Turkey's top court upholds separation of powers
Turkey’s Constitutional Court overturned a bill strengthening the powers of the minister of justice over the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors.
While signing into law the controversial bill on the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) on Feb. 26, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said he found at least 15 articles in violation of the Turkish constitution and that he was assured that the ruling party would make the necessary adjustments at the Parliamentary Justice Commission to amend those violations.
Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), however, did not agree and filed suit at the Constitutional Court on March 2 for this law’s annulment. The court decided on April 11 that the new articles in this law that bolster the control of the minister of justice over the HSYK are actually unconstitutional because they attempt to overrule the independence of the judiciary with respect to the executive.
Turkey’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in his first reaction to this top court’s decision that it is “unacceptable” and that he does not understand what it is that the court found “unconstitutional.” While Bozdag also cast doubt over the timing of the decision, hinting that it could be politically motivated, it is also a fact that the ruling party proposed this change into law only after the Dec. 17 graft probe, which brought the country’s strong prime minister into a power struggle with the followers of a US-based Sunni cleric Fethullah Gulen, who are well-established in key state institutions like the judiciary and law enforcement.
The graft investigation is widely perceived as the end of the alliance between the Gulenists and the ruling Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP). In fact, it has been the AKP government for over a decade that provided full support to the Gulenists to strengthen in number and high-level occupations in these key state institutions. Now, however, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone so far as to depict the Gulenists as a “terror organization” and vowed to purge them from state institutions, announcing an all-out war against the “parallel state” formed by the Gulenists.
