EU to wait before taking action

Lale Kemal

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is understood to have failed to convince the European Union leadership of the existence of a parallel state allegedly supported by what he calls the international circles that he believes have been undermining his government, in power for more than 11 years, through a graft scandal that was disclosed on Dec. 17 of last year.

This is not to say, however, that the EU does not believe that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Hizmet movement headed by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, though once allies, are engaged in a bitter power struggle.

“The EU is also of the opinion that there is a serious problem between the two sides, the government and the Hizmet movement. Yet, the EU cannot tolerate the Turkish leadership's attempts to undermine the high-profile graft probe that implicated Erdoğan's close allies. Parallel state arguments cannot be cited as an excuse for not proceeding with the graft probe,” said an Ankara-based Western diplomat in an interview with this columnist.

“The AK Party has been in power for around 11 years. If there has been a parallel state [operating], why had the government not taken measures against it by now? As the EU stressed, the government should allow the judiciary to continue the corruption investigations in a transparent fashion,” said the same diplomat.

Hannes Swoboda, leader of the European Parliament's Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, shared his suspicions about the government's excuses and blaming others for the graft scandal as if it is not real when he tweeted on Jan. 21, “My question to Erdoğan: Why did you first support the Gülen movement and now you see it as the biggest danger for Turkey?”

In a joint news conference after meeting with Erdoğan on Jan. 21 in Brussels, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso stated: “Whatever the problems are in Turkey, solutions should respect the separation of powers and the rule of law. The issues can be addressed within the limits of EU standards.”

Prime Minister Erdoğan visited Brussels on Jan. 21 for the first time in five years and also met with the presidents of the Council of Europe (COE) and the European Parliament (EP), Herman van Rompuy and Martin Schulz, respectively. Erdoğan pledged to the EU leaders that he would respect the principle of the separation of powers in his government's attempts to restructure a judiciary board through a draft law.

The controversial draft law currently being debated in Parliament is intended to bring the judiciary under government control, killing its independence.

Yet there is no sign that Erdoğan will meet the commitments he made to the EU, as the draft bill on the judiciary board has not seen a major change.

Instead, the Turkish government has been continuing its policy of purges within state institutions, including the police department and the judiciary, in an attempt to prevent the corruption and bribery investigation from proceeding.

The probe, before it was halted by the government, resulted in the detention of some 20 people, including the sons of three Cabinet ministers. Those ministers were later removed as part of a broad Cabinet reshuffle.

Under the guise of cleansing the state of elements from the parallel state, the government has continued with new purges this week, bringing the number of police officers who have been replaced to about 3,000, while also reassigning almost 100 judges in addition to other reshuffles that have taken place at various government institutions.

The government has so far failed to convince not only Turks but the world -- including the EU -- of its allegations of a “civilian coup” being staged against the AK Party using the graft scandal and of the validity of not allowing the judiciary and the police to proceed with the corruption and bribery investigation. What is worse, the government has been initiating new waves of purges to silence those responsible for conducting the probe.

The current turmoil, in which the government has been dismantling Turkey's democracy, has the potential, among other things, to once again derail Turkish-EU relations that only late last year saw a relative improvement when accession negotiations were renewed after a three-year break.

The EU will now wait for the process concerning the fate of the government measure to restructure the judiciary board to evolve. If the draft bill is approved by Parliament with its AK Party majority, destroying the independent nature of the board, the main opposition party plans to take it to the Constitutional Court and it is highly likely that President Abdullah Gül will veto the bill, returning it to Parliament for revisions.

EU officials do not foresee freezing relations with Turkey before seeing the fate of the judiciary bill.

Published on Today's Zaman, 23 January 2014, Thursday