’s parliamentary system has a historic past. It is not that easy to scrap that history and pass onto a system that comes to the agenda from totally different needs.

But we also know this: the current Turkish style parliamentary system is not a system that functions properly.

In order for the system to function in a proper way, the law on political parties and the law on elections have to be scraped of the effects of the Sept. 12 coup and become more democratic.

Thus it can be possible to re-establish the balance between the executive and the legislative. The system can also start functioning properly with an independent and unbiased judiciary. That can be possible in a presidential system too.

The whole issue is to have a system that can protect the separation of powers and establish an equal balance between the legislative, executive and the judiciary.

Yet the AKP’s proposal that we know currently does not aim for that; it aims for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s one-man rule.

I have to recall that humans are mortals. One needs to foresee to what a system that is today created for Erdoğan can turn into in the hands of others, just like how the constitution and institutions created after the Sept. 12 coup turned in the hands of Erdoğan.

The presents that Saudi King Salman brought to Antalya

Saudi King Salman and Prince Bin Talal closed a hotel in Antalya for the G-20 summit.

The things that the king and his entourage would need have been brought to Antalya with 16 trucks and 65 special Mercedes will be ready waiting at the hotel.

It is not really weird. Other delegations have closed down big hotels as well; they will come as large delegations.

In other words, it would not be proper to talk about the extravagancy of the Saudi king. Actually the Americans, the Chinese and the Russians do not spend that much but, after all, we are talking about a king.

I am not curious about what the king brought with him for his personal use. I am curious about those who are light in weight but heavy in their value.

As you might know, the Saudi kings are usually very generous and they pave the habit of giving beautiful jewelry as a present to the spouses of the rulers of the country they visit.

It has not been possible to find out about the presents that were given by the late king to our administrators. The previous president had promised to disclose it all at the end of his tenure but it did not happen. The current president, meanwhile, keeps his silence.