A country cannot make high value-added production if conflicts about intellectual property rights cannot be solved easily in the judicial system.

Lately, the world has become engulfed in the fire of upheaval. During the weekend demonstrations were held all around the world. This fire of upheaval is the clearest evidence that the new normal will not be at all similar to the old one. Today, however, I am not interested in the upheaval per se. I want to state from the very beginning with three observations about the demonstrations I have been following since the beginning of the year. First is that there are two types of countries in the world: those in which the police are harmed more than demonstrators during the demonstrations, and those in which the demonstrators are harmed more than the police. England is in the first group; Turkey is in the second. I am keeping Syria out of the assessment.

Second, the judicial systems of the countries in the first group are able to fulfill their duty promptly without anyone pushing them. Such is England. Turkey, on the other hand, is not even close to making it into the first group. It is now evident that Turkey has only changed the political ownership of the system under the name of judicial reform, completely ignoring the operational problems of the judicial system. Third, the countries in the first group are able to manufacture domestic automobiles while those in the second group are not. England is again in the first group while Turkey is in the second. It is an integral skill to be able to manufacture domestic automobiles with domestic value added. If the judiciary is dysfunctional due to operational problems, that country cannot manufacture domestic automobiles. There will be only empty talk with no action.

Now let me state my purpose. The fire of upheaval surrounded London, the capital city of England, on August 6th, as you might remember. A citizen of the United Kingdom of a different color was shot to death by the police, the victim of a series of misunderstandings. London burned during the first days of August. Shops were looted, and buildings and automobiles were torched. On August 24, 3100 people deemed to have been responsible for the incidents were brought to court. Not all of them were under arrest; only one thousand were arrested. By the end of August, the trials of 1200 of them had been completed. Those who had been convicted of the same offense before received a twenty percent harsher punishment and were sent to prison. By mid-September, even the appeal hearings of some convicts had been completed. I have compiled this information from the British dailies, mostly the Guardian. The conclusion is the same any way you look at it: those who committed an offense at the beginning of August were heard in the courts, which worked overtime, and were confined in the same month. Those who were sent to prison were convicts, not detainees.

This is how the judiciary works in normal countries. From this perspective, Turkey is a perfect example of an abnormal country. Let me say it frankly: Turkey is a country in which the judicial system is dysfunctional due to operational problems. If justice is the foundation of state order, Turkey is suffering from structural and fundamental problems. Take the Fenerbahçe sports club case, for instance. The trials began at the same time as the uprising trials in London. The latter have already been finished, whereas the conclusion of the former remains unknown. Even allegations are nonexistent. This is just one piece of evidence of the operational problems of the judiciary in Turkey. Political trials such as Ergenekon and Sledgehammer (Balyoz) are next.

Or forget about the complex lawsuits, which require a strong organizational capacity and skills to prove allegations, 98% of the bounced check cases in Turkey are settled outside the judicial system, which requires no operational effort or skill to prove the conviction. One accepts a check for the method of payment, but the check bounces. There is no need to know how to send a rocket into space to judge this case; the conclusion can be reached immediately. But it is not the case. As a result, no one applies to the judiciary to settle disputes.

Some days ago I said, “A country which has not defined well the intellectual property rights cannot engage in high value-added businesses.” Let me take a step further: a country cannot make high value added production if conflicts about intellectual property rights cannot be solved easily in the judicial system, no matter how badly you want it. Actions speak louder than words.

Then, is the solution too difficult? It is not. The Union of Turkish Bar Associations solved one of the operational problems of the judiciary in Turkey by providing lawyers with smart ID cards to enable easy access to the Istanbul Courthouse. Micro reforms are easy to implement for the committed.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 18.10.2011