Few surprises are likely when Turkey holds its June 12 parliamentary elections. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is expected to retain power by winning a majority of seats in parliament. Still, these elections will represent a critical turning point in the evolution of modern Turkey for three distinct reasons.
First, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised that the new parliament's first order of business will be to draft a new constitution to replace the authoritarian military constitution of 1982. Only through a new constitution can Turkey hope to resolve two pressing problems: the imbalance in state-society relations and the Kurdish question. This need was accentuated by the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK)'s recent and sudden decision to ban twelve candidates from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) from participating in the election, throwing the entire process into turmoil.
Second, these elections represent the beginning of a leadership transition in Ankara. Erdogan - who has promised not to run for parliament again - is seeking to transform Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system, with the goal of becoming president himself.
Finally, these elections will determine whether the main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), can sufficiently reinvent itself to regain the role of a serious contender and challenger to the ruling AKP.
Whether any of the three goals is realized will ultimately depend on the strategies of the parties and the election results. The candidate lists submitted in early April represented the first salvo in the upcoming contest.
The road to elections, however, is a complex one in Turkey. Other than political parties, old vested interests - civilian and military bureaucracies - continue to play a behind-the-scenes role. The YSK decision was one such example; as a by-product of the 1982 constitution, the YSK remains politically close to the old military and bureaucratic establishment.
Crisis before the Elections
The YSK's decision was capricious and fundamentally political in nature, a move aimed solely to keep the BDP from winning enough seats to have a say how parliament is run. By reversing its ruling just three days later, the YSK demonstrated not only its own arbitrariness but that of Turkey's political system as well.
At the root of Turkey's political system is its 1982 constitution. Both the constitution and the system were devised by the 1980-83 military junta, which assigned the YSK an integral role. Since the country's return to civilian rule, Turkish politicians have been remarkably unwilling, incapable, and unable to dent - much less change - this system.
Part of the blame goes to the military establishment, which constructed a complex web of relationships, structures, and institutions to maintain its preeminence in Turkish politics. This edifice has been crumbling of late, which explains why an institution such as the YSK could be forced to rescind its decision. Ten years ago, such a reversal would have been unthinkable.
The 1982 military constitution is an ideological document that privileges the state over the individual and nationalism over citizenship. Its aim has always been to defend the state and the regime from the individual and, by suppressing both ethnic minorities and the pious, ensure the continuity of a bureaucratic-military tutelage system.
Hiding behind Kemalism, the ideology named after the founder of Turkey, Kemal Atatürk, the document itself and the laws that were subsequently enacted have made Turkey a country of laws but not the rule of law. It is an arbitrary state that punishes people according to its ideological preferences. It superimposes an ethnic Turkish identity on a country with a myriad of identities. As such, the 1982 constitution has been the main impediment to addressing Turkey's Kurdish citizens' legitimate demands, whether seeking representation, expressing their cultural distinctiveness, or claiming their identity.
The military junta - which had taken over Ankara after a tumultuous period of polarization, street violence, and emergent Kurdish mobilization - sought to create a stable two-party system. The generals imposed a 10 percent national threshold for any party to win representation in parliament. Ostensibly instituted to reduce the possibility of a coalition government, the rule privileges larger parties, which end up winning many more parliamentary seats than their national share of votes. More importantly, smaller parties, such as Kurdish ones, have been effectively sidelined or forced to seek coalition partners - not an easy task for a nationalist Kurd in Turkey.
Kurdish parties and politicians have routinely been banned, forcing the Kurds time and time again to create new parties. Their disenfranchisement - and that of other minorities - has not led to social peace. In fact, on the critical Kurdish issue, the absence of effective Kurdish representation in parliament has helped its militarization, as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed insurgent group, filled the void.
