The Rumi Forum presented “Governance and the Turkish Constitutions: Past and Future” with Dr. Fuat Andic, Writer.
After winning the elections for the second time in 2007 the Justice and Development Party (AKP) embarked upon endeavors to revise drastically the Constitution of 1982 and for that purpose commissioned the preparation of a draft of new constitution. The apparent reason was to make it to conform to the EU principles. However, the intent of revising/rewriting the Constitution has led to serious polemics in the Country; the opponents accuse the AKP of undermining secularism that has been one of the guiding principles of the Republic. After briefly reviewing major tenets of the previous constitutions the article analyses the draft from the point of view of good governance and compares it with the currently existing constitution.
Fuat Andic is a native of Turkey and a long-time resident of the United States. He holds his first degree from the University of Istanbul, and a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh (UK). After a long teaching career in the US he now works as consultant to international aid organizations. A prolific writer, he has published 20 books on economic development and over 200 articles and reports. Always interested in Ottoman history, he recently published in Turkey (in Turkish) 3 monographs on Crimean War, the Tulip period 1718-1730, and the political testament of one of the most able Turkish statesmen of the 19th. century. His historical novel “Goodbye Homeland” telling the story of Spanish Jews was published last year in Istanbul, in Turkish.
Moderator:
Mr. Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish journalist who has written extensively on Islam and the modern world. He has degrees in political science and history from Istanbul’s Bosphorus University. He is currently the opinion editor and a columnist for Turkish Daily News, Turkey’s foremost English-language daily. He also writes a regular column for the Turkish national daily, Star. Akyol’s opion pieces have also appeared in American publications such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The American Interest, First Things, The Weekly Standard, and others. He is also the author a Turkish-language book titled “Rethinking The Kurdish Question: What Went Wrong? What Next?” (2006)