Constitution project gains pace as Turkey nears vote

ISTANBUL // Momentum is growing for a project to be tackled after Turkey's parliamentary elections in less than two months: drawing up a new constitution for this Muslim democracy.

The current constitution was written under military rule in 1982, and there is a broad consensus that this economically thriving country with its more than 70 million people needs a new and more democratic basic law. But there is no agreement what such a constitution should look like, and it will not be easy to reconcile competing visions in Turkey's polarised political atmosphere after the elections scheduled for June 12.

"Everybody wants a new constitution. The problem is that everybody wants to do it alone," Asli Aydintasbas, a political columnist with the Milliyet daily, said in a telephone interview on Monday. "I wish there was more consensus building."

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, has said writing a new constitution free of military tutelage will be a key project for the new parliament. The call for it is part of Mr Erdogan's election manifesto and longer term plans to prepare Turkey for the year 2023, the 100th anniversary of the republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

"The new constitution is the most important and number one project of our election manifesto 2011," Mr Erdogan said last Saturday, when he presented the election programme of his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP. The new constitution "will be short, compact, open, focused on the individual and committed to freedom", the prime minister added.

As polls indicate another victory for the AKP, which has ruled Turkey since 2002, Mr Erdogan's party is likely to play a leading role in writing the new constitution. But the AKP manifesto also stresses the need for a broad-based agreement. "All sectors of society should participate in the discussion about and the creation of the new constitution," the manifesto says. The AKP wants the new constitution to be put to a referendum once parliament has worked out a text with the help of civil-society groups.

Turkey's main opposition party, the secularist Republican People's Party, or CHP, has also said it wants to secure a broad consensus for the new constitution. But neither the CHP nor the AKP have put forward concrete proposals of what they want to change.

Some observers, such as Ms Aydintasbas, think chances for a consensus are slim. "I hope I am wrong," she said. Turkey's major parties failed to agree on significant legislative changes in the past, such as a package of constitutional reform that was passed by referendum last year.

A previous project by the AKP to draft a new constitution was shelved in 2007. This came after opponents charged that the government wanted to create a basic law tailored only to its own needs and after plans by Mr Erdogan's party of pious Muslims to widen the right to wear the Islamic headscarf triggered an outcry by secularist groups.

Today, critics of Mr Erdogan are concerned that the prime minister may use his mandate from a possible big AKP election victory to change Turkey's parliamentary system into a US-style presidential system, in order to become president himself and concentrate more power in his own hands. Even Abdullah Gul, Turkey's current president and a personal friend of the prime minister, has said he is against such a change.

Other issues are likely to surface as well before the new constitution can be submitted to a referendum. Representatives of Turkey's Kurdish minority of 12 million people demand cultural rights, such as the right to use and teach the Kurdish language, to be guaranteed by the new constitution, while Turkish nationalists regard such guarantees as treason. The role of religion in public life is another contentious issue.

The fate of constitutional proposals presented by one of Turkey's most influential non-governmental organisation has served as a reminder of the challenges ahead.

The constitutional outline by the Turkish Industry and Business Association, or Tusiad, which was published last month, raised eyebrows because it suggested scrapping the current constitution's first three articles. Those articles define Turkey as a secular republic, enshrine "Ataturk nationalism" as the country's ideology, without defining the term, and say Turkish is the official language of the state. Present rules say those three articles cannot be changed and ban all efforts to do so.

When the Tusiad draft was criticised as too radical, the association quickly distanced itself from the work of the 22 experts it had asked to come up with the plan. Tarik Ziya Ekinci, a Kurdish intellectual who was among the Tusiad team of experts, accused the group of failing to stand up for their project and defended the decision to strike the first three constitutional articles.

"The first three articles contain the phrase 'Ataturk nationalism,'" Mr Ekinci told this week's issue of Aksiyon, a political magazine. "Does anybody know what that phrase actually means?"