Yesterday, we marked the anniversary of the Sept. 12, 1980 coup in Türkiye. It has been 44 years since the coup, and although significant steps have been taken to cleanse the country of tutelary mechanisms, the remnants of it have not yet been entirely eradicated. Just a week ago, we witnessed once again that the mentality capable of saying, "The lieutenants sent a message to the government," still exists.

This shows us that, within those who claim to be against coups and tutelage, there is considerable "longing for the past." By "the past," we mean the periods when the coup leaders "put the people and civilian politics in line."

The Constitution is one of the most important vehicles of the coup tradition. Türkiye's last two Constitutions were made by coup leaders. The authors of these constitutions based their work on opposing the Turkish public. Because after the transition to democracy in 1950, "the people had made a mistake," and despite three elections, they had not corrected that mistake. The circles who lost their hold on power through democratic elections supported the coups to "teach the people a lesson."

Coup leaders, who considered the 1961 Constitution insufficiently functional, paid special attention to both the letter and the spirit of the 1982 Constitution. They established the legal and institutional mechanisms to ensure the continuation of the power of the tutelary interest groups.

Here, the issue of the "spirit of the constitution" is not a trivial matter. For more than 30 years, we have been working to change the 1982 Constitution. There have been significant or minor changes to 96 of its articles so far. It has been amended 19 times. Despite all these amendments, the unchanging truth is that the current Constitution is still a coup constitution. The coup leaders’ stamp remains in the spirit of the Constitution.

Based on this reality, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after the recent Cabinet meeting, once again stated that a civilian constitution is not just a need but a necessity for Turkish democracy to fully reckon with coups and the coup mentality.

Since the 1990s, all political parties have expressed the need to change the coup constitution regardless of whether they are on the right or left. Although they claimed this, they found countless excuses when it came to making changes.

In the upcoming period, even if the opposition does not want to discuss this issue, it is sure that one of the top political agenda items will be the search for a new and civilian constitution. Erdoğan’s reiteration of the commitment that "Parliament will do everything in its power to draft a new and civilian constitution" is a sign of this.

From the 2018 elections to the 2023 elections, the Republican People's Party (CHP) discussed the need for a new constitution. Six parties came together and prepared a report for a constitutional amendment. The essence of the opposition's constitutional proposal was based on a return to the "strengthened parliamentary system."

However, for some reason, the CHP seems to have forgotten what they said on this subject. They shelved the search for a new constitution. They don’t even want to remember their promise of a return to the parliamentary system. While it is understandable from a political perspective that the government and the opposition might propose different solutions regarding the content of the new constitution or the future of the political system, it is contradictory that the CHP, whose main agenda until the elections was constitutional change, now does not want even to discuss such a change.

Opposition parties may not want to discuss constitutional change regarding agenda management. They may think that this will benefit the government. However, politics is a dynamic activity. How you manage the agenda is crucial.

Before 2017, the opposition did not believe that constitutional changes, including changes to the political system, could occur. If they had participated in the negotiations, then a different outcome might have emerged on the issues they now object to. But they didn’t. Avoidance is not an effective political strategy in democratic politics.