What is Citizenship Consciousness?

Sometimes a person falls into deep despair when he has to repeat what he has said. The idea of not being understood is like a bacterium that eats a person from the inside. However, our influence on the flow of life is limited and being aware of this limit is a necessity to protect our mental health. If life is a raging river, we do not have the power to change the direction of the river. Even though we know this, we do not want the mistakes we see to be repeated. The degree of our sense of belonging to the society we live in can lead us to struggle with the problems around us. In every society there are people who feel responsible for telling society something. Why does a person feel this way? We can say that behind this endeavour is the desire to live in a better environment by solving or contributing to the solution of the painful problems of the society in which people live. Nevertheless, the most important factor that makes societies livable is the high proportion of people who have a sense of responsibility towards themselves and society.

In the evolution of state societies, it is after the 15th-16th centuries that the individual finds himself as a social being. What happened in this transformation? Feudal structures disintegrated and centralised kingdoms began to emerge. Kings needed stronger support against the authority of the Church. The most important transformation that took place after the Renaissance and reform movements was the loss of power of the church authority and the transformation of societies from a divine servitude to individuals loyal to the king in the newly formed structure. Of course, people did not suddenly feel themselves as individuals out of servitude. This change could only be realised after centuries of struggles against the authority of the king after being freed from the authority of the church.

The transformation of monarchies into nation-state structures that see the source of legitimacy in the people is also a result of the development of the idea of civil society. In other words, the term "civil society" as we use it today began to acquire meaning after the 16th century. In the process of nation-state formation shaped by historical events, popular sovereignty gave political powers a limited administrative power compared to the periods when legitimacy was accepted as divine. The idea that sovereignty rests with the people has also placed on the people the responsibility of supervising and controlling political powers. Starting from 1215 Magna Carta, the emergence of the right to budget, combined with the idea of popular sovereignty, created a structure that limited the power of political powers.

Published after the 1789 French Revolution and preserved as the preamble of the French Constitution of 1791, the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" (1), consisting of 17 articles in total, has as one of its aims "that all members of society should know this Declaration and remember their rights and duties". Article 15 of the Declaration states that "Society has the right to hold all public officials to account for their duties", which is an important step in defining the limits of power. Article 14 of the Declaration clearly emphasised the people's right to a budget by stating that "All citizens have the right to determine the necessity of taxation, either personally or through their representatives, to freely accept it, to observe its use, and to determine its amount, base, manner of collection and duration".

It would not be wrong to say that Continental Europe, and therefore France, had a great influence on the shaping of the Turkish public administration. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen is generally included in the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey today. Although Articles 14 and 15 of the Declaration are not explicitly mentioned, when considered together with the "qualities of the Republic" stated in Article 2 of the Constitution and Articles 6 and 125, it is possible to interpret that the people have the right to budget as a function of sovereignty and have the right to hold all rulers to account as a requirement of the rule of law. However, the consequences that may arise in the event that this right is attempted to be exercised is a question of whether the qualities of the Republic actually exist or not.

Plato, in his work The State, was one of the first to express the risks inherent in democracy. The basis of these risks is the possibility that if not all the people are at a high level of morality and education, the results of different expectations in elections may lead to corruption. This prediction is clearly evident in societies that are morally immature and have a low average level of education. In societies with these characteristics, results such as unqualified people taking senior positions, rulers using their positions to engage in corruption, nepotism and nepotism being very common, and the society losing momentum in many areas emerge. Of course, these results are not due to the evil of democracy.

Democracy needs individuals freed from servitude. In an environment where democracy is not institutionalised in this sense, it is not possible to talk about the existence of a republic. Because the republic is based on popular sovereignty. Expecting people who see themselves as servants to the rulers to embrace popular sovereignty creates a corrupt democracy and a republic with rules written on paper, but never obeyed by the rulers. The breaking of this cycle can only be achieved through the use of science, as was the case in the 17th-20th centuries. This cycle can only be broken by the establishment of an education system based on science, reason, philosophy and morality.

At the founding of the Republic of Turkey, Atatürk's main goal was to make a great enlightenment revolution and to start the process of nation-state formation, which was long overdue. To this end, he endeavoured to teach people who had suffered in these lands, who had been despised, who had been miserable in the hands of religious merchants and who had seen themselves as servants of the sultan, to become individuals. He was successful in these endeavours as long as he lived. But the great revolution necessary to liberate a society from servitude and enable them to become individuals required much more than a matter of five or ten years. The break here was the bipolar world order that emerged after the Second World War and the preferences of the political powers that became the servants of that order.

While Turkish society has limited the place of religion, which constitutes the framework of full servitude, in the social order with the principle of secularism, political powers, fuelled by religious exploitation, have chosen to leave people in limbo between servitude and being an individual. The figure of the citizen who wishes for his rights rather than seeking his rights is a brief summary of what happened after 1950. Just as parasitic life forms that find a favourable environment in a swamp reproduce and multiply, in environments where people cannot become individuals, are unaware of citizenship awareness, cannot question their rights, and cannot produce any solutions against those who usurp their rights, religion merchants and politicians who collaborate with them breed. In a disrupted order, demanding rights is equivalent to disrupting the social order. The forces that seize state power, whose legitimacy is problematic and who do not recognise the law, immediately take action.

Expecting people who do not know their constitution, who do not care about their rights written in the constitution, who see politicians as demigods, who do not know what sovereignty means and who try to enjoy their citizenship rights as "half-servant-half-individual" like the half-human-half-horse (centaur) beings of mythology, to protect their citizenship responsibilities is nothing more than a dream. No individual can unconditionally bind his/her existence to another human being/another being. If those who govern the state want to be respected, they cannot impose this on citizens by saying "we respect you". In a system where even the opposition enjoys its position and status, neither democracy, republic nor citizenship consciousness can emerge.

1) https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0nsan_ve_Yurtta%C5%9F_Haklar%C4%B1_Bildirisi