Making efforts to prevent the government’s success is perhaps understandable on purely political grounds, as other parties hope that it will lose the next elections. However, blocking the initiatives bears the risk of carrying the tension into the streets. Some people want to create an atmosphere for which the government will be blamed, but they seem not to care about the negative effects of this atmosphere, like creating a “Balkan Syndrome” or the risk of civil war, which gives an excuse for the army to act in order to “correct” the situation. As if all these could help anyone in any manner.Let’s take a look at the ongoing debate about the Kurdish issue. Some people claim that the government grants too many privileges to Kurds because those who came from Iraq were released almost without even being questioned while many other people are kept in prison because they simply used their freedom of speech. To put it more clearly, the government is blamed for applying double standards to the Ergenekon case and to the Kurds who have just crossed the border. They also claim that in both cases although the crime is the same (being a member of an illegal organization), the consequences of the crime are different.
However, it’s probably a little late to criticize this situation because we can provide numerous examples in which the same crimes have been punished in different manners, while different crimes have received the same penalties. Everybody knows that the law is applied differently to bureaucrats, to law enforcement officials and to people with high incomes compared to ordinary citizens. While the state can be very lenient toward some people, it becomes extremely severe against others. But this is not surprising: The 1982 Constitution and the laws emanating from its philosophy are made to ensure exactly this. Despite all reform efforts and all amendments, there is a double standard that remains intact.
In fact, the problem is about the new direction of the old practice: Those who would have been given amnesty before are being punished today, and those who were usually punished are now being given amnesty. Maybe without this change, no one would have noticed the deficit concerning human rights and freedom of speech. An ambiguity is also worth noting: The state is the only actor that knows exactly what people who have been prosecuted for terrorism have done and what their concrete crimes or actions are. That’s why public opinion finds itself in front of a monolithic bloc simply called “terrorists,” and it is not able to designate who the real criminals amongst them are. The same is also true for those who are under arrest and who are being accused of plotting a coup because it is unclear if the military pressures the government or if planning or even perpetrating a coup constitutes a crime in Turkey since the perpetrators of the Sept. 12 coup have led very celebrated lives following their actions.
We can provide a multitude of examples; it seems that the real problem is not the law. Trying to justify political actions by using a justice system that has many weaknesses hinders the understanding of the political roots of the problems. In Turkey, laws have always been used for political purposes, but today this situation is more apparent. Maybe this is a good time to launch comprehensive judicial reform.
Benzer Haberler 
