The decision regarding the local elections to be held in Turkey was published in the Official Gazette. According to the decision of the Supreme Electoral Council, local administration elections will be held on March 31, the last Sunday of March 2024. On this date, elections for Local Administrations, Neighborhood Mukhtars and Councils of Elders will be held. Since democracy in our country is primarily related to voting and being elected, democracy is emphasized especially during election times and people accuse each other of being democrats or not being democrats. Being a Democrat is shown as a virtue. Sometimes this state of virtue is associated with citizenship and religion. The term democracy martyr is a result of this association.

Democracy: The Most Ideal Form of Government?

dēmokrateía in ancient Greek means people's rule, and demos means people. It is the compound form of the words kratia, which means management. In the Athenian democracy, which was born in Athens in 508 BC, it was understood and implemented as the direct self-government of the people. However, after the second half of the 18th century, centuries after the Athenian democracy, democracy was put into practice again in countries such as the USA and France. It is stated that democracy is the most ideal form of government and the idea of democracy is defined as the participation of the governed directly or indirectly in management.

Criticism of Democracy

However, there are also those who view democracy negatively and criticize it. Criticisms such as the fact that incompetent and unqualified people have the say and authority, that it causes instability, and that it only provides advantages to the poor and segments of society that do not have a culture of democracy are some of the criticisms that have been made since the ages when democracy first emerged.

Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC) argued that people who are qualified and knowledgeable about politics should take part in state administration. In addition, while Socrates was a civil servant, he witnessed high-ranking military leaders being improperly tried and executed. In Plato's work The Republic, he criticizes democracy with the metaphor of a ship. Socrates asks whether a ship should be commanded by anyone who has traveled on the ship or by someone who understands maritime. According to Socrates, just as buildings are built by architects and ships are built by shipbuilders, state administration is also a matter of expertise. In democracies, everyone is involved in the state administration by getting involved. The work of the majority is always disorganized and random. Socrates argues that the state administration should be governed by someone who knows the business of administration and is an expert in that field. Otherwise, the city (country) governed would be in danger. It should not be forgotten that the Athenian democracy executed Socrates on the charge of corrupting the youth by spreading atheism. For this reason, Plato, a student of Socrates, also approached democracy with suspicion.

Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) proposed the rule of wise people and philosophers who could contribute to all citizens being virtuous, instead of the whole people being in government. According to Plato, the equality brought by democracy is not realistic. Democracy attempts to forcibly equalize ordinary people with wise people with extraordinary qualities. For this reason, he was in favor of the rule of well-educated, wise people and philosophers, not the rule of the people. If that were the case, there would be no disorder or instability. According to Plato, who prefers aristocracy to democracy, there is harmony between social classes in aristocracy. However, democracies create very diverse and incompatible types of people. In the ideal state consisting of rulers, warriors and producers, the rulers should be philosopher kings. The fact that these rulers do not own private property allows them to devote themselves to the state. Plato says the following in his work called Republic:

“Democracy is a fair of order, take what you like.”

“Moral values are not even taken into consideration…. All these are disregarded in democracies. How a statesman is raised and what knowledge he acquires is not considered. It is enough to make us call ourselves friends of the people; "All honors are earned with this."

“Disrespect becomes kindness, chaos becomes freedom, waste becomes generosity, and brazenness becomes bravery.”

“Even animals are freer in this state than anywhere else; So much so that people wouldn't believe it unless they saw it with their own eyes... In democracies, horses and donkeys get used to walking so freely and proudly that they bump into anyone who does not avoid their path. Citizens come to a point where if they see even the slightest resemblance of oppression anywhere, they get angry and revolt; They disregard all written and unwritten laws, they want to remain independent in the truest sense of the word.”

Like Plato, Farabi (872-950) has a negative view of democracy. Both Plato and Farabi argue that the state should be built on the principles of interest and virtue, not on the variable and slippery desires and wishes of the people.

According to Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC), there are good governments and their corrupt states. While tyranny is the corruption of monarchy, the corruption of Aristocracy is oligarchy. Democracy is the corruption of the regime that Aristotle calls politeia. Politeia is a form of constitutional government based on the benefit of society, including all its classes. When democracy was corrupted, it became a form of government that defended only the interests of the poor. Democracy paves the way for the people to do whatever they wish based on the majority of their numbers, disregarding the principles of law.

