AKP creating a new regime

Emre Uslu

The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been reshuffling and reassigning many public officers.

This has become a routine practice after the Dec. 17 bribery and corruption investigation. The government argues that it relies on this practice to eliminate the so-called parallel structure.

Officers in the security sector were first reappointed or removed; these moves were further followed by similar measures in other bureaucratic segments, including the judiciary, finance (just finance sector), banking sector and education (as a field). I personally know that some of the officers who were removed or reappointed have no connection whatsoever with the Gülen movement. However, in a fairly successful perception operation, the government presented these moves as the elimination and removal of Gülenists from bureaucratic posts. But the government has actually failed to disclose the identity of the newly appointed bureaucrats. Before writing about the identity of the new bureaucrats, I need to bring up a crucial matter: Before making new significant political decisions in Turkey, officers are first purged from the bureaucracy to create a proper groundwork for new political moves so that a new political project can be implemented. In the 1940s, racists and pan-Turkists, like writer Nihal Atsız, were praised at a time when Turkey was moving toward Germany. The same pan-Turkists were arrested in 1944. Left-wingers were detained in the 1950s when Turkey became a NATO member. In 1971, the military issued a warning after which left-wingers were purged from the bureaucracy. The turmoil continued, and in the 1980s, Turkey adopted a liberal and free market economy after the removal of the left wingers from their bureaucratic posts.

In the early 1990s, Turkey adopted harsh measures against the Kurds. And in attempt to address possible objections, nationalist figures were employed in place of social-democrat, religious and liberal bureaucrats. This was done to create a proper ground for a hawkish political stance to deal with the Kurdish issue during the period between 1993 and 1998.

A similar process took place when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power.
Neo-nationalist figures were removed when it became apparent that the AKP would stay in power. Now, the AKP has started a new process of liquidation and cleansing of the bureaucracy. They have removed people, arguing that such persons are part of the so-called parallel structure. This is to create a proper ground for a new regime in Turkey. For this reason, it is useful to focus on the new bureaucrats who replaced those who were removed. There are different types of newly appointed bureaucrats. The first group of bureaucrats includes figures who are unconditionally loyal to the AKP and Erdoğan. For instance, the İstanbul police chief is one of them. They pay attention to whether or not the law can be interpreted in favor of the AKP rather than enforcing it without bias. Figures subscribed to the AKP ideology who express unconditional loyalty and obedience to the AKP were appointed to significant posts within the bureaucracy.

However, it is of course very hard to find a sufficient number of bureaucrats meeting such criteria and who hold similar ideological views. For this reason, the AKP has created a pool of candidates; the main criterion they seek in the appointment of a new bureaucrat is this: Will he object to the new regime we are creating?

The common feature of the new bureaucrats appointed by the AKP is that they would not object to the new political project and new regime of the AKP. The AKP does not want any objections coming from the new bureaucracy, even if its policies are clearly against the Constitution.

It is doing this because the AKP is creating some sort of presidential system. In this way, it wants to institutionalize its semi-authoritarian regime. And to consolidate this regime, they want to transform the bureaucracy and the education system.

The National Intelligence Organization (MİT) has been designated as a protective force of the new regime. The changes in the MİT law confirm this. There is now a legal assurance to ensure the bureaucrats and officers comfortably comply with orders from the representatives of the new regime. The duty and mission of MİT in the new regime resemble that of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran.

In this new regime, the police have been restructured to be subordinate to the government rather than to prosecutors and the law. Likewise, the judiciary is now under full command and control of the government. The media is already under control; there will remain no opposition to the new regime of the AKP within the state subsequent to the proper appointments in the banking, finance and education bureaucracies. The external opposition is already silenced. So the new regime of the AKP will become even stronger.

The new regime will be a de facto presidential system. Leading AKP figures already promote this system, despite the fact that it is clearly in violation of the Constitution. Those who could raise any objection to the new illegal regime within the bureaucracy are being removed. And they are being replaced by new bureaucrats who will comply with the orders of the AKP. Even AKP members admit that this new regime is not a democratic one. This is what is happening in Turkey right now.

Published on Today's Zaman, 07 May 2014, Wednesday