State Minister Egemen Bağış, minister for European Union affairs, has dismissed accusations that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government is becoming autocratic, saying the charges are politically motivated.
“We categorically reject any and all allegations of ‘autocratic tendency,’ which are biased and politically motivated. The AK Party serves all and respects all. Every Turkish citizen’s freedoms and liberties are under the protection of law, which will further be aligned with the EU process,” Bağış, who is Turkey’s chief negotiator in the stalled accession talks with the EU, said in a press statement released on Wednesday.
Dozens of people, including civilians and retired or incumbent military officials, have been detained in ongoing investigations into alleged attempts to overthrow the government by plotting a coup. When the police detained two journalists in April in one of these investigations — into a clandestine network of state bureaucrats, eminent civil society figures and criminal elements called Ergenekon — critics said this was the latest example of government trying to silence its opponents through legal cases.
Bağış denied the charges and said the cases were comparable to investigations into clandestine organizations in Italy, Spain and Greece. “For any allegations of ‘mass arrest’ in Turkey, remember the Gladio and Clean Hands operations in Italy, the ‘Colonels’ Trials’ in Greece and the Campamento Trial in Spain after the 1981 coup attempt,” he said.
As for the detained journalists, Bağış reiterated that they are in jail not for their professional activities but for their alleged participation in coup plans. “Prosecution has its evidence for the arrests, but defendants are certainly innocent until proven guilty,” he said.
Bağış’s remarks came as Turkey prepares to vote in parliamentary elections this Sunday. The minister said re-electing the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) for a third consecutive term “will be yet another mature vote of confidence.”
“Over the last nine years we have faced the electorate about every two years and renewed our mandate each and every time. All changes in Turkey are towards achieving full democracy. Turkey is shifting from a custodian regime to an EU-standard democracy,” he said.
Opinion polls show the AK Party is set to comfortably win a third term. Bağış said the transformation that Turkey went through under the AK Party government has been “relatively slow due to vested domestic interests, inertia, institutional turf wars and a web of legal/institutional tripwires inherently placed in the path of a democratically elected government.”
“Only three years ago my party was facing an indictment aiming to ban us from politics. We were also threatened by a military coup for electing a civilian president. Some call these checks and balances. A true democratic system of checks and balances was never in effect in Turkey, but will be established in line with EU standards. For the first time in Turkey’s modern history, a democratically elected government is not sharing the stage with self-assigned and undemocratic custodians, and hence the noise,” he said.
Bağış also repeated his government’s promises for a new constitution after the elections.
“After the elections, a new constitution is needed to make a clean break with the current one that is authoritarian in spirit and constructed by the 1980 military coup [junta]. EU members such as Greece, Spain and Portugal have learned that accession to the European Union can only be after a country changes its military-inspired constitution for a civilian one. In that spirit, Turkey, after June 2011, is determined to adopt a civilian constitution based on consensus, and to take a notable step forward in the EU accession process,” he said.