Davutoğlu Loathes Free Speech

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's decision to boycott the judicial year's opening ceremony by the Supreme Court of Appeals because the head of the union of bar associations, who is critical of Erdoğan's authoritarian policies, is to be given time to speak, has reaffirmed the long-held view that Erdoğan simply has no respect whatsoever for an independent and impartial judiciary. He has utter disregard for the rule of law, fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and cannot bear listening to critical remarks from anybody, including the chief representative of Turkish lawyers.

Toeing the line for his master, Erdoğan's protégée Ahmet Davutoğlu, who was parachuted in to lead the ruling party and the government, also decided not to attend the opening ceremony of the new judicial year, breaking the long tradition in which heads of government and state used to attend to show the unity of the Turkish Republic and respect for the law of the land. Instead, Davutoğlu hastily arranged a Cabinet meeting scheduled at the same time as the ceremony in order to create an excuse for not showing up at the high judiciary's key event.

I suppose Davutoğlu and his justice minister, Bekir Bozdağ, a meddlesome politician who blatantly interferes in the judiciary to punish opponents with an abuse of the criminal justice system, won't show up at the judicial year opening reception in Strasbourg in January, either, if they know Dean Spielmann, president of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), is going to criticize Turkey for suspending the rule of law, restricting rights and destroying the fundamentals of democracy in a member country.

Perhaps that is not surprising at all considering how Davutoğlu himself has no great tolerance for freedom of speech, or freedom of the press for that matter. In his victory speech last week, delivered right after he secured the chairmanship of the ruling party in a solo race at the party's convention, he attacked the judiciary while slamming the national and international media for articles critical of the government. After Erdoğan openly called the senior members of the high court "assassins," Davutoğlu also issued his own threats to the judiciary and put Turkey's judicial council, the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), on notice.

Davutoğlu's track record is terrible when it comes to respecting freedom of the press. During a joint press conference with visiting Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard in May, he berated a journalist for addressing a question to him, claiming that if the journalist can return home with no repercussions after asking a tough question, this is a good indication of the health of press freedom in Turkey. He was very angry when US-based watchdog Freedom House's “Freedom of the Press 2014” report downgraded Turkey from the category “Partly Free” to “Not Free.” He severely criticized the media advocacy group.

Just as he loathes the critical press, Davutoğlu seems to have a similar disdain for the independent judiciary as well. Acting on a tip relayed to law enforcement officials that several trucks were transporting illegal arms and munitions en route to Syria, the prosecutor in Adana ordered the halt and seizure of the trucks in early January. Davutoğlu immediately claimed the truck was carrying aid to Syria's Turkmens, strongly denying allegations that the truck was loaded with weapons. He also described the incident as a plot against his government by the judiciary and slammed the national media for reporting it.

However, a leaked document, exposed by the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), has revealed that the trucks were in fact carrying a large cache of arms, including rockets, missiles and rocket-launchers. The official record by the military that seized the truck also confirmed the load. The government later claimed the cargo belonged to Turkey's intelligence agency and hastily removed the lead prosecutor, police chiefs and military commander who were all involved in investigating the illegal arms transport. The government also rushed a series of amendments to a law regulating activities of the intel agency that made it almost impossible to charge and indict officials from the spy agency over wrongdoing, pegging legal action against intel officers to the permission of the prime minister.

Questioning reporters' patriotism and calling them "traitors" openly on public television had been a hallmark of Davutoğlu's record when serving as foreign minister. I personally tasted his wrath when he targeted me on several occasions, all without mentioning my name but recalling my op-ed piece published on Jan. 30, 2013, which exposed leaks in the Foreign Ministry. The article, based on an İzmir prosecutor's public indictment, prompted a major trial and disclosed a spy network that extended into bureaucrats employed by the Foreign Ministry. The evidence collected by investigators revealed that highly confidential files and documents were turned over to a spy gang in exchange for sexual favors in a honey-trap scheme.

Since this was a major security leak in the government, I called the capabilities of the Foreign Ministry in detecting this breach into question and asked a simple question as to whether Davutoğlu would be willing to offer his apologies to his counterparts, whose conversations with Davutoğlu were leaked to third parties, just as Hillary Clinton, then-US secretary of state, apologized to him personally when Wikileaks dumped a huge cache of confidential diplomatic communications between Washington and its envoys including ones in Turkey. Davutoğlu, instead of accepting responsibility for this alleged breach under his watch, accused me of “treachery” and called me all kinds of names, including being "Orientalist." Instead of offering reasonable explanations for serious claims and responding to the well-founded criticism with substantive answers, Davutoğlu started questioning my patriotism.

The poor performance of Davutoğlu in responding to parliamentary questions despite the law requiring him to answer deputies' inquiries within two weeks is proof that his loathing of criticism is not just limited to the press. As foreign minister, he stood out from other members of the Cabinet for failing to answer parliamentary probes. When he did, his responses were either off-the-mark or did not contain any information that satisfied the deputies' inquiries on the subject matter.

Even the US Ambassador-designate John R. Bass, who suggested that Turkey is drifting toward authoritarianism during a hearing at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in July -- after he was pressed by Senator John McCain, who mentioned the banning of social media and restrictions on Internet freedom in Turkey -- was dressed down by Davutoğlu, who said Bass's claims had no evidence to back them up. He also asserted that there is a tendency towards authoritarianism in the United States as well.

When putting all this together, there is definitely a pattern of behavior in Davutoğlu's past that one can easily detect in a way that he does not like to be called to account when dirty laundry has been exposed, implicating himself, his aides or people serving under him. The same can also be said when Davutoğlu's projections fail to materialize. He has a firm conviction that his prognosis of events is generally right. As with the case of Syria and Iraq, he repeatedly said the world would eventually come to understand that his vision was the right one. He bets on history to provide a justification for what he thinks was a morally right decision, but which in fact defied common sense, logic and realpolitik. As a result, Davutoğlu gets easily agitated when questioned, prompting him to immediately adopt a defensive posture that may even amount to hostility at times.

Perhaps somebody should tell him the story of US President Harry S. Truman, who kept a sign saying that "the buck stops here" on his desk in the Oval Office. The phrase was a constant reminder of the fact that the president has to make the decisions and accept the ultimate responsibility for those decisions. If he likes, Turks also have many similar examples from their own history as well that may very well relate to Truman's accountability perspective. After all, Davutoğlu loves to make frequent journeys in history when delivering public speeches that often recall the grandeur of the Ottoman past.

It is amazing to see how Turkey's most famous and powerful sultans including Fatih Sultan Mehmet had to give their account before a judge after a citizen's complaint. That stands as quite a contrast to today's Turkey, where so-called Islamist leaders do everything in their power to escape the law, including suspending the rule of law and launching revenge operations against anti-corruption investigators who exposed the massive corruption that implicated senior officials including President Erdoğan and his family members.

ABDULLAH BOZKURT (Cihan/Today's Zaman)