Hundreds of years after the philosophers who lived during the Athenian Democracy period, Karl Marx argued that the legislative and executive bodies in the modern state were representatives of the wealthy classes, not the entire people. Vilfredo argues that modern democracy is actually no different from a kind of elite rule. Pareto (1848-1923) and Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941), on the other hand, saw democracy as a system that legitimizes the elites' coming to power and their rule of the state. While democracy in ancient Athens was the direct participation of the people in government, direct participation was replaced by representative democracy as we moved towards modern democracy. Representative democracy has been the most common form of democracy adopted by contemporary democracies. Representative democracy essentially involves voting, holding elections, and majority rule. However, representative democracy has also been criticized. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) argued that the truest form of democracy is direct democracy.

The Most Ideal Government Form?

Today, democracy is discussed with subheadings such as the rule of law, separation of powers, fundamental rights and freedoms, and electoral systems. Respect for fundamental human rights, a multi-party-political system paired with political tolerance, a democratic voting system, respect for the rule of law, democratic governance, citizen participation are seen as the main elements of democracy.

Implementing democracy, which is accepted as the most ideal form of government, as a form of government all over the world is seen as a necessity to create an ideal world. In this case, non-democratic governments must immediately transition to democracy. For this, it is necessary to carry out democratization reforms. Governments that make these reforms can bring democracy to their countries. There are various ways to do this:

• Emphasizing democracy by placing democratization reforms as a prerequisite for aid packages offered to underdeveloped countries.
• Freedom House prepares reports indicating that authoritarianism is increasing, and emphasizing democracy by issuing warnings and threats based on these reports.
• To emphasize democracy by sending observers or auditors to the relevant administration by making publications about the existence and increase of corruption through documentaries or other media.
• Emphasizing democracy by focusing on the absence or limitation of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
• Emphasizing democracy by activating internal dynamics by taking advantage of the weakness of the administration
• Emphasizing democracy by imposing economic or political sanctions.
• By emphasizing ensuring the sound functioning of the democratic order by encouraging or personally organizing the coup. In Turkey, the soup which started on the night of September 12, 1980 by the Turkish Armed Forces at 03.00 by seizing TRT, PTT and other communication offices, was announced to the whole country on radio at 04.00 . The first statement contained the following statement:

"The purpose of the operation is to protect the integrity of the country, to ensure national unity and solidarity, to prevent a possible civil war and fratricide, to re-establish state authority and existence, and to eliminate the reasons that prevent the functioning of the democratic order."

As a result, democracy was not only the most ideal form of government throughout the historical process, but was presented as the absolute form of government. Democracy and the necessity of democratization, which have settled in minds as an indisputable and unobjectionable form of government, have become a tool used by dominant countries. The United States of America (USA) and the EU stand out as the guardians and users of this tool.

After World War II, the League of Nations was used for a similar purpose. US President Wilson's Principles, which are based on the right of peoples to self-determination, were presented based on the principles of not gaining territory after the war. However, the Allied Powers, which won the war, invented the Mandate System to seize the lands of the countries that lost the war with some kind of cunning and placed it under the umbrella of the League of Nations. The legal justification for the mandate system was determined as the level of civilization and culture not being competent to govern itself. Thus, a country was evaluated according to its level of civilization and culture and whether it had the competence to govern itself or not. The Mandate System was applied to the country that was determined not to have the competence to govern itself. Like this. Particularly the Arab regions, which were connected to the Ottoman Empire through the mandate system, were liberated and at the same time Germany's colonies in Africa, Oceania and the Pacific regions were seized.

The evaluation of democracy or democratization serves to make a similar point. The USA and EU countries brought democracy to Iraq so that it could be democratized. Democracy also came to Egypt. Since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is considered a democratic country, there is no need for democratization. African countries in particular seem to be included in the democratization process. US President Joe Biden hosted the Democracy Summit on December 9-10, 2021. Democratic countries were invited to this summit. Countries deemed democratic by the USA are democratic countries. Among the countries that were not invited to the summit other than Turkey were China, Russia, Hungary, Belarus, Iran, Egypt, Bangladesh, North Korea, Myanmar, Cambodia, Rwanda, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Arising Questions

Could the USA and EU countries be making efforts to bring democracy to countries that were not invited to the Democracy Summit?

How likely is it to expect busy days in the future, just like the busy days in the past?

Is it true that whatever is being done is for democratization?

Couldn't the USA and EU countries have a bad intention or plan?

What will happen in the 21st Century?

Democratization was the management jargon of the twentieth century. It must be a jargon suitable for the digital age we live in. In this context:

We should go global?

What happens if we go digital?

We should be digital citizens?

Or, we all should be the world citizens