The tragedy of Turkish justice

I wrote a piece in this very column some three years ago with the exact same headline above: “The tragedy of Turkish justice.” I argued that Turkey’s justice system was a warzone between political camps, rather than being a fair arbiter of disputes. I concluded:

“We should stop seeing the judiciary as the battlefield of competing ideologies and start to think together about how to rebuild it in a way that really serves justice.”

Since then, however, things have not gotten better. They have gotten worse. Now the judiciary is again a warzone between political camps. In the upcoming intra-judiciary elections for the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors, three ideological lines will compete, and the domination by neither will be good news.

As you probably know, the so-called “parallel state” is at the heart of the current political war. The government, and President Tayyip Erdoğan, condemn this “gang within the state” almost every single day and define it as the biggest threat to Turkey’s national security. They also claim to “cleanse” the state form this danger, and to carry out a “witch-hunt” against it, if needed. No wonder hundreds of police officers have been detained and questioned, and it is very likely that new arrests are coming.

But what is the truth about this “parallel state?” Here are my two cents:

I think the “parallel state” is not an imaginary phenomenon, although the government’s propaganda exaggerates to caricaturish levels. There is ample evidence to believe that the Gülen Movement, indeed, focused on empowering itself within Turkey’s bureaucracy, particularly within the police and the judicial system. There is also ample evidence to believe that this effort...

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