Can an established parliament draft a constitution?

I am not a constitutional lawyer. However, in our constitutional law class at the Faculty of Economics, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Nail Kubalı taught us the exact same program he applied at the Faculty of Law; therefore, even if not in depth, I have some knowledge of this subject as a citizen. According to what we were taught, a parliament with the status of an "established parliament"—which has taken office by swearing an oath in accordance with the existing constitution—cannot draft an entirely new constitution; it can only amend certain articles that need changing in accordance with the general principles of the existing constitution, or introduce new provisions. Given this, the current parliament, which has the status of an established parliament under the constitution, cannot in any way draft a brand-new constitution. However, the grave reality is that, unfortunately, there seems to be no hesitation in jeopardizing even the integrity of the country to pave the way for drafting a new constitution.

The identity of a constitution is, at the same time, the identity of the state. The identity of a constitution is determined in the context of property relations over the means of production. The submission of a draft constitution that defines private property over capital assets to a referendum, and its acceptance by a large majority of the public, is a result of the implicit pressure exerted by the capitalist system on society, manifesting as complete ignorance and false consciousness. Acting with false consciousness, the public does not realize that by accepting a draft constitution that includes private property, they are condemning themselves through social blindness. This situation is not unique to the constitution but applies to the entire legal system. Therefore, state structuring can actually give the appearance of freedom or democracy to the general public while masking capital interests, or it can present a false image under such brilliant expressions.

When we look at the constitution-state relationship, a similar masking is seen in state structure and policies. We see a promise of partial freedom and a peaceful economic life both in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan state theory and in the Hegelian state structure, which is not bourgeois in its essence. However, following the collapse of the social state phenomenon applied in Europe and almost all capitalist economies after the Second World War, Marxist thinkers have presented the state in a different way through realistic analysis and interpretation. While most are not Marxists, in the views pioneered by James O’Connor in the US and Bob Jessop in the UK, the state and government are distinguished from each other, and the duties of the state are defined very differently from the classical view. Leaving aside minor differences, in both O’Connor’s and Jessop’s approaches, the state is defined as the public instrument of the bourgeoisie, a political agent tasked with contributing to private capital accumulation. The state, responsible for contributing to private capital accumulation, is also tasked with providing services to certain segments of society—which at first glance may seem contrary to the interests of capital—in order to ensure the legitimation and maintenance of the system. Ralph Miliband, who brought the subject of the state to the agenda with clarity, defines the state as the "stick of capital," arguing that it carries out all the business of capital through regulations or legal arrangements with veiled expressions. Miliband goes even further, claiming that companies place their personnel in various public decision-making levels to ensure that public decisions are made in favor of capital. Nicos Poulantzas goes even further than Miliband, arguing that the state apparatus already operates in accordance with the requirements of the bourgeoisie without the need for companies to insert personnel into various levels of the state.

The aforementioned views that emerged after the Second World War are also undergoing changes depending on today’s changing international capital structure and economic conditions. Under today’s neoliberal economic conditions, changes have also occurred in the structuring of national states in parallel with the origin of capital and the expansion of its market. Parallel to these changes in capital, bourgeois states have also transformed into international bourgeois states. The state structure, which had set out to serve national capital in the guise of a nation-state structure, has turned in favor of the interests of international capital during the period of the internationalization of capital. In line with these developments, constitutional provisions and the understanding of social benefit have also undergone change, and national assets are now being placed at the service of international capital through privatization practices. As a stage of capitalism, neoliberalism has dominated our age not as a system that improves social life, but as one that corrupts the human spirit and society. Engels also describes the effect of capitalism on the working class as "social murder." Under today’s neoliberal conditions, Keynesian social state policies are in the background, and the worker is expected to put not only their labor but their soul and entire existence into their work. The globalization trend directs national states from national policies to the service of international capital policies. Under these conditions, pressure on labor is intensifying in all countries, but even more intensely in developing countries, through methods such as flexible employment, unemployment, and low wages. In this process, the AKP, which is becoming increasingly hardened, clings to religiousness as a cover to mask the policies it implements. Clinging to religiousness in the shadow of rising sects, the AKP, in this way, both pacifies the reaction of the oppressed and strives to wear a velvet glove over its oppressive policy. As a result of the pressure of imperialism and the desperation of politics, the state will naturally head toward a new and different structure along with the oppressive constitution that is being attempted to be fed to society.

The imperialist policies implemented with the 2000-IMF project are a "neo-liberal imperialism" model. In this model, the problem is not just the excessive burden on the public, but also the tendency of national and local administrations to serve international capital interests to the detriment of national and local interests. This set of rules, which carries such provisions that are not yet reflected in concrete constitutions and are unlikely to be reflected so openly in a designed constitution, should be seen as an abstract constitutional model imposed on our country in the context of the new international capital formation.

Now, under these conditions and international impositions, what Turkey will be left pregnant with in exchange for granting "legitimacy" to the existing government in Turkey and ensuring it remains in power is a situation that disturbs the entire nation. Here, in the new constitutional impositions, with whom, in exchange for what costs, on which issues, and how negotiations are conducted and will be conducted for the purpose of drafting a constitution to be embarked upon with a political survival instinct(!), and what kind of agreement will ultimately be reached, are matters of extreme suspicion in terms of national survival and security. Such being the case, instead of an effort to draft a constitution by leaning toward imperialism out of a hunger for power, the most sound path is seen as preparing a new constitution through a "Constituent Assembly" to be established in accordance with the procedure, and even proceeding to the parties entering the election race only after the necessary revisions to the political parties law are completed and rewritten.