How Can We Help Preserving Secularism In Turkey?
By M.Orhan Tarhan

All through my secondary education, I sat in class rooms in which the major decorations were a large picture of Atatürk and his address to the Turkish youth printed in large letters, both hanging on walls. We had learned that text by heart by looking at it all the time. You will find it translated into English and reprinted in this first issue of our new ASA NEWS. We are not doing this because it would be proper to have the address in any publication bearing Atatürk's name, but because some of the grievous conditions enumerated in this address are unfortunately happening today in Turkey. Of course, there are no foreign military invaders, Heavens forbid! The fortresses and shipyards of the nation are still in proper hands. But, most of the people who have been holding power since 1950 have been utterly in-competent. They have permitted repeated trespasses of the constitution by dark forces, they have placed their personal interests above the national interest, and they have permitted a foreign theology and ideology that are absolutely anathema to the Turkish constitution to slowly invade the country. We think that these are plenty of reasons for reminding the present Turkish generation of its duties as defined in Atatürk's address. Yes, it is for times like this that this address has been written!

Since democracy came to Turkey in 1950, three times it was derailed and three times the Turkish military intervened as a sort of guardian angel, cleaned up the mess, set democracy back on its tracks, and returned to its barracks. There is no other place on Earth, where the military does this sort of thing. Thus, Turks should really be glad that they have such a guardian angel, the sort of last resort insurance, when everything is thoroughly messed up by lousy politicians. But the other side of the medallion is that it is really an indictment of the political system and of the political culture in Turkey that things do not work out by themselves and that a "guardian angel" is needed from time to time to make things right. True democracy should work without outside assistance. Let us try to understand the problem with Turkish politics.

Turks elect parties, not people. There is no primary. Thus the law does not allow the citizen to elect his own representatives. The party bosses make a list, on which they put the names of their own people. If in a province a certain party wins three deputies in the general election, then three of the candidates from the top of the party list become deputies. Of course, in their own election districts, party bosses always write their own name on top of the list, so they are always re-elected. There is no way of getting rid of them, no matter how incompetent they are. Thus the deputies have no allegiance to the voters, but feel very indebted to the party boss who put their name on the list. So, there is no bond between the voter and the deputies they elect. I can describe this system by the motto "Sovereignty belongs unconditionally to party bosses." Obviously, this is not democracy. It is top-down government. It is a system in which the voters cannot control the politicians and such a government exists only for its own sake. It is not responsive to the people. Once such a government goes haywire, there is no way to control it, because voters have no effect on their deputies. This sort of system is unstable and leads to periodical derailments, as it did many times in Turkey. It is in an awful shape again right now.

I believe that the American election law, in which we elect people and not parties, leads toe grass-roots democracy or bottom-up government. In primaries we elect our own candidate representatives who have

allegiance to us. We can control them and this makes for stable governments. When things do not go right, we can always pull the reins, or worse, elect someone else. This system has worked well for 220 years. I have written an article as a guest columnist on this subject and the newspaper Cumhuriyet has published it on August 13, 1996. As a result of it, two of our sister societies got together and are preparing a proposal for a new election law they want to introduce to the Turkish parliament. They asked for our assistance and are getting it.

If such a law is adopted, sovereignty in Turkey will indeed belong unconditionally to the people, as Atatürk intended.

This would be one way to prevent a military "assistance" to straighten up things. With the American election system, it would be impossible to have blundering politicians leading parties and no minority party with 21 % of the vote would be allowed to capture the government. Another way to prevent a military "assistance" would be to make sure that the constitution is exactly adhered to. The 1961 constitution provided for a "Cons-titutional Court" that works pretty well like our Supreme court. In this country, the opposition picks up laws that appear to be unconstitutional and takes them to the Supreme Court that decides on them. On some subjects the private America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sues to save the civil rights of people and can go all the way to the supreme court. In Turkey this mechanism did not always work. Actually, most of the time it did not work. No one challenged the formation of the religious Welfare Party, no one challenged the opening of Imam-Preacher schools which are run with taxpayers' money, no one challenged the admission of Kurdish deputies to the Parliament, who did not want to swear in Turkish according to the standard text, and no one challenged the swearing of Necmettin Erbakan and his Welfare party deputies, that they would uphold the ideals of Atatürk, when everyone knew, that these were not the ideals that they and their rank and file party members were preaching during the campaign. (Under "challenging" I do not mean "objecting to," but " taking to the Constitutional Court.") The public had no way of punishing the politicians who failed to make these challenges, i.e., the politicians who dishonored themselves by breaking their oath.

