Turkey will soon have one of its most critical elections in recent history.
Tomorrow, we will all learn how allegations, information pollution and events since the Dec. 17 operations have been perceived by the public.
Something else will happen tomorrow.
After the ballot boxes have been opened and the votes counted, a new era will begin in Turkey. Critical placements and dismissals will continue at an accelerated pace. New people will be appointed to important ranks in the police force, the judiciary, the upper supreme boards and bureaucracy. The closure of institutions such as the Telecommunication Directorate (TİB) - a legal monitoring center which has been used for illegal monitoring through unlawful court decisions - might even be brought to the agenda. New institutions will be formed. I define this process as the "reconstruction of the state."
The Dec. 17 operations revealed the existence of a structure that operates outside the borders of state hierarchy and which imposes its private agenda on the country in different spheres and levels of the state (mainly within the police force and judiciary). President Abdullah Gül noted this structure by saying, "There are different interdependencies within certain state institutions." Prime Minister Erdoğan spoke in detail about the activities of this structure during his rallies.
This structure became widely known as the "parallel structure" and was directly linked to the Gülen Movement.
After Dec. 17, many developments occurred that can be characterized as "a state crisis arising from different interdependencies."
Certain police officers have disobeyed unlawful orders of prosecutors leading the operation. Istanbul's chief prosecutor announced that the prosecutors behind the operations had conducted the mission without his knowledge, that the office of the chief public prosecutor had been bypassed, resulting in a violation of law and practice.
The fact that the president, parliamentary speaker, chief of staff, intelligence undersecretary and thousands of other people were illegally monitored by a structure within the police force and the judiciary is only one example of such a practice. Another example is the raid conducted by public prosecutors and the gendarmerie on the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) trucks carrying aid to the Bayir-Bucak Turkmen in Syria.
In reality, the Ergenekon, Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) and OdaTV trials were previews of what is taking place today.
The opposition parties in particular mentioned how innocent people along with the guilty stood trial, including mainly soldiers who were discharged from state command.
The opposition often mentions how the parallel structure discharged critical cadres in state institutions using unlawful lawsuits, only to replace them with those who benefitted their own agenda and would form their own cadres in public offices.
Government sources say that they only came to realize this fact with the Dec. 17 operations.
In other words, the government has been struggling with bureaucratic tutelary powers with considerable success and realized the existence of a new power group outside the state hierarchy on Dec. 17.
After tomorrow's elections, we will face a process targeting the limitation of the efficiency of tutelary forces within the state. In other words, the state will be reconstructed.
At this point, it is crucial not to create a new tutelary focus in an attempt to eliminate the old one. The system has to be built in a cosmopolitan manner. A structure has to be constituted in which no political ideology, world view or identity can rule on its own.
I believe the government has learned its lesson and possesses this perspective in moving
forward and reconstructing the state.