The Republic is a people's regime, but...

The 100th-anniversary celebrations of the Republic were, as expected, celebrated by the people against the government. In one sense, this is quite natural. However, from another perspective, it is a subject that must be addressed with sensitivity.

Let us first look at the natural situation; as is known, as the opposite of a single-ruler regime such as a kingdom or monarchy, it is a form of people's governance where the public dominates the administration. To recall simply, as seen in ancient Greek civilization, direct democracy is not applicable in today's complex, high-population eras. In this case, the system of ensuring the administration of society through people's assemblies, namely parliaments, as representatives of the people, is called a 'republican regime.'

The first version of this simple model was brought to the political agenda with the 1789 French Revolution. With the revolution, all people began to be treated as citizens and received equal treatment. In other words, everyone was granted the right to vote and be elected under equal conditions. At first glance, the French Revolution was seen as an extraordinarily advanced movement in this form; this was also very natural. However, if all citizens have the right to vote and be elected, and the parliament has the power to govern society through law, such a system posed a great danger to wealthy and elitist segments. Because by securing a majority in parliament, some rights of the nobles could be restricted. To prevent this danger, for the sake of the survival of the elites' acquired freedoms, the freedoms of the large segments of society had to be curtailed under the discourse of democracy. Namely, the parliament could take any decision, but it could not make changes to certain fundamental rights (!).

This clause, which posed a serious obstacle to the realization of true democracy, protected certain privileged segments. Thus, the French Revolution, which was reflected/projected to the whole world as a noble beginning with the principles of liberty, equality, and solidarity, was actually elevating slaves to the level of citizenship, and although it made them holders of citizenship rights, it deprived them of the capacity to use the rights they possessed, because the rights of the nobles could not be abolished by the majority votes of the citizens. In this form, the French Revolution, while granting citizenship rights to all individuals, did not go beyond superficial political democracy. In the political democratic system created as a result of the French Revolution, the rights protected in the constitution that could not be changed were not of a social nature, but were rights belonging to individual persons or segments.

Without closing this parenthesis, let us consider the unchangeable provisions in the Constitution within the framework of the French Revolution by looking at the situation in Turkey. The unchangeable provisions accepted after the French Revolution were not general provisions covering the entire society, but minority provisions aimed at protecting the interests of certain privileged persons or classes. In contrast, the unchangeable provisions determined in the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, such as secularism or social democracy, are not specific to one person or group, but are provisions covering the entire society.

Moreover, the unchangeable provisions in our constitution, unlike the post-French Revolution provisions that divided society by merely protecting certain personal rights, are provisions that liberate individuals and form the cement of society. That is why touching the unchangeable provisions in our constitution is tantamount to destroying the unifying features in the fundamental columns of society. Could there not be an official similar to the British agent whom the Ottomans once knew as Reşit Efendi, whose real name was Arminius Vamberi, who instills such society-destroying views into the consciousness of society? Cemal Kutay's book on this subject sheds light on our present day and warns us.

When we discuss our topic purely as a republic, that is, people's governance, the danger of the contradiction of fragmentation appearing against the integrity of the people that needs to be ensured can emerge. While the noble class preserved in the social and political republican structure created after the French Revolution created this contradiction, in today's conditions, production relations, the form of ownership, and the distribution problem caused by the system create it. Indeed, this very problem began to occupy the minds of political scientists as the most important problem of the system with the industrial revolution that occurred in England in the 1840s, about a century after the 1789 French Revolution; the problem of economic democracy versus political democracy!

If we approach the issue in terms of today's Turkey, it is understood that problems such as who the dominant segments in politics are or which circles they belong to, and the way political decisions are taken and implemented, cannot be sufficiently explained by the concept of republic. Therefore, the word 'Republic' as a definition of a management style does not mean much in the context of today's production relations and economic power distribution. Although it is clear that using the word Republic together with the word democracy would be more meaningful, it is thought-provoking why the term “Democratic Republic” is not included in general usage.

It is clear that the expression democratic republic envisions justice at the production process stage. This situation brings to the agenda or suggests a non-capitalist production relation. Therefore, the expression democratic republic is generally replaced by the expression social democracy. Unlike the democratic republic, in the practice of social democracy, income distribution is not decided at the production stage as in the first, but an attempt is made to ensure secondary distribution through tax and expenditure mechanisms at the post-production distribution stage.

Leaving these topics, which require a more detailed examination of state and social democracy theories, to the next article, I wish for the second century of our Republic to pass in greater happiness and prosperity, leaving behind the pains and sufferings of the first.