PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

ciety bodies, were cut off from political activities. Democratic politicswas severed from its social base. The constraints against political and socialplurality were too firmly entrenched in the new Constitution and lawsto be dispensed with easily.An important factor in such a pessimistic turn was the absence ofparliamentary majorities follovving the 1991 and 1995 elections. This producedheterogeneous and ineffective coalition governments, in contrast tothe stronger majoritarian governments of the 1983-91 period. A successionof weak governments and lack of credible leadership (Turgut Özalwas, from 1983 to 1991, a controversial but effective Prime Minister) leftthe majör problems unattended, hence their aggravation. Hence also, themore active involvement of the Army in the political process, as the militarybureaucracy was worried about the inability of the civilian power tocope adequately with two issues they considered to be vital: the terroistactions of the Kurdish guerrilla movement, PKK (The Workers' Party ofKurdistan) in South-East Anatolia, and Islamic fundamentalism. Both hadgrown in the 1980s and continued to do so in the 1990s.The result was the Army's interference in the civilian political process.On 28 February 1987, when the National Security Council ~a constitutionalbody, where the military members are in the majority andelected ones in minority, and vvhich is the real seat of power~ imposed aseries of anti-islamist measures upon the coalition government led by theislamist Prime Minister Necmeddin Erbakan, in association vvith TansuÇiller's True Path Party. This government resigned in June 1997. TheWelfare Party vvas subsequently banned for anti-constitutional (antisecular)activities, and immediately replaced by the Virtue Party. Whetherjustified or not, this "soft" intervention was a defeat of democracy. Itmeant the resurgence of a familiar configuration in Turkish polity: weakand ineffective representative institutions (both the executive and the legislative)on the one side, and a tutelary Army, resuming its role as the ultimatedefender oef the secular republic and the integrity of the country,on the other.It is remarkable that, so far, democratization survived such recurrentcrises, and expanded again up to a certain point, to take another regressiveturn. Within such cycles, gradually, a number of fundamental elementsof democracy have been established. They include regular elections;active political parties (but they are clientelistic and their internalfunctioning is non-democratic) representing different ideologies, rightistand leftist, as well as elitist-secular and conservative-islamist; and theemergence of an organized and dynamic civil society.However, democratization has not been able to gain enough strength,against numerous anti-democratic features. There is a conspicuous absenceof transparency and accountability in the state and public adminis-232