{"id":44083,"date":"2020-10-15T07:26:27","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T07:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=44083"},"modified":"2020-10-15T07:26:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T07:26:27","slug":"turkish-court-and-ministry-spar-over-lighting-tweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=44083","title":{"rendered":"Turkish court and ministry spar over lighting tweet"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"68\">\n<p>\nANKARA:\u00a0A dispute between Turkish state apparatus heated up on Tuesday night after a Twitter spat about who worked harder at night.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe fresh debate was triggered after a tweet from a Constitutional Court member, Engin Yildirim, who shared a photograph of the building and said: \u201cThe lights are on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nThe tweet quickly came to the attention of pro-government media and government authorities, who accused the judge of \u201cimplying a coup attempt,\u201d a reference to a failed putsch from July 2016.<\/p>\n<p>\nNot to be outdone, the Ministry of Interior tweeted a photograph of its building with the caption: \u201cOur lights never go off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThose who assumed the duty of those who greeted putschists in the past by saying \u2018the lights of the General Staff are on\u2019 should not wait even for a second to resign!\u201d the deputy interior minister tweeted, suggesting that journalists had always previously checked the General Staff building\u2019s lights at night for signs that a coup was being prepared.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe judge later deleted his tweet.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Constitutional Court held an unscheduled meeting on Wednesday, releasing a statement afterwards saying that it opposed all kinds of anti-democratic interventions that undermined constitutional order.<\/p>\n<p>\nBerk Esen, a political scientist from Sabanci University in Istanbul, said the row between the court and the ministry was worrying and that he was concerned about the possible negative ramifications in the weeks ahead.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cFor many, the lights don\u2019t matter if justice and the rule of law are already under darkness for a longtime,\u201d he told Arab News. \u201cThe decisions of Turkey\u2019s top court were long annoying the government and its nationalistic alliance partner which was even urging for reshaping the court \u2018in line with the presidential system.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nA series of Constitutional Court actions have upset the ministry which, in turn, has pushed back and tried to cut the institution down to size.<\/p>\n<p>\nEsen said that if the top court\u2019s decisions were no longer recognized, there would be no legal body left to stop an arbitrary interpretation of Turkey\u2019s constitution.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cIn the past, the Constitutional Court did not take the necessary steps to prevent autocratization in the country and ratified many articles that undermined the democratic regime, including some presidential decrees.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt failed to serve as a check on the presidency\u2019s growing control over the political system, so they share some blame for Turkey\u2019s democratic backsliding,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANKARA:\u00a0A dispute between Turkish state apparatus heated up on Tuesday night after a Twitter spat about who worked harder at night. The fresh debate was triggered after a tweet from a Constitutional Court member, Engin Yildirim, who shared a photograph of the building and said: \u201cThe lights are on.\u201d The tweet quickly came to the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}