Transparency and Democratization

The public has the right to demand of those elected to public office that they exercise their authority according to a rationale and dynamic that is clear and accountable. In short, government must be transparent. Without transparency there can be no true democracy.

This is fundamental. Every act of public administration is assumed to have as its criteria that are implemented in a non-partisan way and have as its objective the general welfare. Politicians derive their mandate from an electorate which means in turn that every act of public administration should be conducted in the expectation it will be subject to public scrutiny.

The budgets of large public tenders should be transparent and it should be clear who earns what from which project. In the case of work-related accidents and fatalities, contributing factors, the core responsibility and the steps taken to prevent their recurrence should all be a matter of public scrutiny.  In cases where access to internet sites are blocked, the public needs to know the numbers involved, the names of the sites and the justification for the interdiction. When those taking part in demonstrations are injured or die as a result of police intervention, there needs to be a transparent investigation into what happened and into how future occurrences can be avoided. In the case of a public official in possession of wealth wildly incommensurate with salary, the public has a right to know if those assets were come by legitimately. If officials are being relocated to different jobs or different cities, and especially where these re-assignments are to the detriment of bureaucratic efficiency, the reason behind these relocations has to be transparent. If state officials say that a parallel state exists, they should also be able to explain how that parallel state came into existence. If there are elected officials who claim that “I have documents proving malfeasance which I will disclose when the time is ripe,” then they need to be informed that the rules of transparency demand the document be released immediately.

Without transparency, it is impossible for an electorate to evaluate issues in accordance with their personal convictions and political views.

Imagine a country not so very far away…

Close your eyes and free your mind from the preconceptions you’ve been taught. Imagine a country and a society where institutions are relatively weak. This is a country in which democratic practices do not permeate into every-day institutional life. Instead, democracy is defined as a blanket mandate delivered at periodic elections to political actors. The non-governmental organizations of this country are neither strong nor deeply-rooted. On top of this all, people do not define their interests along axes of social class and have little consciousness of the differences between proletariat or bourgeoisie or aristocracy with the result that basic societal interests are unacknowledged and unrepresented.

Politics is no less problematic. There is a persistent dilemma between a nation which knows it is badly served by weak leadership and the inconsistency and lack of progress this implies. At the same time it is a nation which suffers from a strong leadership which becomes the focus of a greedy entourage whose desire to get-rich-quick is justified by an ideology (be it as the agent of westernization and modernization or as the beacon of a religious based morality). This strong leadership becomes increasingly disconnected from the voters’ will as it consolidates power.

Imagine the choice between running to stand still without proper leadership or watching others soar, clinging to the coat sleeves of a strong leader in the hope they might also get a free ride. It is not surprising that our imaginary country develops a leader-fixated rather than an issue-based view of politics. This is a polity where being in power means everything and being out of power means being consigned to anathema. Society becomes polarised into groups which are not so much rivals, as opposing camps that despise and try to excommunicate the “other.” It is a society which cannot recognise differences of opinion in pursuit of the common good. It cannot reconcile social diversity into an overarching identity. And if the leader is strong, this accentuates the problem since the cronies have every interest in maintaining an ideology that polarises society and allows themselves to rake in the spoils.

The electorate always back the leader in this country. Mesmerised by power, they do not see the bigger picture. The ordinary voter is simply not accustomed to asking “what lies behind this situation and where might this policy as opposed to that policy lead us?” The voter hangs on the whims of the leader. Their love for him is heartfelt. They identify the leader with their most popular folk hero, call him father or master. Voters are blind to faults the leader might allegedly have, and will do anything to protect and defend him. Voters declare war on anyone or anything that upsets the leader. They marginalize the offending person or object, drive it away, threaten it and tear it down. If they saw it in the street they’d give it a kick.

Transparency as the key to breaking the vicious circle

Now open your eyes freed of preconceptions. Imagine an era in that country, wherever it may be, when the conservative central right wing cannot stick to the political centre and even their own supports cannot believe the dizzying speed of their divergence down a radical path. Let’s just suppose this imaginary country is the Republic of Turkey and the time is the present.

