Well, what will happen to the governors?
The president will be elected by popular vote, but the governors who represent the elected president in provinces are “appointed.”
How will that happen? This could also be worded as such: “If Turkey is transforming into a new order with a president elected by popular vote … If this is the first step of the governance model that is to be elected by popular vote starting from the top … Then what will happen to the appointed governors who are administratively above elected mayors?”
Or, we could ask, “Who will represent the elected president in the provinces, the appointed governor or elected mayor?”
One letter is enough for an investigation: Imagine, the governor can send a letter to the Interior Ministry about the elected mayor of the same province. Investigations start, and maybe an arrest comes later…
Imagine, there is ongoing construction right next to your house. They make a lot of noise from early in the morning to midnight. They would not care whether it is a Saturday or Sunday or whether there are sick people around. You phone the municipality, they answer you, “That jurisdiction belongs to the office of the governor.”
The governor is not elected… Would you expect him/her to pay as much attention as an elected mayor?
Of course we have very good governors; nevertheless, being elected to a position is fundamental of any public service.
Imagine the mayor is responsible for mass transportation of the residents of the city. But managing the traffic is the work of the security department under the office of the governor.
If the traffic police were under the mayor, I wonder if there would be this same amount of chaos. Health services and education belong to the appointed, but sewage system to the elected and several similar situations…
The fact that the president will be elected by popular vote will absolutely affect this strange situation between the appointed governor and elected mayor.
In the 1920 Constitution, there were “city councils” with wide powers. The governor was a mediator between the capital and this council.
People’s assemblies
Can there be an era when cities will be run by people’s assemblies? Should we fear this? If some people still insist that this is “separatism” then there is one answer to that: “How can people’s management be separatism?”
One of the important debates in the next era within the context of the new Constitution will be this, for instance…
Voter’s loss of appetite
This country has suffered a lot from those who assumed politics was the idea akin to children’s Lego games. It still does. This is an old illness: “A good person, has a good educational background; they may lead the party. They are also reasonable.” This mentality has dried up the people’s branches of politics. Well, the joint candidate formula of the CHP and the MHP is this… Can an election be handled with an addition-subtraction method?
“You have 25 percent, I have 15 percent. Add another 5 percent from that party. Then it becomes whatever,” can arithmetic democracy succeed?
What about policy, targets, new horizons and projects? Don’t they have any significance? Can there be a political movement not explaining these?
Look at the social democrat line of Turkey… The Sept. 12, 1980 coup went over them like a bulldozer. The trade unions, the devoted brains of labor were shredded…
Turkey’s non-governmental artery was snapped. It dried up.
Turkish democracy is still suffering from that… For this reason, the political Lego players in Turkey form political parties from their offices; they invent new names for them.
This is a virus. The diagnosis of the sickness is the voter’s loss of appetite. There is no strength left to go to the polls.
