School of Politics Hosts Hüseyin Çelik

The 6th week of the School of Politics 9 Program organized by the Bahçeşehir University School of Government and Leadership hosted the following speakers: with the talk "Foreign Policy and Multinational Organizations in the 21st Century," Nationalist Movement Party Deputy Chair and Ankara Member of Parliament Tuğrul TÜRKEŞ; with the talk "Turkish Politics from Past to Present," former Member of Parliament İsmail AMASYALI; with the talk "Democratization Efforts in Türkiye from Past to Present," AK Party Deputy Chair, Gaziantep Member of Parliament and former Minister of Culture and of National Education Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hüseyin ÇELİK; with the talk "The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy in Türkiye," Bahçeşehir University faculty member and Zaman Newspaper columnist Dr. Şahin ALPAY ; and with the talk "What Kind of Türkiye?", Democrat Party Chair Gültekin UYSAL .

Highlights from the speakers:

TUĞRUL TÜRKEŞ

"Current issues are always part of our lives. However, in politics there are some things that are not visible, under the table. In the context of foreign policy, one of these is multinational organizations. The UN, the EU and NATO are the best known and most important of them. Multinational organizations emerged in the 18th century. After the First World War, the UN was established first. The purpose of the UN's establishment was to resolve international issues, previously resolved through war, through reconciliation instead. For nearly the last 50 years, the era was called the space age and the atomic age. However, this was not accepted because it did not address all of humanity. The 21st century became the information age, and multinational organizations began to be redefined. Speaking of the most important of these multinational organizations, the UN and, along with it, the UN's security body are important in taking decisions over countries. For example, the UN's mark can be seen in the separation of Ethiopia and Eritrea and in the division of Sudan into two. A similar process is taking place in Cyprus, and the UN is trying to apply the same policies in Cyprus. The UN denies the existence of two separate countries and two separate nations in Cyprus. The European Union, on the other hand, is a symbol of the West's development and prosperity. In the 1960s, Türkiye applied for EU membership. Although the criteria in that process were the same as today's, EU candidacy cannot be achieved. So what has changed? There is a reason given by the EU: the Turks have a large and young population and are a strong Muslim state. NATO is a product of the bipolar world after the Second World War, the conflict between Russia and the USA. Thanks to the strong Republic founded by Atatürk, Türkiye did not enter the Second World War and embraced NATO with both hands in this process; while the wind of socialism was blowing all over the world, it saw NATO as salvation for the survival of the independent, secular and democratic Republic. The Armenian Genocide allegations frequently voiced today are a price of Türkiye's NATO membership. The concept of genocide, which entered the literature in 1945, is alleged to be an act committed by the Ottomans in 1915. The so-called Armenian Genocide is a policy of undermining applied by Russia as a result of Türkiye's rapprochement with the USA."

İSMAİL AMASYALI

"Politics has been under the manipulation of institutions, and the margin of error of politicians is very high. Those who carried out the 1980 coup trusted the second man and obtained his approval. At that time, political leaders knew best that a military coup would take place; if early elections had been held then, the results of an election held by the will of the people could have been different. The commander who said the effects of 28 February would last a thousand years was right. On 28 February, they wanted to take over the state. If those who attempt coups, like Talat Aydemir, are pardoned, the situation becomes what it is today. Aydemir later made an actual attempt and was executed. How many experienced statesmen are there on the political stage? Those who said 'I leave without looking back' have always been in politics and manipulated it. Türkiye has serious security problems. Everyone makes their own assessments. Regarding terrorist incidents, we need to look at who gives the orders, who provides the logistics and who provides the food. The person who has been inside for 13-14 years is taken as the interlocutor, but the interlocutor is elsewhere. And we applaud those who give incredible support to them from inside and outside. When I asked an American General I spoke with, 'Is there as much interference in parliament in your country as in ours?', he told me that US presidents have always had military backgrounds and joked that the Pentagon faces the parliament building. In America, laws are drafted by the bureaucracy; in our country, laws are passed without knowing what hands are being raised for. There are members of parliament who are unaware of the laws coming before parliament. It is all about parliamentary immunity; you cannot prosecute a civil servant without asking their superior. There is general immunity in Türkiye."

