10 Temmuz 2008 Perşembe

Chapter I: TYPES OF STATES ACCORDING TO THE TYPE OF COMMUNITY

According to the type of Community, we had rather use the word "community" than "nation," since the latter is described in such a large scope as religious unity, cultural unity, lingual unity, racial unity and common geography, and because its meaning changes from view to view. The first type of state is based on this integral aspect which shapes it and is divided in two: homogeneous and heterogeneous.


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Homogeneous, meaning "the same kind" or "having the same kind of the others." We are aware of the fact that the meaning of the phrase, "the same kind," can be interpreted in many different ways considering the elements mentioned above. Therefore, in our case, "homogeneous community" can be described as the community whose ways of interaction have been formed in a different way from ones not belonging to that community.


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Describing the type of state as homogeneous and heterogeneous is very important particularly in terms of International Law. According to International Law, this issue, besides being first a matter of theory, is closely related to the ones which appear in practice as directly imposed legal sanctions. For instance: "A heterogeneous state is required to be controlled!"



ACCORDING TO ITS INSTITUTIONS

According to its institutions, the structure and institutions of a state are not the same as each other. The physical conditions and historical events of the country play a major role in the establishment of a state. Therefore, in terms of these different structures, states are divided into two other types as simple states and united or combined states.


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In the first type, which is the simple-unitary states, the execution of local affairs is usually left to secondary institutions (those of a second degree; for instance, municipal organizations). Issues directly related to the public order are handled by a single authority which is centralized. Needless to say, simple-unitary states can be both homogeneous and heterogeneous and can be different from each other in terms of the degree of authority endowed to local administrative units.


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The second type of state is the united-combined states, which are formed as a "united-unified" entity or a "community-combination." According to some experts of law and political science, any state which can be classified in this group is also called "state of the states." This can be considered in two parts: "The states in such states are embodied as a union which are united/unified or as a community-combination which came together." The states which are "united" are divided into two: "personal unification" or "real unification." Similarly, the states embodied as a "community-combination" are divided into two: confederations and federal states.


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The "personal unifications" are two different states united under the authority of the president of the state. In other words, the connection creating such unification is derived not from International Law but from the inner particularities and laws in the given state. In these unions, relationships of rulers such as inheritance, marriages and donations appear, and the state is attached to the union and preserves its international entity. In other words, as two different governments and regimes, one of these states can be ruled by absolutism, and the other by a constitutional regime. The most significant aspect of such states under the name of "personal unification" is their nonessential properties and temporariness, and the fact that the right of each state to dominate and rule is fully reserved.


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As for the "real unifications," some of the states described as unified are not only united by the presence of the ruler but have also formed a union based on codes of law in relation to each other. These unified states are autonomous in internal organizations, codes and administration, whereas they are subjected to the same code when it comes to foreign affairs and territorial defense. Each state in a unified state has its own codes, legislative commission, parliament, flag and official language, yet foreign affairs are handled by a single, central authority. Although the administrative forms of these states in a single union are different from each other, they are perceived as a single state by others. The most important point here is the fact that a real union cannot form a single state. What we see here is that two or more "ruling-autonomous" states are united. In practice, they represent one single international entity, and as a result, cannot declare war or practice peace on their own. Their consulates and embassies are common ones. Political agreements can be signed only by the union. The liabilities regarding foreign countries are the concern of the union itself. As long as there are strong connections in a real unification, unlike the personal unification, the decline of or the changing of the ruler does not destroy the union itself.


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States which came together in a combination are the second type of combined or united states: they are the states that constitute confederations or federal states.


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Confederations are entities of independent states, which preserve their unique qualities, coming together for a common and limited purpose. The confederations formed throughout history are now lost and insufficient to cater to the concept of the state. Some experts in law, in respect to this point, claim that a confederation is not a state; that there is only a law-bound relationship between its states; that it has no distinct community and territory, and therefore cannot be described as a state. They point out that each member state in a confederation has an international entity and a state entity. The limited quality of the purpose in a confederation preserves the specific entity of the states which formed it. Throughout history, there have been a number of states which joined a confederation: on condition that they keep their state entity. The major organ of the confederation is the congress or the Diet, and the decisions they make are agreements rather than codes or laws. The confederation has neither a common nationality, nor a common territory, or a government ruling all the others attached to it. It can be likened to an alliance, since it is a political association rather than a legal one. However, we should remember that the institutions in confederations generally called congress or Diet never existed in alliances.


