Chief, emir, sultan or head of the people

It seems I do have a clue after all. For weeks, when speaking of Tayyip Erdoğan, I have referred to him as the ‘head of my People’. Certain malevolents and rabble-rousers took this to be in derision. Never. Am I one to deride the ‘head of my People’?

Indeed, the ‘Bahçeli – Erdoğan agreement’ is now an open secret. What follows will amount to nothing but posturing with no bearing on the outcome. The AKP will present parliament with a proposal for a new constitution or an amendment to the constitution. That session will be managed by the Speaker of Parliament. This means that the AKP will participate in the vote one short, that is with 316 fully-fledged MPs. To reach 330, 14 spare tyres are needed. Deducting expellees, the MHP has 39 MPs. Bahçeli will have no problem getting 24 or 34 MPs to vote ‘yes’, never mind 14. Even if he has taken a bruising, he is the ‘second great leader’ and in parties like the MHP, if the great leader says something, this is not a request but an order.
Those who do not comply will meet a sticky end.
So, the 330 ‘yes’ votes are in the bag. It is a lost cause to split hairs and engage in pointless calculations along the lines of, “How about if that went this far and this went that far, or if this was like that and that was like this.” Regulation will be made in that proposed constitution to vest executive power in Erdoğan. His name will not be Head but President. If only they had copied me and given him a name like Head of the People because it is a case of ‘Tom, Dick or Harry’. ‘Head, President or Head of the People’.
My razor-sharp young colleagues in Cumhuriyet’s editorial office placed a dash in the word meaning president in yesterday’s headline to lend it precisely the meaning I have been referring to. That single dash told a story that pages of text could not.
 
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Let me hark back to yesterday’s Claw Mark. I mean the Claw Mark quoting the sentence uttered by the head of my people in which he said with reference to Martin Schulz, “The president of a parliament over there. What does that make you?”
The European Parliament in question is the parliament that is the European Union’s highest decision-making organ. I bring to your attention that in Erdoğan’s language he alludes to this as “The president of a parliament over there.”
This deprecating allusion reflects Erdoğan’s subconscious (or conscious?) hatred for democratic institutions like parliament. For Erdoğan, parliament is an impediment that stops those in power from doing just as they please.
Some of that hatred is also reserved for the ‘separation of powers’ that underpins the rule of law in contemporary democracies. That is another impediment. The “Turkish-style presidential system” of which the AKP crew never tire of speaking does not only aim to emasculate and obliterate parliament. It also plans to circumvent the judiciary, the key institution under the separation of powers.
Political Islam, you see, completely dislikes and totally rejects ‘infidel’ institutions such as a president without powers and responsibilities representing the state, a government heading the executive branch, a parliament vested with legislative power and a judiciary that supervises them all within the framework of the universal rules of law.
Political Islam accepts and defends by way of principle that heavenly commands create the law and that rule by persons vested with absolute power equipped with titles like chief, emir, sultan, sovereign is an edict of Islam.
Now, thanks to the Turkish-style presidential system, those chiefs, emirs and sultans find themselves joined by the Head of the People.
 
I was about to speak of a contribution towards theory, but there is no theory here.
Just Medieval darkness.