The referendum on political and judicial reform which had held Turkey in a state of tension has been decisively resolved in favor of the ruling AK Party of Prime Minister Erdogan. The vote, covering 26 amendments to the Turkish constitution, went a surprisingly confident 58%-42% in favor of the reform, which has widely been interpreted as a strong vote of confidence in the government. This despite the continuous obstructions to various reform proposals on the part of the AKP by the nationalist clique controlling the Turkish judiciary and much of its civil service, including a injunction by the constitutional court against legalizing the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in public places such as universities. The previous Turkish constitution of 1980 itself had been created after a military coup by nationalist forces ushered in an almost 20 year uninterrupted rule of this section of Turkish society, which is strongly reliant on the military, the Turkish bourgeoisie (centered largely in Istanbul) and its intelligentsia. The democratic legitimacy of the successive nationalist governments can be highly doubted despite their veneer of liberalism and their appeals to the liberal West, in particular with an eye to the repeated attempts (some successful) to ban any opposing party which threatened to be too successful and did not support their lines on the religion question or the Kurdish one. Continue reading “A Reform Bill for Turkey”
Category: Politics
What the Wikileaks affair reveals
The major newspapers in the West and various intelligence agencies are in an uproar because of the recent leak of secret data, including battle reports and strategic analysis, relating to the NATO war in and against Afghanistan. The internet site wikileaks, run specifically for this purpose by the elusive Australian Julian Assange, distributed the information to various major newspapers to assure the publication would go through. Wikileaks has a history of revelations of this kind, but this is the greatest transparency coup they have succeeded in committing so far. Continue reading “What the Wikileaks affair reveals”
Independence for Kosovo?
Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not break international law, the International Court of Justice has ruled in a non-binding decision.(1) This of itself has a limited meaning in legal terms. The Court’s full decision is not yet accessible, but the implications are that declarations of independence are matters for the relevant ‘host’ nation state to accept or not, and are not matters for international law a priori. In other words, the question is for the ICJ a nonjusticiable matter. The implications politically for the region are nonetheless serious. Continue reading “Independence for Kosovo?”
A Commentary on the Dutch election results
As a Dutchman, few things are more tiresome than to have to explain the workings of our political system to outsiders used to less democratic systems with three or just two parties. It is understandable enough that a proliferation of viewpoints, embodied in different parties, can be confusing: as many as ten parties at any time may hold seats in our parliament. Nonetheless, the very fact shows the clear and substantial benefits of proportional representation, which this election once again underlines. No voting threshold means that smaller parties on the basis of strong ideas, but with less overall popularity, have a small representation which allows them to exercise ideological pressure on the larger parties – as exemplified by the PvdD, the only ‘deep green’ party in any country’s parliament in the world. Since animals and the environment have no vote, this party can represent something of an interest that in the larger scheme of things would not be heard. Similarly, since there is no district system, there is no gerrymandering, there are no ‘strategic votes’ (unless one considers the Prime Ministerial position to be the most important issue, which few do), and most importantly, every vote actually counts. In the elections for Westminster in the United Kingdom as many as 70% of all votes are routinely wasted because of the first past the post system, and turnout in countries with such systems is therefore also notably lower (except for Australia, which has compulsory voting). The diffusion of the vote is sometimes seen as a problem, because it demands much of the difficult process of coalition-making. Yet at the same time the greater precision in preferences enabled by this system allows many different coalitions to express more precisely different combinations and nuances of political ideas and ideologies that would otherwise be swamped under major polarisations of ‘left’ versus ‘right’ or ‘liberal’ versus ‘conservative’. Finally, the argument of instability of government is not much of an argument either: having elections held more often in fact increases the influence of popular opinion on the course of government, which is why the US House of Representatives is voted every two years, for example. In an age in which all modern countries are by necessity ruled by bureaucracies from day to day, the supposed ‘instability’ therefore is imaginary. Belgium was for half a year ruled by no federal government at all, and yet not a single Belgian noticed any particular collapse in the functioning of social relations or governmental daily life. The only ‘instability’ is that of the possibility of different ideologies to work together, and it is fitting that if a clash of that kind occurs, the voters have a say in which course is the right one. Continue reading “A Commentary on the Dutch election results”
The British Elections and Electoral Reform
In Dutch there is an expression which loosely translates as: “when two dogs fight for a bone, the third will run off with it”. When the Conservative Party under their ‘modernist’ leader David Cameron challenged their major opponents to the first ever televised leader’s debate in Britain, they would have done well to remember this. They counted on the slick appeal of Cameron easily putting the jaw-munching tactlessness of Prime Minister Brown in the shade. But they forgot that the Liberal Democrats, doomed to be the perpetual third party in the UK since the Armistice, had a charismatic figure and an excellent debater in their leader Nick Clegg. The effect has been remarkable: for the first time anyone living can remember, the Liberal Democrats are now leading the other parties in the popular vote in some polls, and are equal contenders in others. The Labour share has dropped to levels lower than those of Michael Foot in the disastrous election of 1979, but the Tories too have not managed to beat their equally bad poll results of the days of New Labour ascendancy in the 1990s. All the remainder of the vote seems increasingly to be moving collectively into the Liberal Democrats’ camp. Now one can debate to what extent this is entirely the result of the impact of modern mass media like television on political campaigns; there are good, if anecdotal, reasons to assume that much of it is also driven by an electorate tired of Labour but equally repulsed by the Tories, looking for a way out. Be that as it may, British elections have not been as exciting and not had as uncertain an outcome in many decades, with everyone now expecting a hung parliament to result for the first time since 1974. Continue reading “The British Elections and Electoral Reform”