Did You Get a Load of Arizona’s System?

Oddly enough, just one month before the armed attack in which six were killed and House Representative Gabrielle Giffords was gravely wounded, the Turkish Justice Department had been taking great interest in Arizona’s legal system.

In the wake of the attack, Sheriff Dupnik placed the blame on “a toxic political climate.”* According to sources, Giffords had been a sharp critic of the harsh immigration laws passed in the state which call for the trial and deportation of illegal immigrants. Giffords was also criticized for voting in support of Obama’s health care reform bill. Friends say that Giffords had recently been the target of death threats. Among those killed was Federal Judge [John] Roll, who had also criticized the immigration laws and received death threats leading up to the attack.

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Between Dec. 2 and 11, Undersecretary of the Justice Department Ahmet Kahraman, along with eight leading judges, took a close look at the legal systems of the states of Washington, Colorado and Arizona in order to find ways to eliminate certain shortcomings in the Turkish legal system. They found Arizona’s system to be ideal. Arizona Appellate Court Judge Daniel Barker quotes the committee as saying, “We believe that there are some shortcomings to guaranteeing the security of the public in our Turkish legal system. For this reason, we are looking to Arizona’s system, which has recorded great gains in this area.”

Now the minister of justice, chief justice, prime minister and president have made this public and announced that regional appellate courts will be created.

“Going forward,” says Minister of Justice Sadullah Ergin, “it will not be enough to establish regional appellate courts or to support the Supreme Court, but we must have them working simultaneously in order to achieve results.” Prime Minister Erdoğan also announced, “Preparations for the regional appellate courts have been finalized.”

And yet, once again, the administration is uneasy! President Gül gave encouragement with the words, “Fear not, I am behind you,” as he departed for Yemen.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP Party) sent 35 lieutenant governors and judges to a seminar in the U.S. in order to learn techniques for public administration. Heading up the committee was Kadir Çakır, head of the Ministry of Domestic Affairs Strategic Development Committee. He is quoted as saying, “Whether it be in theory or in practice, we will use the information that we have gained here in the best way possible for the purposes of security in Turkey.”

The purpose of all of these actions can be understood if we remember that Tayyip Erdoğan said that he had thought about implementing a “presidential system” in place of a “parliamentary system.”

Turgut Özal was thinking about creating the same kind of system, but it was never realized. This project was not even originally Özal’s idea. It is the modern-day version of America’s plan to divide and rule Turkey from 115 years ago.

In his letter, Yavuz Gürler poses the following question: “Do appellate courts mean state courts? Can these courts be created without a series of state governments? As I understand it, while Greece was an Ottoman province, there were appellate courts. I would be happy if you could give some information to shed light on this issue.”

Shall we have the blind leading the blind — development agencies closing their eyes and joining in on Turkey’s makeover into a federal system? The Justice and Development Party, after all, was formed, according to its mission statement, as an entity that empowers local authorities with sovereignty, as can be seen in the secret document of the Council on Foreign Relations. That is, we have all the proof we need in order to tell what the Justice and Development Party is up to.

*The quote from Sheriff Dupnik could not be verified.