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Is “Presidential System” suitable for Turkey?

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For quite a while now Turkey has been debating whether the “Presidential System” would be suitable for the country.

Opinion leaders have expressed that PM Erdoğan has made it clear he would be in favor of such a system switch in the Turkish democracy whereas many believe this would make the number one politician of Turkey even more authoritarian.

The members of the ruling party have already started to talk in favor of the system making comments such as;

Turkey has experienced its most successful times under the administration of single party governments. The country has enjoyed stability and made greatest progress like has the case been for the last 10 years. On the contrary, the stability and pace of development have decreased under the ruling of coalition governments. Thus, the best way to ensure stability in the country would be a switch to the presidential system.

In reply to remarks such as this new system would gather all the power in one hand and it would make the president to be elected – most likely Mr. Tayyip Erdoğan – even more authoritarian which is a contradictory situation in regards to basic principles of democracy, the members of the ruling party come up with an example from USA politics on which occasion even President Obama was unable to appoint an ambassador for Baku for one and a half years.

On the contrary to this opinion, the opposition maintains that the ruling party has managed to have full control over judiciary and security departments (meaning police) – on top of the fact they have the power to pass almost any law in the parliament – and this has caused the PM to turn into an authoritarian ruler. They furthermore emphasize if the PM manages to integrate the presidential system into the regime and is elected as the president Turkey stands the risk of facing even a more powerful administrator who would be the only power to make decisions about the future of the country at his sole discretion.

The example about Obama as provided above might not necessarily correspond to the actual situation in Turkey. The reason is although Turkey is “supposed” to be practising the parliamentarian regime, it would obviously be difficult to say the composition in the parliament reflects the actual choice of the people voting – even those in power are well aware it does not.

On the contrary it reflects the choice of the first man, i.e. the party leader  who chooses the deputies to be voted for and presents them to vote owners – in which case it is difficult to claim that the composition in the parliament reflects PUBLIC’S WILL. This is another reason why party leaders have full control over their deputies who mostly have to vote as the leader requires them to, rather than in the direction of their personal opinions and conscience.

This certainly gives us a point to debate as to if regimes similar to the one practiced in Turkey currently, could and should be referred to as “TRUE” democracy.

09.05.2013
Editor, BTT

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