Aren’t these strange days?
Isn’t the country losing its balance in an agenda that swings from one extreme to the other?
Israel’s televised murders on one side and the influencer Polats’ shamelessness on the other.
On the one hand, the debate on the supreme judiciary that started around the case of a member of parliament, and on the other, the decisions that released the murderer of a journalist for good behavior…
In the midst of all this, a political mechanism entirely focused on elections and constitutional change…
Let’s briefly go through the debates on the judiciary. First, let’s take a look at the debate among the high judiciary. There are dozens of polemics, written statements, and hundreds and thousands of opinions.
But we are missing the point of the debate.
The essence is this:
Just because a person is in pre-trial detention does not mean he is guilty. He is innocent until his conviction is finalized by the Court of Cassation.
For this reason, detainees can be candidates for parliamentary or other positions because their convictions are not finalized.
Moreover, when the Constitutional Court ruled on Can Atalay, it did not say “Can Atalay is guilty or not guilty”. The problem is that since the person was elected as an MP while he was still under arrest, i.e. while there was no final judgment against him, the trial against him was not suspended and he did not go to the Parliament in accordance with Article 83 of the Constitution. The Constitutional Court is pointing out a procedural error here.
I think it’s clear enough…
Now let’s come to the other issue.
On January 19, 2007, Hrant Dink was murdered. Over the years, it has been revealed that public officials not only knew that the murder would take place, but also almost all the details. Every step of the person who pulled the trigger was followed. Moreover, there were nine gendarmerie officers around when the killer pulled the trigger. Those who are supposed to protect their citizens watched the murder.
The killer Ogun Samast was released after 16 years and 10 days.
Do any of you remember the trial process of the Dink assassination? I wonder how our high judiciary, which threaded the needle in the case of Can Atalay, made decisions for a murderer at that time, what debates did they have?
What are we going to say about the constitutional amendment that was initiated by citing the high judiciary debates amid this bizarre situation?
President Erdoğan states that the world has changed a lot since the 1980s and that although from time to time these changes are reflected in the constitutional text, this destroys the textual integrity of the constitution.
At one point in his statement, he said that the 50+1 requirement for presidential elections should be changed:
“If the procedure of electing the candidate with the majority is adopted, the presidential elections will be quicker, less time-consuming and less misguided. The current 50+1 requirement leads parties to the wrong paths. It is not clear whose hand is in whose pocket. Table of six, table of sixteen… Who knows what else will come out of this? But in terms of the number of votes, when it is said ‘the candidate with the highest number of votes is elected’, the election will be completed quickly.”
I think these sentences are so clear that they leave no room for interpretation.
Well, but let’s say that with the new year, the parliament starts working on constitutional amendments. If the parliamentary arithmetic is within the limits of the referendum, is there a possibility that citizens will be presented with a referendum ballot box in the local elections?
Probably such a possibility has started to be voiced in Ankara that opposition parties have accelerated their search for an alliance. As a matter of fact, CHP executives, who criticized Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu during the congress process just yesterday, are now making statements such as “No one has to ally with us, but if they see fit, we will start a constructive process.”
It seems that the political cauldron will boil more…
