Yusuf Kanli: Is party closure death penalty?
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Punishment has to be corrective in nature… That is the modern understanding of punishment. This understanding was the backbone of the anti-death penalty movement in Turkey until that inhumane application was lifted from Turkish criminal law by the Bülent Ecevit government with the exception of times of war and later by the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government all together including the time of war.
Amid building pressures against resumption of hangings during the period of military rule, Kenan Evren, the leader of the 1980 military coup, had asked angrily “Shall not we hang but feed them?”
Those were the times when the “If you hang a few of them, peace and order in the country will easily be restored” mentality was in power in the country and that “absolute power” of the then ruling junta was so merciless that the age of an 17-year-old young “criminal” was “increased” by a court decision to 18 – in order to overcome the “legal obstacle” prohibiting at the time application of death penalty on people below 18 – so that he could be hanged as well. He was Erdal Eren, one of the 54 people hanged during the 1980-83 coup period.
After the restoration of civilian rule at the end of 1983 Turkey started to apply an undeclared moratorium regarding the death penalty, largely because of the deep sorrow the Turkish public felt at the Eren case and as a reaction to Evren's “Shall not we hang but feed them?” mentality…
Applause for Ecevit, Erdoğan:
Abolition of the death penalty is indeed one of the many reforms that the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government achieved in its first three years in office, that not only the supporters of the party but even opponents who wanted enhancement of democracy and individual rights and liberties in this country united in applauding. Those years were the times of a fast wind of change in Turkey toward becoming a country anchored firmly with the democracies of the Western world…
Since then, unfortunately, that wind subsided in parallel with the growing awareness in the AKP that the “religious freedoms” it was aspiring were not indeed conforming well with the European Union understanding of governance and individual rights – as was demonstrated in the decision of the European Court of Justice during the Leyla Şahin case.
Thus, after the first three years in office the reform understanding of the AKP was replaced with a “pretending as if doing” approach, rather than the preceding fast track and indeed revolutionary performance, forgetting that it was the “change expectation” of the Turkish people and the strong winds of reform that not only brought the AKP ship to power but helped it survive all those difficult tides.
The more the AKP sailed away from the EU dock towards an ambiguous orientalist destination, the more the country started to polarize and the more the AKP faced hardships, the latest one being the closure case which to a great extend triggered with the so-called turban or headscarf case.
Now, as the Constitutional Court has set July 28 as the date to start its decision-making sessions in the closure case, not only the AKP but its supporters among the intellectuals of the society and in the media have started talking about the “similarity” between the “death penalty for individuals” and “closure of political parties.”
Of course there is a similarity between the two as the death penalty terminates the life of an individual, closure decision terminates the life of a political party and from that perspective in essence such an application is against the modern understanding that punishment has to be corrective in nature. From this perspective, of course, even the Venice criteria that allow closure of parties if they were involved in violence must be scrapped and some sort of a new “corrective” punishment like the “life imprisonment without parole” must be introduced in the laws governing political parties.
But, of course this issue is not something that can be resolved between now and the beginning of August when the high court is expected to finalize its verdict in the AKP closure case.
This issue must be addressed perhaps as part of a wide-ranging new reform move that not only this writer but vast sections of the Turkish society aspire to see irrespective of what the verdict in the closure case against the AKP or the much ignored other closure case – against the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP – might be.
However, until after that new “corrective punishment” is defined in laws, the current law has to be applied and current laws say the Constitutional Court can decide either for closure – and impose political bans for those it considers caused the party's closure with their actions – with a qualified (minimum 7-4) majority, suspend Treasury assistance or acquit the party.
We might not be happy and we might even deplore the verdict, but it will be a legal one that has to be respected.
* The original copy of this article is taken from Turkish Daily News. To read the full version of the article please visit http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/editorial.php?ed=yusuf_kanli