Mohammed Sultan - محمد سلطان
The second reason behind the low scores of Turkey is that it has been always under very swift cultural and political changes. For the sake of clarity, when I talk about the swift changes, I don’t judge them as being good or bad, but it is the set of decision that made suddenly, and therefore accounted for instability and sometimes chaos. As for the culture aspect, inspecting the modern history would be very revealing about how the pragmatic approach of Micaville was more of harmful than fruitful. According to Professor Davutoglu, the Prime Minister of Turkey and Professor of International Relations, the pragmatic approach has been the Turkish strategy since the fall of the Ottoman Empire (Davutoglu, 2010). For example, in the 2nd of Nov 1994, Chiller went for the first visit to Israel in order to strengthen the mutual relationships and aiming for reviving the economic and militarily cooperation and partnership (NewYork Times, 1994). Such troublesome strategies based solely on the Micaville approach were very shocking for the Turkish society based on hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire. In the 2nd of August 1990, President Turgut Ozel supported the American military contributions in the first Gulf war hoping that it might empower the Turkish role in the Middle Eastern affairs. On a side note, Ozel and Chiller are from the same political party.
As for the political aspect of the second reason, I think the main catalyst behind that is the role of the military rule. Turkey since its formation has been under 4 military coups from 1960 by the rate of almost having a coup every 10 years (Burak, 2011& Oktem, 2011). In the 28th of Feb 1997, Turkey witnessed the last coup- so far- which was known as the white coup against Necmettin Erbikan followed by his resignation in the 30th of June in the same year. Such cruel system based on dominance of the military rule depicting the people as either enemies or allies was the main reason behind Germany's deterioration in the past and Turkey's deterioration in the present. Unfortunately, it was originated even before the formation of the state, known as the deep state in the modern history and had several forms before that (Türköne, 2005). In 1993, the assassination of the reporter, Augur Momku, investigating allegation about the deep state was a red flag about the practises of the deep state, and in 1996 the incident of Sosruluk unveiled the ties between the Mafia, cartels and the police (Oktem, 2011).
The Control of Corruption due to the hidden powers manipulating Turkey, in this is very implying about the small winning coalition role in good governance, Turkey's scores about the control of corruption were even worsened from 1996 till almost 2004, the year in which democracy began to be extremely fought against because of the participation of the masses (Index, Graph 6). By the advent of the second millennium, the problems were clearer due to the transformation of data and technology. The role of the judiciary power became more obvious that is just an apparatus in the military men's hands to reshape and direct the political discourse for their interest, like banning the political parties opposing the military mentality or waving with public declaration for intervening in the political life to save the public order (Lutfallah & Bulmet, 2000).
In conclusion, having a successful governance could only be achieved the circulation of power in a civil and democratic atmosphere. Most of the countries that earned high scores in the indicators of governance were once at their history are military based countries; however, with professionalizing the military and limiting its intrusion in the civil life, they achieved better governance, and Germany is the best example of that. Also, the free democratic practice of governance might go through a lot of difficulties and obstacles, but with the inclusive counseling for all the sects of the society and with separation between the institution with no usurpation of power, there is always a way out of any obstacle. Another aspect that I want to stress upon is the importance of including the various ethnicities in the decision-making process. I wanted to include that under Turkey's part, but then decided to emphasize on it in the conclusion because it logically fits here. One deadly sin that Turkey committed was the excessive use of force with the ethnicities, like the Kurdish dilemma, which I refer it back to the blind use of force by the military mentality. Comparing that to Germany with the current Syrian refugees flux, Germany was able to overcome this problem by rehabilitating the refugees and turn them into a labor power in the German aging society. In other words, the democratic regimes have the capability to adopt and make use of any problem to extract the benefit out of it for the country's interest without resorting to the use of force in the first place.
As for future of Turkey, even though the scores are not improving significantly over the past 10 years, I would say that looking at a broader timeframe would denote to the improvement of Turkey. For example, from 2003 onward, many significant achievements concerning the role of Gender, Women and Human Rights were declared, like constitutionally equating between the rights and duties of men and women, having a Hijabi female minister for the first time in the history of the new Turkish state since 1924 and issuing the law of no executions as a penalty during the times of no-war. Other aspects are still in a very bad condition concerning the freedoms and personal rights, and I would say that was a limitation on my research due to a couple of reason, the Turkish language and the clearly biased reports in English.
Index
World Bank Data Representation: Graphs
due to a technical issue you can access the report From The World Bank Website form the
beginning till now Between Turkey and Germany:
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#reports
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