Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who became of the first directly elected Turkish president after the Aug. 10 election, has introduced another new aspect to Turkish politics. He did not attend the Judicial Year Opening Ceremony where the representatives of higher judicial bodies and bar association delivered speeches on Sept. 1. This stance of Erdoğan was supported by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government under the leadership of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Neither Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ nor other senior government officials attended the ceremony. The apparent reason for this crisis, the most controversial topic this week, is a discussion that took place during the 146th anniversary of the foundation of the Council of State in May. Attending the occasion as the then-prime minister, Erdoğan had a verbal clash with the Turkish Bar Association head Metin Feyzioğlu, who spoke out against Erdoğan and his government in an unnecessarily long speech. Erdoğan stormed out of the meeting hall saying that a man of law cannot accuse the government with baseless arguments. Erdoğan, who became president three months after this contention, said that he would not attend this year's Judicial Opening Ceremony in September, where Feyzioğlu delivered another speech. As for the root cause of Feyzioğlu's attitude, which ignores Erdoğan and the AK Party government, is the characteristic of the transformation process that Turkey has been going through for the last 12 years. The core of this transformation process, which is called the "new" Turkey by the AK Party's senior officials, is to promote public will against the sovereignty of appointed staff.The struggle between elected and appointed staff is the major problem of modern Turkey, just like Karl Marx's self-contradictory essay "Wage Labour and Capital." Due to this paradoxical situation, the 90-year-old Republic could not attain a civilian, transparent and democratic form. The principle of the separation of powers, composed of the trio of legislature, executive, judiciary, has never worked out in Turkey due to the hierarchical superiority of the judiciary. The policies that are produced by Parliament, the only legitimate representative of the public, and elected governments, have always been subjected to content control by the higher judiciary. According to the Constitution, however, the sphere of jurisdiction of the judiciary is only limited to procedural audits. The judiciary, which hangs over the public will like the sword of Damocles, is composed of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's archaic principles that date back to the 1930s rather than to universal values. The higher Turkish judiciary, which has always demanded to be independent, takes no notice of suggestions that it should be neutral. However, the essential characteristic of Themis, the goddess of justice in Greek mythology, is her neutrality and hence, she is portrayed with her eyes closed. The independence of the judiciary is a necessity to provide it with neutrality. As a matter of course, the political practices that are in accordance with the requirements of the age contradict with the outdated values of the Kemalist regime. With the support of the military, status quo and such ideological tools as the media, the judiciary has restricted the scope of Turkish democracy and turned the system into a juristocracy.In modern democracies, any field in which parliament does not get involved is considered a problem, whereas in Turkey, politics is hampered in the Parliament, i.e., in its own realm. The scope of the concept of "judicial intervention" has been expanded to restrict Parliament's authority to appoint a certain number of judicial members. Nowhere in the world are these authorities of parliament regarded as a problem, however, even discussions about this subject are considered an offense in Turkey. This juristocratic tradition has blocked democratic ways for many years. Consequently, the Turkish democracy has turned into a graveyard of outlawed parties and associations. For many years, the members of the higher judiciary have enjoyed this privileged position and belittled the legitimate representatives of the public. Chastising elected representatives during the Judicial Year Opening Ceremony has almost become a tradition. Erdoğan and the AK Party government's reactions against the antidemocratic inclinations of the higher judiciary caused a crisis. Yet still, the majority of Turkish society thinks that this crisis is necessary in order to get back their right of sovereignty that has been seized by the judiciary for many years.