HÜSEYİN ÇELİK

"The Republic of Türkiye was initially a bureaucratic republic, not a democratic one. This continued until the multi-party period in the 1950s. There are republic and monarchy as forms of government in a country. A republic is a system in which the president, prime minister or members of parliament are elected without a dynastic class. A monarchy is a form of government in which monarchs such as a king, sultan or shah rule the state and the state is regarded as the property of the dynasty. In the single-party period, there was a parliament, but the military or the judiciary was decisive. In the 1950s, the Democrat Party was formed with the slogan 'the word belongs to the nation.' After the 1960 coup, in 1961 the constitution was changed by imposition by the National Unity Committee. And for parliament to convene after the election held, the following conditions were put forward: there would be no speaking against 27 May, the banned DP would not be presented as banned, Cemal Gürsel would be president and İsmet İnönü would be prime minister. The president or prime minister had to be from the military. The people, who had not been othered before the Republic, began to be othered with the 1925 Law on the Maintenance of Order. Mahmut Esad Bozkurt said, 'The masters of this nation are the pure Turks,' and after that, a racist basis was pursued. There were 5 classes othered in the early years of the Republic: villagers (they were not allowed into the Kızılay area of Ankara until 1946), non-Muslims (the Wealth Tax was levied), Kurds, the religious and Alevis. However, since villagers made up the vast majority of the country and their votes would be valuable, villagers were later removed from being othered.

He who closes his eyes in the middle of the day makes it night for himself. We cannot ignore Alevis and Kurds. We said there are no Kurds, there is no Kurdish. We said Kurdish is made up of a mixture of other languages. Isn't Turkish the same? Yes to pure Turkish, but a resounding no to dry Turkish. We cannot deny the Kurdish people altogether! To live in peace, we do not need to turn into one another. A democratic society means an orchestral environment. The state is the conductor. If the state governs well and ensures balance, the voices come out in harmony. Every person in the world is different from one another; even identical twins have hundreds of different characteristics. While individual differences are not a problem, why should social differences be a cause for conflict? This Kurdish issue, the issues in the East and Southeast, and the painful side of PKK terrorism unfortunately stand before us as the biggest problem. The PKK terrorist organization comes to attack you. Nowhere in the world can you respond to a terrorist attacking you with weapons with bouquets of flowers. There is no choice but to fight weapons with weapons. But there is no country in the world that has eliminated terrorism only with police and military measures. Our politicians had found the easy way out. We had left the job to the police, the military and village guards. Political reason, that is, state reason, could not think of anything else. Two basic powers are spoken of in the world: hard power and soft power. Your body, your muscles, your weapons are hard power. But there is a power we call the power of reason, which is superior to all other powers. Unfortunately, we do not activate the power of reason. First of all, there is economic desperation in the region. The most dangerous person is the person with nothing to lose. Ultimately, if a person is in need and miserable, if they are dying every day, they say, 'I am not living anyway'; this is a very dangerous aspect. Racism reduces people to the level of animals. They taught us the republic as democracy, but these are not the same thing. We are still not a truly democratic state. The AK Party's 2023 goal is to establish full democracy."