Let us contemplate about the causes of this radicalization. Can conservatives keep to a moderate political axis in the scenario described above when elected officials draw from a seemingly bottomless approval of a portion of an electorate that returns it to power again and again? In my humble opinion, it cannot. In that case, what option is there for a “majority” to the right and left of the political centre and whose only ambition is to be able to live in unity in a better country, untainted by extremism? Which concept should this majority embrace? Is it inevitable that this majority will for generations be trapped by a  vicious circle of weakness – mismanagement – weariness/discontent – election/change – strong leadership – betterment for a time – radicalization that serves private interests – weariness/discontent – election/change – weakness – mismanagement?

The one thing that might interrupt this vicious circle is “transparency”. Transparency should be the key demand of the majority who make up the political centre.

If transparency is a concept inherent to the political centre, then lack of transparency is intrinsic to conservative thought and is a luxury that societies can ill afford. To some extent the avoidance of transparency can affect the Left and a social democratic movement unchecked can move toward radicalism. I would argue, however, that while history is full of examples of this happening, it is not a tendency inherent to the Left. Therefore it becomes much more obvious when left-wing movements try to avoid transparency. Transparency requires the constant vigilance of the centre left and right, however the centre right is more adept at equivocating those responsibilities. It is better at creating barriers to a transparency agenda.

Political high-mindedness can conceal a strategy to avoid accountability

Conservative thought – especially if it is legitimated by religious belief can take refuge behind such high-minded concepts as 1) “a sense of shame” 2) “a need for secrecy” 3) “trust” 4) “an obligation of safekeeping” 5) “moral and ethical judgement.” In the medium term this might push conservatives to deprioritise transparency, accelerate radicalisation, and exacerbate the sensitivities of the political centre. This also means that conservatism becomes a strategy to avoid transparency and an impetus for political actors to emote outrage and bitterness and to move them further along a radical path.

Instruments to this end are:  (1) implicit propaganda (e.g. in Turkey, “I can only be prime minister if I set the political agenda,” “I am the real victim” “Stand with me against the enemy,” “Join the boycott, do not buy their goods,”) and (2) open propaganda (e.g. in Turkey, “iron will of the nation,” “we will not be corrupted,” “state within a state,” “merchants of blood,” “hooligans,” “traitors,”  “tax evaders”). This forces a realignment of the political centre and creates the perception that the reflexes of the radical axis are normal.
The slide to the radical right coincides with erosion of transparency and its three constituent elements:

(I) Openness, (II) freedom of communication and (III) accountability
At the end of the day the political centre is relatively fragile, depending less on slogans than the production of policies that are inclusive. Transparency remains a pre-condition to evaluate those policies which explains why governments try to undermine their efficacy. To look at the three in more detail:

Openness consists of:
a)  Free access to information (By contrast: access to Youtube and Twitter are banned. Newspaper owners are requested to fire outspoken journalists. Incrimination of ordinary people speaking their minds is vilified as “doing politics.” Controversy becomes the prerogative of politicians; others are required to take off their professional hats before being allowed to speak freely. Even this essay is an example “doing politics” and as such is “shameful.”)

b) The strengthening of decentralized governance which is participatory and based on cooperation (The opposite example is where laws are passed on the hoof as omnibus legislation, bypassing stakeholder governance completely).

c) The diminishing of heavy-handed governance (in which central authority is highly centralised and hierarchical with little voice left to decentralised institutions) The opposite of this is where citizens even dream about the Turkish prime minister and attempt to explain themselves to him. They ask “Why are you acting this way?” with all the emotional ambivalence that implies of feeling remote and removed from authority. This power relationship is reflected in the official discourse of “my police, my prosecutor, my governor” by the current Turkish prime minister.

