Turkey has changed, the constitutional architecture remained unchanged
Turkey had better start thinking about a new constitutional architecture not only to boost its per capita income from $10k to $25k, but also to save the precarious transition process we are going through from additional ambiguities.
The issue of a presidential system keeps coming onto the agenda in Turkey nowadays. Or better still, it never really comes onto the agenda. I would like to point out what I make out of this debate. First, I believe we need to get this debate, which has been on a headstand, back on its two feet. Let me start there...
In 1982, Turkey’s income per capita stood at $1,400. Then in the early 2000s it exceeded $3,500. Then in 2010, the per capita income of the country exceeded $10,000. But Turkey’s constitutional architecture, as designed in the 1982 Constitution, has remained unchanged. From 1980 to today, particularly when the EU accession process paced up, the constitution became a rag bag.
The truth is, no one gave much thought to the harmony of all the amendments introduced to the constitution. No one cared for the totality of the constitutional architecture. We have never discussed the new requirements brought along with the transition from an economy with a national income per capita of $1.5k to one with $10k. We never even thought about it. Now no one wants Turkey to remain here. Everyone wants the national income per capita to leap from $10k to $25k. OK, so would this 1980-make constitutional architecture allow Turkey’s jump from $10k to $25k? See, we don’t discuss that at all either. But we should.
Korea was just like Turkey in the early 1980s. Its per capita income was around $1,700. It reached $2,000 in 1982. Korea’s per capita income had reached $3,700 by year 1987. It was only then that Turkey reached a $1,700 income per capita, to the point Korea was in 1980. Korea had good fortunes in 1990s. Its national income per capita exceeded $12k in 2002. It was only then that we reached $3,700, i.e. the point Korea was in 1987. This is one way to narrate the Korean story. It is possible to tell the story in another way. Let me go down that road too:
It is not a coincidence that I cite the year 1987. Korea made a new constitution in 1987 and redesigned the constitutional architecture. It based the presidential system in the country on new principles. It revamped the system residuary of a military coup. The rule of the president was limited to a single term. In the meantime, the Constitutional Court, which was missing in the former constitutional architecture, was added to the system. Korea’s Constitutional Court was set up in 1989. The principle of the rule of law, which guarantees the equal treatment of everyone, could hence be applied. That is how Korea leapt from $3.7k to $25k per capita income. As Korea changed, Korean constitutional architecture too changed. That change sort of paved the way for Korea to escape the middle income trap by its own means.
What do I mean by the constitutional infrastructure? Constitutions are made up of two sections. The first section identifies the basic rights and liberties. The second section designs the constitutional infrastructure. The constitutional infrastructure comprises the organization of legislative, executive and judicial powers and the relations among the three. As the economic infrastructure changes, as relations become more complex, the revision of the constitutional infrastructure and the administrative structure that stems from it becomes ipso facto mandatory. As the relationships become more complex, the guarantees required by economic actors need to be reinforced. You can no longer allow investors to say, “Who can tell if you will or will not take a decision to invest in a new port at dawn today?”
So, from the perspective of 2023 targets, does Turkey need a new constitution and a reorganization of the relations among institutions in order to achieve those targets? Yes, Turkey needs to change its constitutional infrastructure. Has the regulation whereby the president of the republic is elected directly by the electorate, one we introduced based on the political frictions of the day without giving it much thought, disrupted the balance of the constitutional infrastructure of the 1982 constitution altogether? Yes. Are the practical outcomes of the same regulation an additional source of ambiguity today? Yes. Can Turkey afford additional ambiguities considering the region it is located in and the negative economic shocks of the day? No.
The prerequisite for a patient to agree to a treatment is for the patient to accept their malady. Let’s agree on the diagnosis first. Then we can consider what the treatment should be. I have the impression that there is considerable confusion surrounding the presidential system in Turkey. The reason for this confusion is the fact that we have started discussing the treatment before we discussed the diagnosis. This is what I mean by a debate on a headstand.
So here is my diagnosis: Turkey had better start thinking about a new constitutional architecture not only to boost its per capita income from $10k to $25k, but also to save the precarious transition process we are going through from additional ambiguities. The transition period about the constitutional infrastructure should be designed in a way that won’t lead to additional ambiguities.
I made an introduction today to get the debate back on its two feet. I will go on. Let me elaborate a bit more on the diagnosis, and then we can get to the treatment.
