Aladdin's magic lamp

When will we realize that living in Putin's Russia and acting like the Oslo Bar Association has no real-world equivalent? Or that a Bar Association is not an organization for those who hold a law license, but for those who make a living by practicing law? Professor Kaboğlu is a retired member of parliament and an academic. He may be the sweetest person in the world, but he has never practiced law in his life.

There are nearly 90,000 lawyers registered in the two bar associations in Istanbul. The overwhelming majority of this number consists of lawyers under the age of 30. It has only been 10 years since I became a lawyer, and nearly 60,000 more lawyers have registered with the Istanbul Bar Associations since then.

If we were to encounter the genie from Aladdin's Magic Lamp on our Orhan Adli Apaydın Street, if we were to close all law faculties in the country to new student admissions, and on top of that, make the Legal Professions Entrance Exam reasonably difficult and put current students through a real screening process, we would still be left with between 110,000 and 140,000 lawyers—most of them fresh out of school—and only one wish left. No matter what we do with our final wish, it does not seem mathematically possible to save the legal profession. For this reason, it is useful to save that last wish for ourselves.

It is clear that there is a democracy problem in Turkey. However, the same problem now exists all over the world. The word democracy is composed of the words demos, meaning people, and kratos, meaning power, and essentially carries the meaning of the power of the people. Because the world's old democracies have become confused about whose demos' kratos they are, the entire world has now evolved into the same simulation as Turkey. Do not tire yourself out with plans to flee abroad in vain; sit in your home and watch how the world is evolving into a dystopia that we cannot even accept as reality.

If the lawyer's problem is solved, the lawyer, the citizen, and the bar association become stronger. If the opposite happens, all three lose at the same time. We have so many problems that even if the president of the Istanbul Bar Association worked 24/7 without sleeping, they could not solve them. It is clear that the "bar association masturbation" that has been going on for decades has stuck us in a swamp. I think we have all understood that politicians, sectarians, ethnicists, those codenamed "change-makers," and everyone else use the bar association as a stool. Istanbul, Istanbul's lawyers, and the people of Istanbul now need a problem-solving character. Given the conditions in Turkey, this person could be a former public official, selected and appointed in Ankara with a broad consensus, who will reorganize the profession and the system according to the Turkey of 2025 and the current lawyer population. If we do not bring in a founding-style leader from Ankara, we will continue to organize "Bar Association Olympics" among ourselves every October every two years.

One final duty falls to the esteemed masters; there is no doubt that you fought epic battles in your time. However, if you had been able to win those battles, our generation would not have had to taste tear gas. You lost the battle you were fighting as of September 12, 1980. Other than living on the same planet as you, we have almost nothing in common. From now on, we will live this life. The time has long since come for us to fight our own battles in the way we see fit. For those under 35, it is time to unite in every segment of society, in every region, and in every professional group.