How democratic is Türkiye? Or how big is the democracy deficit? We have been asking these questions to ourselves for years, sometimes as our relations with the European Union accelerate, these questions become more important and then they are forgotten for a while and are never talked about. There are certain indices and criteria to answer the above questions. Besides these indices, of course, there is another indicator that needs to be looked at, and that is non-governmental organizations and their activities. The report card of countries and organizations emerges from these studies.
So how is Turkey's report card? Let's take a closer look.
In order to reveal the state-society synergy, first of all, a glue is needed that attaches the state horizontally to society. If you notice, I didn't say vertical, I specifically said I needed a horizontal adhesive. Because the state in dreams is the state we see when we look to the side, not up to see it.
What is this glue? To me it is democracy. There is no civil society without full democracy. It must be accepted from the very beginning that democracy is a concept like play dough that has dozens of definitions and unfortunately changes into different shapes in the hands of whoever gets it. In this case, talking about democracy is a difficult issue. For example, what is the source? Equality? Freedom? Is it a concept that encompasses everyone, protects and protects the consent of each individual, and does not allow anyone to be oppressed by the majority? Or, at the end of the day, is it based on what the majority consent is?
How can democracy be defined and how is it measured? Is democracy only election-oriented? For example, is the existence of relatively free and independent elections in a country sufficient for that country to be classified as a democracy and for its democracy report card to be valid? In democracy, do rules or people come first? These questions go on and on. Two words were given to us from the Greeks: Demos (People), Kratos (power), but they did not bequeath a consistent model to follow. According to current indices, two-thirds of nearly two hundred countries in the world are defined as democratic countries.
The record of democracy is broken
There are many indices measuring democracy in the world. For example, Turkey's as of 2020 Unfree with 35 points out of 100 Freedom House Index, where it falls into the (Not Free) category. The Freedom House Index covers socio-economic rights, socio-economic inequalities, freedom and property rights, war and including freedom of the press It measures the degree of democracy in many states with a maximalist approach that includes various criteria ranging from rights to freedoms. The report card is given accordingly. Turkey ranks 110th in The Economist's democracy index, another maximalist index that ranks 167 countries in terms of global democracy performance, and is in the Hybrid Regimes category. The following criteria are taken into account in this index of The Economist.
• Electoral process and pluralism
• Civil liberties
• Functioning of government
• Political participation
Our democratic deficit is evident in our years-long skid, and unfortunately it has increased even more in the last five or six years. We are at a mediocre level for now in the economy, entrepreneurship and creative class indices, but when it comes to the democracy index, we are heading towards the mediocre level.
The sad thing is that our definition of democracy in our country is increasingly narrowing down to a minimalist approach, only being able to hold elections. We are rapidly being dragged into the democracy trap that will emerge from election to election. However, our situation is not very bright in the Liberal Democracies Index, which focuses only on elections in a minimalist sense, unfortunately among 178 countries. 149th place and autocratic electoral democracy We are defined as. We are only four or five countries away from falling into the category of closed autocracies in the index.
Civil society is indispensable for a democratic country. So, what is Turkey's civil society report card? Let's take a look at it.
As of 2019, there are nearly 115,000 active associations in Turkey. These associations have around 11 million members. Approximately one fifth of the members are women. According to OECD (Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation) data, there is one non-governmental organization (NGO) for every 613 people in Turkey. This rate is 49 in France, 59 in England and 138 in Germany, which is said to be "jealous" of us by our administrators. In an ideal democracy, each interest group is expected to organize itself. One of the most important signs of a true democracy is non-governmental organizations. Let's take a look at what happens when all this does not happen.
What about the economy report card?
When democracy does not function fully, the biggest damage occurs to the economy; and therefore into the pocket of the citizen. Whenever democracy is discussed and it is revealed that we are failing, the government immediately gets defensive and says that the foreign powers that do not want Turkey to grow and are jealous of us have unfair, unwarranted and inaccurate statements. Representatives of the government, especially President Tayyip Erdoğan, go from square to square and say, "Oh USA, Oh Europe, Oh economic evaluation institutions."
But the truth does not change, If there is a democracy deficit, the economy is also It does not develop fully, the society cannot be a welfare society, you do not have strong institutions, foreign capital does not come to your country. In the end, the loser will be the nation, the country.
Look what happens in the economy when democracy's record is weak.
• We do not have any group of business people who have accumulated capital over a billion dollars without relying on the state.
• We do not have enough entrepreneurs because it is not a free environment. (Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship are different; we have many entrepreneurs but few entrepreneurs)
• Türkiye’nin GSMH’sinin sadece %17’si sanayiden geliyor. Bunun da %70’i de orta düşüklükte ve düşük teknolojili sanayi
• Our creative class gap is never closing. According to the Global Creativity Index, we are ranked 88th out of 139 countries in terms of Technology-Talent-Tolerance, which means we are even below average.
• As our democracy record weakens, per capita national income also decreases. National income per capita (12519 Dollars), which reached a record level in 2013, decreased to 9127 Dollars in 2020
Without democracy, there will be no economic development. Maybe we can have hope for the future when democracy ceases to be play dough played in the hands of the government.