ŞAHİN ALPAY

"With globalization gaining great importance, the distinction between domestic and foreign policy in countries is becoming increasingly less important. The founding period of the Republic of Türkiye is examined in 4 periods. First Period: 1919-1923 is the period of secular Turkish nationalism, winning the War of Independence and founding the Republic. Underlying these policies were Türkiye's resistance to partition under the Treaty of Sèvres, Mustafa Kemal's uniting of all the forces he could unite, and, after this great unifying period, the approach of reducing and isolating enemies. Second Period: 1923-1946 is the Single-Party Period. In this period, Mustafa Kemal put forward the modernization project. The modernization project turned into a policy of building the Turkish nation. The prevailing view was that a modern society is achieved through secularism, and religion was considered an obstacle to modernization. Türkiye was deemed suitable for the project of building a Turkish nation through common Islam, with people of different ethnic origins speaking the same language. Under the conditions of the day, those governing Türkiye thought this modernization would be more appropriate and that no other kind of modernization was possible. When the Lausanne negotiations began, a debate on language was envisaged, but as a result of the negotiations religion took precedence over language. After the Second World War, the world became bipolar with the USA and the Soviet Union, and as a result a cold war arose between these two poles. Third Period: Between 1950 and 1980, the transition to a multi-party system took place. For those governing Türkiye, the transition to a multi-party system was important in 2 respects: democratizing in order to Westernize, and war fatigue within the country and the nation's desire for this system. The 1961 Constitution brought political freedom and freedom of association. In this period, in foreign policy, Türkiye joined the Council of Europe to align with the Western alliance. In those days, there was not the slightest doubt about Türkiye's Europeanness. Türkiye had easily joined organizations such as NATO and the European Economic Community. Fourth Period: It begins in 1991. Between 1990 and 1991, the First Gulf War with the invasion of Kuwait, followed by the Kurds taking refuge in Iran and Türkiye and the Iraqi Kurds appearing on the world stage, was a very important development for Türkiye. While Türkiye was never criticized by its Western friends for coups or limited freedoms, it was heavily criticized over the Kurdish issue. For the first time, the question 'Is Türkiye European?' came onto the agenda. From the 1990s onward, intellectuals raised their voices against the heavy tutelage and social restraint brought by the 12 September regime and demanded freedom and true democracy. The Cyprus issue is the most important problem on Türkiye's European Union path. The obstacles placed in front of Türkiye dampened the enthusiasm for reform and caused the European Union process to enter a troubled period. The 2011 Arab revolutions are as important for Türkiye as the Cold War period was."

GÜLTEKİN UYSAL

"How do we understand today's Türkiye, and how do we make sense of it? For a thousand years we have been in the middle of an important and troubled geography; under the influence of recent developments and political events, we are trying to sustain our existence as a new Republic. We need to understand developing conditions and the concept of time well and characterize our country accordingly. We suffer from the disadvantages of the geography we are in but cannot sufficiently benefit from its advantages; this geography is our destiny, but we can turn it into opportunities. We need to determine a new politics under the influence of a new movement that will unleash our potential. Will we be able to use this potential that geography and history present as both destiny and opportunity? Although we have the 17th largest economy, we rank 59th in terms of competitive potential. To build our future with the means we have, we must turn existing opportunities into added value; what matters is whether we can do this. Putting our own human capital ahead of natural resources is about turning this population into the cogs of the wheel. Türkiye, which has made very big leaps with scarce resources, still has a long way to go. History consists of a race of nations, and there are measures we need to take in this race. In foreign trade, there is a picture fluctuating between 2-3%, and to what extent the targets will be achieved is unknown. Unfortunately, our education policy, which carries the word 'national' in its name, is not stable; there is no structure to fill in the vision, and compared with developing countries we are not in a good position. While attracting foreign direct investment at a rate of 4-6%, in total we can attract only 1% of resources to our country. As of 2008 data, this corresponds to approximately 22 billion dollars, and this figure is expected to be 15 billion dollars this year. This shows that Türkiye does not have a healthy economic growth policy. It should be noted that the good relations we developed with the modernization paradigm have been effective within a four-axis policy. Looking at the Arab Spring and the Syrian issue, we see that our policy has turned into one that divides Syria, and this policy has made Barzani the main actor in the region. Even in the Middle East, where it claims to be a founding and central country, we see that the institutional structure of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not sufficient. In the last 10 years, the gray has narrowed and we have been squeezed between black and white, and the most important shortcoming of our democracy is our inadequate profile in producing solutions."