Turkey: a version of an allusive democracy
Closure of the 25th political party in Turkey proves that the Turkish version of the so-called democracy is an allusive form, and that this country is still not fit for the European Union and won't be for many years to come.
Indeed, the Constitutional Court, charged with upholding Turkey's secular Constitution and Kamalism ideology, has a long history of banning political parties that it deems a threat, and even came close to banning the ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AK) in 2008. Since the adoption of a military-inspired Constitution in 1982, almost two years after a military coup, pro-Kurdish and Islamist-leaning parties have been a particular focus of its attention, but members of banned parties have typically regrouped under a new name. All these have lead to articulate the idea that Turkey has become a massive graveyard for the political parties that have been shut down.
On December 11, 2009, Turkey's highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, decided to close the Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in the midst of efforts to find a peaceful resolution to Turkey's close to a century-old Kurdish question. This is a setback to an already fragile peace process. With the banning of the DTP, the number of the political parties shut down in Turkey has reached the high peak of 25 since 1968. No doubt, these figures of dumping political parties show a serious problem with Turkey's version of democracy in general and the whole democratic process in particular. The 11 members of the Constitutional Court unanimously came together and ruled that DTP promoted Kurdish separatism and had links to Kurdistan Workers' Party (PPK); this was enough to end the life of another Kurdish political party in Turkey. Ahmet Turk, a co-chair of the party and a member of Parliament, in addition to Aysel Tugluk, another fellow Parliamentarian, are among the 37 party members who were banned from joining any other political parties for five years. The ban on the four-year-old party has been seen as a setback for the process of legalizing the collective efforts of the Kurdish leaders and bringing them into the political mainstream, and defiantly it could escalate the Kurdish question and will plunge the country into political uncertainty.
It is crucial to point out that the Constitutional Court, in order to justify its verdict, has tried to come up with some answers. As they argued, «the DTP was closed under articles 68 and 69 of the Constitutional and the political Parties Act given that action and statement made by the party became a focal point for terrorism against the indivisible integrity of the state.» Among the other things the court had taken in its consideration was the closure of the Spanish Batasuna as an example in their ruling regarding the DTP. Batasuna was a Basque nationalist party based mainly in Spain, where it was outlawed in 2003 after a court order ruling declared it had been proven that the party was financing the ETA with public money. The Spanish ruling was appealed and earlier this year was confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights. Several Turkish legal experts and politicians have ruled out any similarity between the Batasuna and that of the DTP. At this point, it seems that creating a link between the Batasuna case and that of the DTP are an attempt to discredit the DTP from taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights. It is notable that Ahmet Turk, after the closure of his party, announced that they would take the case to the European court. The same court has already fined Turkey over the closure cases of several previous Kurdish political parties. A European court also ruled last year that the EU should drop the name of the PKK from its list of terrorist organizations, and this hasn't taken place yet.
Full story: http://www.kurdishglobe.net/displayArticle.jsp?id=31135A685D8978D4E40D51A3682A5E50
