To begin with, when addressing this failure, we should not focus on the concrete steps taken during the process.

It appears that the constitution-making process initiated in 2011 has become mired down for now. Levent Gönenç of TEPAV has done a study of 148 among 806 attempts at constitution making since the French Revolution of 1789 and identified that the average time that it takes to make a new constitution was 16 months. In Turkey’s case, civil politics has failed in making a new constitution in its first attempt of about 25 months. I hope it does not end up like the Myanmar Constitution, which was made by the military in about 17 years. The Citizens’ Assembly Meetings we carried out in early 2012 revealed that 75 percent of the people were unhappy with the constitution of the coup d’état. Yet the politicians have so far failed to replace it with a new one.

It is not that the politicians were oblivious to the deep-rooted tradition of deliberative constitution-making in Turkey. We don’t have such tradition. This was the first attempt ever and no one knew how to succeed. In fact, we still don’t know how to make a constitution. But the need for one is evident. At this stage, what matters is to learn lessons from the failed attempts so that the next attempt can be more successful. After all, we will try again. So, today let me share with you the lessons I learned from the first try. To begin with, when addressing this failure, we should not focus on the concrete steps taken during the process. The 60 articles on which the commission is said to have agreed and their content do not have any significance. If we are to derive lessons, we have to concentrate on the design of the process, not outputs of it. So, there goes the first observation: Turkey was not able to finalize the constitution making process because the design was incorrect.

What I meant by incorrect design has nothing to do with the senseless argument that waiting for four political parties to reach a common accord was incorrect in the first place. I believe that this was the nagging of a technician. In its second attempt, Turkey had batter not give credit to incorrect views. Under the current political system, it is impossible to complete the process without the common accord of political leaders. The process could not have been (and has not been) completed without the communion of leaders behind closed doors. This is the second observation.

Third, I think to create a new constitution with reference to the current one was the biggest mistake from the start. I guess the fiscal policy tradition and the constitution tradition are the same in Turkey. Since we always cheat by copying from the previous texts, we fail to make any headway. All of the finance officers in Turkey argue that the best tax law has already been written. Alike, all legal experts seem to think that the most perfect constitution ever is the one already written. If you copy from an incorrect document, all you will make is another mistake. So I believe that the first mistake in the new constitution-making process was to initiate the debate on the articles of the current constitution rather than on the fundamental principles on which the new constitution should be based.

My fourth observation is that asking political parties to propose articles for the new constitution causes a futile path dependency for the process. When the proposal is made by a political party, even the slightest change you offer to make encounters resistance of that party. Asking party councils to debate fundamental principles and feeding proposed articles from the outside of the council would enable a healthier process management. The current method was a mistake, and we all know the outcome.

Fifth seems to be related to the isolation of the public control from the negotiation process. A poll conducted in January 2013 revealed that 62 percent of the population was unaware of the works of the constitution commission. The public support at the start could not be sustained. Let’s hope the better for the next time. These are mistakes in design that I could identify. From another perspective, the constitution-making process cannot run independent of the political agenda. Even if the above mistakes were not done, this first attempts would have failed. Given the schedule of three consecutive elections, the solution process would have failed anyway even if all the steps were correct. You should not attempt making a new constitution independent of the political schedule.

Or more correctly, if the intention is to progress the solution process based only on empty talks, you cannot make a new constitution without checking your schedule.

This commentary was published in Radikal dily on 13.12.2013