I suggested that a non-government society or foundation, such as the ACLU, be formed by distinguished who practice privately, that should have the authority and responsibility of taking before the constitutional court laws or government actions that seem to be unconstitutional and thus give a chance to the Court to judge on them. In India, the Constitutional Court has that duty itself. Mr. Yekta Gungor Ozden, the President of the Court said that my suggestion was a good idea and that he may want to start such a society of foundation. If most of the unconstitutional laws and government actions are caught this way and stopped, pretty soon Turkey will be an entirely different, definitely healthier place.

Of course, if the President and the party leaders would re-read the constitution, remember that they have sworn ON THEIR HONOR to up hold it, and look at laws that Parliament passes and at the actions of the government from that angle, (taking suspicious ones to the Constitutional Court) there might be no need for any non-government legal entity to do the job, THEY should have been doing in the first place.

Thus, the Turkish constitution contains strong guarantees for secularism. Just implementing it tho-roughly would be an excellent way to preserve secularism.

Perhaps the most tangible difference we made in standing against the expansion of fundamentalism in Turkey was to warn the Turkish press, the media, and the Turkish Government about the danger of the fundamentalist students in the United States. It all started in August 1995, when the ASA hosted Mr. NEVZAT AYAZ, the Minister of Education of Turkey, who informed us of problems arising from the misbehavior of fundamentalist students in U.S. Universities sent here by his ministry and by the Council of Higher Education. (They wanted to move all their courses away from Fridays, they were fraternizing with anti-U.S. and anti-Turkish Arab students, and causing many other problems to universities.) We also learned from Mr. Ayaz how far has the saturation of various ministries with dedicated Islamists has gone. In a way, Mr. Ayaz's visit opened our eyes. We soon became aware of the activities of the fundamentalist students in the Internet, thanks to the invaluable cooperation we received from secularist Turkish students all over the United States.

These fundamentalist students were writing in the Internet unspeakable lies and slander about Atatürk and its legacy. Those of them who wrote theses in social sciences, were trying to prove all Atatürk principles wrong. These writings were downloaded from the Internet and sent by special packages and by special couriers to several newspapers and to various government organizations, including the president of the republic. Last winter Mr.Yavalar went to Turkey. He talked to everyone who would listen to him. He made interviews with news-papers, appeared on TV and brought the student problem to the attention of the public opinion. Newspapers ran articles on it. The Turkish government had to act. Finally most of the fundamentalist students were recalled right in the middle of their studies back to Turkey. We understand that some of these students sued the government for interrupting their studies and recalling them home. At the court, the government showed as evidence the material the ASA had downloaded from the Internet. These students were destined to spread all over Turkey their venom against rationalism and secularism and hasten the downfall of the Turkish Republic.

Recently Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller came to Washington and, in a press meeting, said that the government is planning to send ten thousand Turkish students to the U.S. and have the whole thing financed by the World Bank. We know what happened when last time they sent 5,000 students here and we were greatly concerned. This time, we have a government in Turkey that would be pushing the funda-mentalist students and if any thing can be done, it won't be in Turkey.

These are our ways to heed Atatürk's advice to the youth. What is yours?

We are here only a handful of people and some of us are totally dedicated to the preservation of secularism in Turkey. But that is not enough. We need a lot of help. I know that there are many energetic, active, younger people in this area. We cordially invite them to come and join us. They do not have to like us personally. All they have to do is to like our ideas and goals and we will bend back wards to work smoothly with them. Not joining us, when they agree with our ideas, would put them into the same category of people like the Turkish party chiefs who can't work together, whom we all criticize so intensely.