THEY ALSO SAID "YES"

Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis periodically writes articles to newspapers and his last article was published in the daily newspaper Posta on August 7, 2010 and there, Bagis touched on the Referendum process from the historical perspective.

In his article Bagis wrote:

We have been endeavoring to integrate into European Union since 1960. Again since 1960's we have been governed by military constitutions. Is it a coincidence? Of course, it is not. I want to give an account of this with the story of three Mediterranean countries, which are EU Member States, why it is not a coincidence.

First, our neighbor, Greece. Between 1967 and 1974, Greece was ruled by a Junta. During this period, tens of thousand people were arrested for political reasons. Thousands of people were tortured. As the famous Greek composer, Mikis Theodorakis said, " The military junta was even worse than the German occupants."

After the 1974 Cyprus War, the military junta returned power to the civil government. The first task of the civilian government was to prepare a democratic and civil constitution. By adopting the 1975 constitution, Greek Parliament paved the way for democratization. Soon after the establishment of the democratic regime, Greece applied for membership to the European Community. Despite economic troubles, accession negotiations were launched and Greece became a member of the Community in 1981. From 1939 to 1975, another Mediterranean, the dictator General Franco, governed his country for 36 years. It is known that 100.000 people were missing, more than 50.000 people were executed by firing squads and tens of thousand people were arrested.

By saying, "the main duty of Spanish army is to protect the internal order", Franco emphasized that the main enemy is internal. Just like the 12 September Generals. Taking the first step to democracy with the death of the Western Europe's last dictator, Spain applied to the European Community in 1977. The precondition for starting the negotiations was to constitute a democracy, in other words a civilian constitution.

A constitution was prepared through consensus and it was referred to a referendum in 1978. An overwhelming 88 percent majority of the Spanish said, "Yes" to the constitution. The negotiations were started in 1979 and Spain joined the Community in 1986.

Portugal, the neighbor of Spain in Iberian Peninsula, lived through the longest dictatorship period of Europe with "New State" that was created by Salazar. During the period of more than 40 years, the Portuguese suffered from political murders, detention and torture. In Portugal that went through the transition from dictatorship to democracy with the Carnation Revolution in 1974, the Parliament approved the democratic and civilian constitution in 1976. After putting the constitution into effect, Portuguese applied to the Community in 1977 and joined along with Spain in 1986.

The similarity of the history of these three Mediterranean countries is notable. The Dictatorship periods in which the people suffered, the fall of these regimes, implementation of the civilian and democratic constitutions and European Union membership. What is particularly interesting is that, while European Commission opposed the membership applications of these three countries for economic reasons in that period, the Council of Ministers supported their membership on political reasons. The reason for this was to support these emerging democracies that had prepared their civil constitutions. In other words, the formula was clear; if you want to be a member of the European Union, you should have a civilian and democratic constitution.

It would not be wrong to say that the first step taken by these countries who are EU Member States for the progress and development, level of prosperity, socio-economic transformation, democratization, urbanization and modernization attained in the past 25-30 years was their constitutions.

Turkey, another Mediterranean country, shared similar events in her recent political history. 12 September period is a black spot in the history of Turkish democracy where more than 1.5 million people were accused, half million people were detained and tortured, hundreds of thousands people's passports were restricted, those who were underage were executed by increasing their ages, tens of thousands of people were fired from their jobs and thousands of people were expelled from citizenship. But what is just as sad as the events of the period is the fact that we are still being governed with this constitution even 30 years later.

There is a lot of lessons that can be learned from the histories of these Mediterranean countries. History shows us that the choice made by the Spanish to say, "Yes" to the civil and democratic constitution was the right one. It is time to take the same decision as Greece, Portugal and Spain.

In the coming 12 September, we will actually make a choice between two 12 September's in our recent history. Either we will choose to stay on the statist, anti-democratic gridlock of 12 September 1980 or we will support the way to the European Union that was paved by the late Ismet Inonu on 12 September 1963 by the signing of the Ankara agreement. Despite all oppositions and diversions, I believe that the Turkish people will not give up the road to contemporary civilization that was opened by Ataturk.