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The second type of the states that came together is federal states. This type is formed when a group of countries unite and the states of these countries take part in the government of the federal state and have a common constitution. The autonomy of the member states is much greater than the authority given by a central government. It is also superior to that type of authority. Although a confederation is a kind of association or an alliance, a federal state is a state per se. The confederation is based on agreements whereas a federal state has a constitution. In other words, a confederation is an institution of International Law, while a federal state is the outcome of Constitutional Law. In a confederation, the member state's international entity is reserved, whereas in a federation this entity is the entity of the federal state and although the "state" title of the member states are kept as it is, they cannot represent an autonomous dominance. In a confederation there is no group to execute power over all the others, yet in the federal states the constitution and the government are unified. Eventually, there is one single nationality in a federal state and the citizens of all the member states are "given" the same nationality.



ACCORDING TO THEIR SOVEREIGNTY

With respect to their sovereignty, we can divide states into two: independent states and semi-independent states.


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Independent states: These are those that have domestic and international sovereignty. They enjoy their sovereignty rights freely, without any restrictive clause or conditions. Aside from the issues related to limiting the sovereignty and power in accordance with the objective rules of internal and external public law, the reality is this: there are so many seemingly independent states that only few are so. Therefore, the intensity of independence is in accordance with the concrete evidence of power of sovereignty and one can just forget about the rest.


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Semi-independent states: The states which are not fully equipped with the prerogatives and authoritative power fall into this categorization. These are generally states which have partially or completely lost their external sovereignty or the ones which have not gained it yet. These states can be grouped into three classes:
a) Some states, through an agreement, are placed under the protection of another, more powerful country. Of course, this protection makes both parties endowed with liabilities as well as rights, which, however, never means a legal equality between them. The protective state always has a superior position in international relations. This way is no more than an effort to legitimize its imperialist and colonialist politics. The practices of these states demonstrate to us that these states always consider themselves as having a higher level of civilization and that they protect an inferior state with a lower level of civilization than their own and they always use them as a means to a specific end of their own. (Indeed, we believe that these issues cannot be settled with phrases like "higher civilization" and "lower civilization", to put it simply, we opt for using "higher civilization" for the powerful and "inferior civilization" for the weaker one.) Although the state which was protected by another has its own constitution and major representative body, they are not fully given the right to sovereignty.
b) Some states may have been separated from the one they once had been subjected to. Yet, they may still feel attached to it. Such countries are called subjected countries. In international affairs, the subjected state is represented by the state to which it is subjected. In comparison to the protected states, subjected states are exposed to more restrictions and they have no external sovereignty at all.
c) Mandated territories are a type of state which appeared after the First World War. It means the authority given to a country to mandate in a given country or countries in the name of the League of Nations and under the control of the League of Nations to carry out some particular functions. It could be similar to the practice of tutelage in Private Law, so the practice can be called an international institution of tutelage. In some ways it is different than the practice of protective governments. The protection of the protective countries is based on an agreement with the protected country; yet the authority of mandate given to a country is a duty. Indeed, mandate administration only indicates an attempt at explanation to legitimize European colonial and imperial politics. Nevertheless, because of the powerlessness of the League of Nations, it was replaced by the United Nations and the concept of mandated territories had its place in the past. In the United Nations Constitution dated 26 June 1945, an "international protection regime" was described. It was like mandating regimes but with a wider scope of rights.



ACCORDING TO THE SOURCE OF POWER

When we categorize states with respect to the "source of power", we usually see monarchic states/monarchies in the first group and republican administrations in the second.


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In a monarchy, the power stems from one individual. The source or owner of power is the ruler, as long as he is alive, and his will is the unique source of power.


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There were different types of monarchies in history. In some monarchic regimes the ruler was seen as divine or as the representative of Allah. Such regimes were called Theocratic monarchies. The fact that the Ottoman Sultans were regarded as the "shadow of Allah" on the Earth and that the Caliph of Allah's prophet, which we will consider later, is an example of the same concept of theocratic monarchy.


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In some monarchic regimes, the ruler is the owner of the state. The ruler has property rights both in his country and in other subjected ones since they are attached to his country. The real owner of the land is the ruler. This is also called a patrimonial monarchy and it was seen in oriental monarchies as well as in the last period of the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages (with some differences). In this type of state, the ruler is not an agency of a state; because the state was not yet an independent and sufficiently legal entity.


