Thoughts on a birthday

How fortunate I am that I was able to turn 80 last week. My thanks to everyone who celebrated and gave gifts. However, among my gifts, the one that made me think the most—and therefore pleased me, for it is my nature to enjoy thinking—was an album meticulously compiled by my eldest son, featuring photographs from various stages of my life.

What is happening in my country keeps the phrase "I've seen this movie before"—which I find unpleasant in reality but cannot help but use here—at the forefront of my mind. In other words, I am happy that I can think, but I am equally saddened by what comes to mind.

In 1960, as I was finishing middle school, I gave a speech titled "Knowledge and Freedom" at my graduation ceremony. I was certainly inspired by the student movements of the time. Some time after this speech, my late father, along with my late sister, put me on the Paşabahçe ferry from Dolmabahçe and sent me to listen to the Yassıada trials. As he put me on the ferry, he told my sister, "My heart cannot bear to watch these trials, but Hasan and you need to see this event." My father also told me this: After May 27, while he was the president of the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, a famous law professor who was preparing the new constitution visited him and said: "In the constitution we are preparing, we would like business circles to have a certain weight in the country's administration. We have a plan. We are thinking of reserving a senate seat for every commercial establishment in the Senate whose paid-in capital is above a certain amount. As the president of the country's largest chamber of commerce, what do you say?" My father's response was: "Dear professor, you think I would be very happy with this proposal as the chamber president, don't you? How wrong you are! What you are describing is a completely fascist order. Please leave here now and return to your university by marching up the Babıali slope with the goose-step that is the symbol of the order you propose." My father's workplace was across from the New Post Office in Sirkeci, and even when he recounted this professor's visit, he would get very angry as if he were reliving the event.

The following observation I heard from the late, famous jurist Prof. Aydın Aybay regarding the legal dimension of the May 27 coup is also very instructive in terms of our justice system or lack thereof. At Yassıada, the lawyer for the defendant, former TBMM Speaker Refik Koraltan, is making a defense. At one point in the defense, there is a reference to a famous work by a famous British jurist. The Chief Prosecutor immediately warns the court president: "Mr. President, I request that this reference be immediately removed from the defense. There is a rule in the establishment directive (regulation?) of this extraordinary court that public resources cannot be used in the defense of the accused. I know that there is only one copy of the referenced book in our country. And that single copy is in the public library of the Istanbul University Faculty of Law, which is a public institution." Dear Professor Aydın would not tell this story without adding a heartfelt laugh.

By the time of the September 12 military coup, I was already a university professor. I watched my university sink to the depths of despair by shamelessly awarding an honorary law degree to Kenan Evren. I learned later. Naturally, many other rectors had also attended the honorary doctorate ceremony I mentioned. Regarding this ominous ceremony and the rectors who attended it, the dean of the Istanbul University Faculty of Law at the time said: "They took over the administration, but it was of no use to the university. We thought about what to do with the rector. He goes everywhere, let's invite him, we said. We explained the shortcomings. He and his aides took notes. We had prepared the diploma, we gave it. At that time there were 28 universities, and the rectors of all 28 were at the ceremony. The rectors of all the universities said, 'Come to us too, let us give it too.' Evren turned and said, 'I don't have time, I'm accepting it on behalf of all of you.'" (https://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/cubbeyi-para-icin-verdik,l9vRtbbpykKf_Hxmq2FL7A)

I still regret it. When I was the president of the TÜBA Ethics Committee, I made the İhsan Doğramacı–Spock plagiarism such an issue that I was ready to take it to the European Court of Human Rights, but (A Plagiarism 2nd edition, H. Yazıcı, İletişim Yayınları 2024) I made no attempt to have the honorary doctorate I mentioned revoked during the nine years I was the president of the Istanbul University Ethics Committee.

I watched, and continue to watch, the Ergenekon absurdities, the 2016 FETÖ uprising, and their aftermath with great sadness. As I write these lines, some television channels are showing the CHP's Maltepe meeting and the reactions to it. As always, I am both happy and sad.

It is better that I return to the gift my son gave me. In one of the photographs, I look with great longing, as if to say "Where is it!", at a text hanging on a wall that reads: The stability and balance of a state, along with all its affiliated institutions, the morality, customs, and all the blessings of society, are so dependent on the honest and proper application of justice in that country that...

The date these words were spoken is 1776. The speaker is John Adams, who would later become the 2nd President of the USA. It is only a part of the introductory sentence of a paragraph emphasizing how vital the separation of powers is for a society to survive humanely and the priority of justice in this vitality.