Saturday - March 05, 2011

How America Works?

This is a question I came across on Ricochet.com.

Ricochet, please permit me to introduce you to my dear friend Mert, a new member of Ricochet and a student of constitutional law here in Istanbul. He’s about to embark on the writing of his dissertation. He wants to write about the American presidential system. He’s particularly interested in the idea of checks and balances in the US political system and the limits placed by our Constitution on the president’s power.

There’s an important reason for his interest. In Turkey, the ruling AKP is considering the introduction of a presidential system to replace Turkey’s traditional parliamentary mode of governance.

There were several comments. Here’s the one I posted:

I hate to say it, but our Federal Presidential system was a result of 13 separate States, or Countries, forming a Federation. And previously a Confederation. My guess is that Turkey cannot successfully implement our Presidential system. They are not a union of separate, sovereign, states. There’d be no separation of powers, no multiple chambers in the legislature, no Electoral College, etc.

The result? A dictatorship. An Islamic dictatorship.

Was denken Sie? (I hope I remember my freshman college German)

Posted by Christopher     on 03/05/2011 at 11:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Government • International • Middle-East •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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