Constitutional amendments accidentally annul educational reforms as Turkey liberalises in the hope of accelerating EU accession negotiations, reports Gareth Jenkins from Istanbul Last week Turkey took another step towards liberalising its draconian constitution with a series of amendments designed to bring the country in line with European Union norms. It hopes to receive a date for the beginning of accession negotiations at the EU summit in December 2004. But in the process it effectively annulled controversial educational reforms passed just one week earlier. On Friday Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer approved ten changes to the 1982 Turkish constitution, which was formulated during the 1980-83 period of military rule. They included the abolition of the State Security Courts (SSCs), which were originally established to try cases related to anti-state political violence but over the last 20 years have been the main instrument for the suppression of free speech, the outlawing of capital punishment under any circumstances and the subordination of domestic law to international treaties signed by Turkey. The amendments also trimmed the authority of the country's powerful military by removing the secrecy surrounding military expenditure, bringing it under civilian control and abolishing the right of the Turkish General Staff to appoint a representative to the Supreme Educational Board (YOK). In theory, the amendments could lead to the release of four Kurdish members of parliament -- including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Leyla Zana -- who were convicted by SSCs in 1994 for alleged links to the armed separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). They have been imprisoned ever since, despite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that their conviction was unsound. But doubts remain, particularly given the sluggishness of the Turkish judicial system and the conservatism of the judiciary, whether the four can be retried before they complete their current sentences in mid-2005. There are also doubts as to how much difference the amendments will make in practice. On the one hand, no one has been officially executed in Turkey for 20 years. On the other, the SSCs are due to be replaced with Regional Serious Crimes Courts. Will it make any difference? On Monday Justice Minister Cemil Cicek promised that the new courts would mark a break with, not a continuation of, SSCs. "We have never looked at abolishing the SSCs as merely a question of changing one's hat and coat," said Cicek. "We are taking Europe as our example and trying to ensure that everything we do complies with EU norms." Last week Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced that the latest package of constitutional amendments meant that Turkey had now met the political criteria for accession to the EU. His views are not shared by Brussels. EU sources insist that while Turkey has probably done enough to merit receiving a date for the opening of accession negotiations, it is still far from meeting the standards for actual membership. "We hope very much that in December Turkey will be given a date for the beginning of accession negotiations," said an EU diplomat. "But the negotiations could easily continue for 10 or 15 years. Turkey still has a lot to do in terms of implementation. The current government has passed an impressive range of reforms on paper, but we have not seen anything like as much progress on the ground." On Monday Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul announced that the government would now concentrate on amending other laws on the Turkish statute book to bring them in harmony with the revised constitution. "We expect to complete revisions of the Turkish Penal Code in July," he said. "We have also taken some decisions regarding broadcasting in languages other than Turkish." Even though it is now nearly two years since bans on broadcasting and teaching in Kurdish were lifted, in practice it is still very difficult to run even Kurdish language evening classes, much less teach it or use it as a medium of instruction in schools. Authorities have yet to grant permission for anyone to broadcast in Kurdish. Yet last week's constitutional amendments will have a tangible impact on the government's attempts to reform the education system. On 13 May, after the constitutional amendments had been passed by parliament and forwarded to Sezer for presidential approval, the government pushed through reforms to the educational system in a marathon all night parliamentary session. The reform package, which was designed to place graduates of religious training schools on an equal footing with graduates of standard high schools, produced a furious reaction from the Turkish secular establishment, sending the Turkish lira and prices on the Istanbul Stock Exchange plummeting, triggering the most serious political crisis since the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP) came to power in November 2002. Nobody in the JDP yet appears to have realised that the educational reforms included a reference to the military- appointed member of the YOK. As a result, since Sezer formally approved the constitutional amendments last Friday, these educational reforms are now unconstitutional and will have to be withdrawn.
