For the first time since the 1980 military coup and the subsequent 1982 constitution, a new constitution is being drafted in Turkey. Many in Turkey are worried that the combination of an Islamist ruling party and an Islamist president will contribute to a change in the country’s secularist tradition.
“In the 1982 constitution the presidency was given too many powers,” explains Mu’stafa Akyul, a Turkish writer and columnist with Turkish Daily News.
Although the prime minister is the most important person, the president has many powers to veto laws and appoint university directors, top judges and so on, says Akyul.
But this will soon change, Akyul believes. The new Turkish constitution, scheduled to be approved by the parliament by the beginning of 2008, will limit the powers of the president and make them similar to those in most European parliamentary systems.
“The president will be more a symbolic figure,” Akyul says.
Nevertheless, the guardians of secularism – the military – are not so sure that Akyul’s assessments are accurate. Since the fall of the caliphate after World War 1, Turkey was always headed by secularist presidents. The appointment of the Islamist party’s foreign minister, ‘Abdallah Gul, to this position a few weeks ago will change the balance in the country, many, including the military, believe.
"The principle of secularism that is enshrined in the constitution …should not be a topic for discussion,” General Ilker Basbug, head of the land forces, said on September 24.
One of the controversial issues is the headscarf. Both Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are in favor of lifting the ban of women wearing headscarves in public institutions.
“AKP’s [the ruling party] leaders have devout Muslim identities, their wives wear headscarves and they have a Muslim worldview. Turkey’s ultra secularists therefore do not believe that anyone who’s a devout Muslim can be a liberal or a democrat, so they routinely and systematically suspect and accuse the AKP of not being sincere. They accuse the AKP of diminishing the powers of the state institutions like the constitutional court and the military’s role in politics,” Akyul explains.
Nevertheless, Akyul says he is optimistic. A democratic state, he says, is a state which is in peace with society.
“Turkish society is very diverse. This diversity was not appreciated by the Turkish state for a long time because the state believed in the idea that in order to have a powerful society you should be homogeneous. Now, groups in political movements like the AKP, the Kurds or the liberals, are pushing for a more diverse Turkey in which devout Muslims will be more free in their faith; Christians and other groups will be more free to evangelize their faith, and Kurds and other minorities will be free in their demands for having an education in their language. This is what this constitution is promising and I think it will be ratified by parliament and voted for [in a referendum] by the Turkish people,” Akyul says.