One can observe the fact that the lack of trust to the government in Turkey equals to 49 percent based on the data provided by the ‘Turkish Values Research”. It is 70 percent for the political parties and 47 percent for the TBMM (Turkey’s Grand National Assembly).
It is also interesting to see that the trust for the political parties is even lesser than the confidence toward the government. The lack of trust for the political parties is a clear reflection of general distrust and discomfort with the Turkish politics and political organizations at the same time.
In such an environment, it is impossible to bridge the gap between state and society, and share a common ideal to work for a joint future. One even can not talk about mobilization of the masses behind national causes.
In recent years, Turkish politics had important problems but it is not possible to argue that these problems were addressed in an adequate manner. We did not see will and decisiveness to produce solutions to these problems. The political parties in Turkey have been stuck with the daily routine and showed little performance in terms of generating time and energy for the basic problems in this political chaos.
If one analyzes how Turkey’s political system works, it would be seen that there are some basic problems and these problems were accumulated due to absence of solutions to them in the past. In result, the problems of political system further complicate the political situation and become more complex problems of today.
The most important problem of our political system is the inability of the governments to do work and undertake the responsibility of what they have done. This is mainly due to lack of long-term thinking and failure to appropriate a future vision. One can easily assume that such governments can never have realistic targets for the society, Turkey faces the risk of remaining behind the challenges and opportunities of the global age.
The disorder of the political parties, the inability of governance by continuing coalitions, the loss of power for the central parties and slow pace of political reforms are the reasons that affect the political system in negative terms.
The facts that governments preserve their hold on power and not willing to share it also cause the system to work in am improper way. Because the governments focus on a centralistic perspective, it becomes difficult for the civil organizations to support governments and ease the tension between state and society.
The level of democracy will also increase when the issues are solved in the Turkey’s political system. Therefore, it is important to argue on the issues of political system and find solution alternatives.
Another question of our political life is that our parties and the politicians have problems to convey their messages to their constituencies. Political communication has been under the shadow of improper advertising campaign which did not have long-term effects at all. However, in the highly democratic countries, political communication practices take place in the center of politics and with the implementation of long-term strategies, successful results have been achieved.
Political Communication Institute of TASAM targets at talking about the issues of Turkey’s political system, doing the scientific research and investigation that the parties need, to prepare reports for guidance, enabling parties and politics people introducing themselves through correct strategies of conveying their messages.
We believe in taking equal distance to all parties, appropriating scientific rules, targeting to offer guidance to political parties and other actors in political system and improvement of the quality of Turkish politics in general.
Political Communication Institute of TASAM is ready to perform its role for the Turkey’s bright future. It will also enable us to view future from a trustworthy perspective if our parties and other political institutions perform their duties and put effort for preparing our country to the global age’s needs.