(II) Communication (“communicare” in Latin, means sharing)

While sharing, both parties teach each other. Can a person who is not from its camp teach anything to today’s government? Persons who are forcibly marginalized, who are judged as to whether they are “from our camp or their camp?” cannot enter into a relationship of sharing. Communication cannot take place. Lobbying too becomes impossible. This impossibility means civil society organizations weaken. Instead of the state becoming transparent, the citizen unable to engage in communal action becomes transparent in the sense of loosing privacy and value as an individual. 

Although communication is one of the most important elements through which citizens directly control public administration, every known obstacle to that communication is present in Turkey.

a) Filtering (fire him, throw her out, the Law No. 5651 on Regulation of Broadcasts Via Internet and Prevention of Crimes Committed Through Such Broadcasts, National Intelligence Agency Law numbered 2937)

b) Selective perception (the attempt to monopolise the public agenda with lengthy televised speeches)

c) Loading of polluted information or misinformation (the government sits in the driver’s seat of the twenty-four hour news cycle and becomes ill-tempered if they are temporarily dislodged; it never feels the need to justify itself, or to refrain from going on the offensive
d) Diverting the news agenda (An example being the government’s vilification of a provocative newspaper columnist as being more important than the incident which he wrote about in which over 300 mine workers died).

e) Bringing motions centre stage (a Turkish prime minister who says “Rage is my style” is like a  bad-tempered relation who continuously upsets the family)

 (III) Accountability

Accepting responsibility  means being held accountable. A public authority unable to accept blame does not give an account for its actions.

There are recent examples in Turkey of the government refusing to accept responsibility. In the wake of the May 2014 mining disaster in Soma, the Turkish prime minister described the over 300 casualties as the result of unexceptional occupational hazard. Similarly the failure to commemorate the death of a teenage killed by riot control police while buying a loaf of bread in March, 2014 provoked the following by the Turkish prime minister: “I am sorry, but are we supposed to organize ceremonies for everyone who dies? Then we should abandon any attempt to get work down and simply organize funerals. He is dead and it is over. Should the police stay idle and do nothing against these persons? I have no idea how the police are able to put up with [demonstrators].”
 
Ask five experts the cost of Istanbul’s third bridge and get five different answers

All this goes to show that in Turkey the three preconditions for transparency do not exist. These are:

(1) Answerability,

(2) Blameworthiness/culpability

(3) Responsibility.

This has turned in a search for someone willing to stand up to be counted. The mayor of Ankara fought his election as if he had not been the incumbent since 1994 rather than a new broom to brush things clean. The government blames its ills on state within a state despite having been in power since 2002, never suggesting that they might have someesponsibility in creating what they call a parallel state. What we see are smoke shields to cover up basic issues of answerability, culpability and responsibility.

Even though being able to be held legally and morally responsible are two different headings, these axes can sometimes intersect. An example of this is the anti-bribery dimension of the concept of transparency which should be demanded by the voters, regardless of whether they stand to the left or the right.

The whole question of public finances is one of the most pressing issues in a country lacking not just transparency but even the demand for transparency. In Turkey there are no project based budgets which have been produced in a manner the public can comprehend. Spending items pertaining to different projects are stated under different sections of different ministries. If one asks about the budget of the third bridge project you cannot find an answer. Ask the sum total of the cost of the third airport project to the best five academicians and CEOs in Turkey. There will be billion dollar differences between the numbers which they have had to make up. Turkey was a candidate for the 2020 Summer Olympic but if anyone had said “Under current budgetary regulations, those games would have created huge opportunities for corruption,” that person would have declared a traitor. The most effective way to escape from the bottom of this particular well is (again) “transparency”.  

“Transparency” is a right. It is as clear as daylight that citizens should be able to know or to demand access to the information that affects their lives. Once transparency is ensured, everyone can decide what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong according to their own natural judgement.
 
About the author: Gönenç Gürkaynak is an attorney-at-law and managing partner of ELIG, an Istanbul-based law firm 

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