The First 4 Unchangeable Articles of the Constitution are the Guarantee of the Republic

For basic information, let us first look at the etymology of the concepts we will use in our article. The word ‘monarchy’ entered our language from the French word monarchie. The word monarchie derives from the ancient Greek words ‘monos’ and ‘archos’ meaning ‘one chief’. Monarchy, etymologically, means ‘the rule of one person’.

The word ‘republic’ came to us from the Arabic word ‘republic’. The word ‘republic’ derives from the word ‘cem’, that is, community, and in Arabic it means ‘collective’, ‘society, people’. ‘Cumhuri', on the other hand, means “for the people”, that is, “for the community, for the people”. ‘Republic’ is derived from this word “cumhuri”. Etymologically, ‘republic’ means ‘something belonging to the people’, ‘something belonging to the people’, and in political terms, we can define ‘republic’ as ‘the state belonging to the people’.

The Latin form of the Arabic word ‘republic’, which is widely used all over the world, is the word ‘Rebuplic’. Its French equivalent is ‘republique’. It means the same thing as the word ‘republic’. The word is derived from the combination of Latin ‘res’ meaning ‘thing’, ‘ownership, possession, property’ and publica meaning ‘public’, ‘people’. Latin res publica means ‘public property, property of the people’. In terms of the form of state, Latin ‘respublica’ and French ‘republique’ can be defined as ‘the state that is the property of the people’. As can be seen, the Turkish word ‘republic’ and the French word ‘republique’ have exactly the same meaning.

The word ‘democracy’ entered Turkish from the French word démocratie and was first used in Turkish in 1870. The word was borrowed into French from Latin as dēmocratia and its origin is a combination of the ancient Greek words ‘demos’ (people) and ‘kratos’ (authority). In its simplest definition, it means ‘self-government of the people’.

When anyone is asked ‘what is a republic’, we can get answers such as ‘republic is the self-government of the people’, ‘government by the people’ or ‘the most democratic government’. When we ask the same people ‘what is monarchy’, we can get answers such as ‘the rule of one person’, ‘the rule where the power belongs to the king’, or ‘an anti-democratic form of government’.

As it can be understood from the answers, both republic and monarchy have a shape feature. The most important formal characteristic that distinguishes republic and monarchy from each other is the way of exercising sovereignty. From here we can go to the source of sovereignty. The republic is participatory, pluralistic, the people living in republics choose the people who will govern them, but in monarchies, the people cannot choose their rulers, either there are hereditary, kinship-based transitions or a board of elites or a council determines who (primus inter pares / first among equals) will govern them.

When we look at the theoretical source of sovereignty, the republic is a purely electoral form of government. In republics, elected rulers do not hold office for life, but only for a certain period of time. Therefore, republics are the system of government in which national sovereignty is best realised. Therefore, we can infer that a republic is identified with national sovereignty and therefore with democracy. However, when we look at the existing countries in the world, is it possible to completely confirm or completely falsify this conclusion? In other words, can there be an anti-democratic republic? We can ask a similar question as to whether there can be a democratic monarchy.

Our neighbour Iran is a republic, its president is elected, but it is very difficult to say that Iran is a democratic country. We can give the same example for Venezuela. However, today there are developed democracies such as Germany, the United States of America, Austria, France, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, etc. which are governed by republics.

We can give a similar example for monarchy. We can say that Saudi Arabia is an anti-democratic monarchy, and there are many similar countries such as Jordan, Morocco, etc. On the other hand, there are countries such as Belgium, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Norway and Sweden, which are democracies but are ruled by monarchy.

As can be seen, in practice there is no definite connection between a republic and democracy. A republic can be democratic or anti-democratic. Likewise, there is no definite connection between monarchy and democracy. A monarchy can be democratic or anti-democratic.

If we cannot confirm the proposition that every republic is democratic and every monarchy is anti-democratic, we can seek the answer to the question of what a democratic republic should be like. We will find the answer when we look at the common practices in countries that are both republics and democracies. In these countries, we see that constitutional structures are a common feature, i.e. there is a commitment between the society and the nation, a social contract in Rousseau's terms. Through constitutions, republics have been defined, the principles that they must implement in order to be democratic have been determined and guaranteed. These principles, which have been compiled in the historical process, can be counted as the separation of powers, secularism, the rule of law, and today we can add the state that respects human rights, the social state and even the environmentalist state to these principles.

Article 2 of the 1982 Constitution includes fundamental principles such as ‘secular state’, ‘social state’, ‘rule of law’ and ‘democratic state’ and defines the Republic of Turkey with these fundamental principles. A constitutional amendment that contradicts these fundamental principles, which cannot be changed, would also contradict the republic form of the state. Because the republic we have is defined with these principles. A republic without these principles cannot be democratic. As a matter of fact, the Constitutional Court took a decision in 1971 in line with this view and repeated this decision in many other decisions.

...it is too much to say that the principle of immutability here does not only target the word ‘republic’. In other words, it is not possible to reconcile this principle of the Constitution with the idea that only the word ‘republic’ in the Constitution is immutable and that all other principles and rules can be changed. ... because the purpose of the principle of immutability is the state system expressed by the word ‘republic’, the nature of which is specified by the fundamental principles in the preamble (AYM; 1971/323).

On the basis of this definition of the republic with the principles set out in Article 2 of the Constitution, the Constitutional Court has been able to annul constitutional amendments attempted by the governments in Turkey. If the Court had adhered to the formal definition of the republic, i.e. only to the definition that ‘a republic is a system in which the people govern themselves through elections’, the constitutional amendments would not have been cancelled.

When democracy was introduced in Turkey is a controversial issue. We can say that democracy was not automatically introduced with the abolition of the sultanate and that the first period of the Turkish Republic did not fulfil the conditions of democracy as defined in political science. Atatürk was ideally a democrat and laid the foundations of a highly democratic and participatory system at a principled level for his time. In line with this ideal, there has been a process in which the basic qualities of a democratic republic were defined with the basic qualities included in our Constitutions in 1924 and onwards. What is to be done from now on is the proper implementation and realisation of these principles. Only when the second century of the Republic is crowned with democracy, the goal pointed out by Atatürk will be a little closer. However, unfortunately, from time to time in our country, we also hear and see those who yearn for non-republican forms of government.

Within the scope of the discussions on the new Constitution, which have been brought to the agenda in these days when we are celebrating the 101st anniversary of our Republic, it is possible to say that the opening of the first 4 articles of the current Constitution to discussion, which are labelled as ‘unchangeable and not even proposed to be changed’ , is a discussion directly against the Republic of Turkey. Similarly, discussions such as the abolition of the Constitutional Court and limiting its authority will also serve this purpose. The most appropriate form of government for the Turkish nation is the republic. Of course, there will be no going back, but we invite politicians to be sensitive when discussing these issues.