What matters is the system

It is now crystal clear that there is preparation going on in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) about the presidential system.

President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an want to legitimize his current situation since everything he does is in violation of the constitution.

According to Mustafa ?entop, a high level AKP delegate, the whole constitution needs to change. He says, "It is not sufficient to expand only fundamental rights and freedoms. If you do not arrange the structure of the state with more freedoms, there is no meaning to single handedly expanding rights and freedoms."

I do not think anyone can object to ?entop's statements.

He says something quite right and I hope he will remember his own statements when work on the constitution will start in the parliament.

But the debates originating from the AKP are not in consistency with these statements

Because we cannot arrive at a constitution based on more liberties with the presidential system devoid of its checks and balances which they advocated during the term of the previous parliament. A constitution based on freedoms has nothing to do with the systems. You can have a more democratic constitution within the parliamentary system as well as presidential system. What are important are the arrangements that will secure the separation of powers and the mechanisms of checks and balances.

Turkey's parliamentary system has a historic past. It is not that easy to scrap that history and pass onto a system that comes to the agenda from totally different needs.

But we also know this: the current Turkish style parliamentary system is not a system that functions properly.

In order for the system to function in a proper way, the law on political...