Action above partisanship in Parliament
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Ocak 05, 2009 00:00
Times are difficult. Turkish political tensions are high. Passions amid looming elections, a score of critical national debates and an escalating crisis in Gaza near fever pitch. Yet still, dispassion is possible. Underscoring this fact is a small proposal with enormous meaning.
This is the proposal by a National Movement Party, or MHP, deputy to offer restitution to those imprisoned without any criminal conviction in the wake of the 1980 military coup. Ali Uzunırmak would do this with a mechanism to count time behind bars toward calculation for government retirement benefits.
There may be alternative ways to do this; we acknowledge the dire state of Turkey’s much-abused public pension system. That discussion will come later. But the means are secondary to the primary goal which is our point. The point is the broad response to this proposal at a time when political life is dominated by extremes of political posturing for the smallest advantage. Members of all the acronyms in Parliament, AKP, CHP, DTP and DSP have welcomed this move and agreed to consider it before it has even been formally submitted. We would like to believe the fact that members of all other parties have tentatively stepped forth to endorse this idea turns on two things. First was the scope of the coup’s sweep: 650,000 taken into custody, files opened on 1.6 million, 517 sentenced to death.
Second is the fact the strife and violence both before the Sept. 12, 1980 coup and afterward remains vivid in the minds of many in Turkey’s political class today. Many political actors today witnessed the street violence and killing of the 1970s and subsequent horror of the coup from rival vantage points. That today there is broad consensus in retrospect that these were years of wasted lives and national potential should tell us something.
We believe that this tells us something about political maturity, that unity is possible in the face of challenges other than externally-driven emergency. The moral and ethical clarity with which this recent history is viewed today across the political spectrum illustrates not only the possibility of reconciliation, but the reflex and impulse to support reconciliation. There is even a phrase for this circulating in parliamentary corridors, "parti ötesi hareket." Rough translation: "action above partisanship."
The validity and value of this social capital may be easy to overlook in these times of many political and policy distractions. This should not be allowed to happen.
Turkish politicians will continue to wage many battles. Fair enough. Democracies were never designed for decorum. But there are some issues where the stakes are so high, and the issues so clear in moral and ethical terms, that division is not an option. We hope to see more action above partisanship.
There may be alternative ways to do this; we acknowledge the dire state of Turkey’s much-abused public pension system. That discussion will come later. But the means are secondary to the primary goal which is our point. The point is the broad response to this proposal at a time when political life is dominated by extremes of political posturing for the smallest advantage. Members of all the acronyms in Parliament, AKP, CHP, DTP and DSP have welcomed this move and agreed to consider it before it has even been formally submitted. We would like to believe the fact that members of all other parties have tentatively stepped forth to endorse this idea turns on two things. First was the scope of the coup’s sweep: 650,000 taken into custody, files opened on 1.6 million, 517 sentenced to death.
Second is the fact the strife and violence both before the Sept. 12, 1980 coup and afterward remains vivid in the minds of many in Turkey’s political class today. Many political actors today witnessed the street violence and killing of the 1970s and subsequent horror of the coup from rival vantage points. That today there is broad consensus in retrospect that these were years of wasted lives and national potential should tell us something.
We believe that this tells us something about political maturity, that unity is possible in the face of challenges other than externally-driven emergency. The moral and ethical clarity with which this recent history is viewed today across the political spectrum illustrates not only the possibility of reconciliation, but the reflex and impulse to support reconciliation. There is even a phrase for this circulating in parliamentary corridors, "parti ötesi hareket." Rough translation: "action above partisanship."
The validity and value of this social capital may be easy to overlook in these times of many political and policy distractions. This should not be allowed to happen.
Turkish politicians will continue to wage many battles. Fair enough. Democracies were never designed for decorum. But there are some issues where the stakes are so high, and the issues so clear in moral and ethical terms, that division is not an option. We hope to see more action above partisanship.