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In the third type of monarchy, the ruler is not over and outside the reality of state, but is an element and agent of the state's reality. We can mention absolute monarchy and constitutional monarchy in this category.


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With respect to the type of enthronement of the ruler and the scope of his authority, the monarchies can be further categorized:
a) Elective monarchy: In such states, as the name suggests, the ruler is selected by the people. However, unlike republican states, the right to rule that belongs to the ruler is not for a specific period of time but instead during his lifetime and these elective monarchies usually change, in time, into hereditary monarchies. This type of state can be seen, for example, in the histories of Belgium, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. The most familiar type of monarchical state regime is the hereditary monarchy. In such monarchies, the candidate-ruler should ascend from a dynasty and is supposed to have occupied a position beforehand.
b) With respect to the scope and limit of the ruler's authority, the monarchical states can be divided into absolute and constitutional monarchies:
Absolute monarchy: In this way, the right to rule of the ruler is not limited by any law. The ruler is the first and foremost and principal agency. There is no constitution which can bind the ruler in the usual sense and way in states administered by such a regime. In some cases, the only sanction that can be imposed on the ruler is religious or moral. Yet, such regimes are different from despotism in its compliance with some of the customary rules. For instance, in France, there were customary requirements called fundamental law of the monarchical kingdom. Although it cannot be analyzed in such classical schemes, there were major rules in the Ottoman State as well, and during the period of decline, when these rules were disobeyed, the consequences of this disobedience are today known to all.
Constitutional monarchy: In this type of state, the rights of the ruler are restricted within the law. Here, the state has some first degree political organs over the ruler like the public and its representatives in the parliament. In short, there is an order of public law, sanctions and a constitution which restrict the rights and authority of the ruler. Besides, some of the contemporary monarchies are seen to have left room to democratic and parliamentary systems.


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The second group in the categorization according to the source of power is republican administrations. Here the dominant power belongs to many people. In countries which accepted this type of regime, instead of the real entities, committees and legal entities are the first degree political agents. And according to the significance of the first degree agents, republics are further divided into two as aristocratic and democratic.


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In an aristocratic state, a specific social class dominates others due to reasons related to birth, age, knowledge, wealth, industrial and commercial professionalism, and so on. This privileged class is the first degree organ of the state and the function of legislation also belongs to them. The authority to execute is given to either an individual or a committee. Yet, the executive organ in this system is obviously not the ruler. No matter what type of dominance or government is employed, the right to dominate, in aristocratic regimes, does not belong to one person but to a class of a number of legally privileged people.


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Unlike aristocratic administration, in the states administrated by democracy, there is no privileged group or class dominant over others. It is replaced with a "community-nation." In this type of state, either the community itself functions as the legislative and executive organs or that authority is given to a committee. In the former case there is "direct democracy" and in the latter there is "representative democracy". No doubt, taking the populations into account, it is practically impossible to apply direct democracy in our age. In between these two types, another one to reconcile the disadvantages and requirements of them can be seen as "semi-direct democracy". In this system, the public selects its own representatives as in the other type, but despite the parliament with its right to legislate and be a decision-maker, the last word is reserved, again, by the public. The public enjoys this authority through ways such as referendums, vetoes, and proposing a new rule. Switzerland and the United States can be given as exemplification of states enjoying semi-direct democracy.


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"Nations have the right to determine their own fate," which is an article of the declaration issued by the president of the United States Woodrow Wilson during the First World War, announced to the entire world that democracy is not an internal regime but the fundamental part of international relations.



PRESIDENCY -- TYPES

In the introductory stage of the "Grandsublime State", let us consider the question; "What is presidency?" Since the meaning of the "head of the state" or "president" is very close in content to the "types of states", it is included in this chapter.


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Faithful to absolute truth, distinguished with his sense of restricted freedom, and in compliance with the supreme justice criterion in any case, let us for a moment leave the ideal president aside. He has always been in our minds. In reality, however, we can consider two categories, which we can formulate from what we have seen so far: Totalitarian and democratic samples. All those having significance from a central entity to the public or from the public to the central entity�the king, shah, president, and the president of the council of state are in this category. As for the inner strata of this classification, there are three classes as follows: "puppets, puppeteers, and glorious mannequins."


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Puppets... Poor beings compelled to please others; to play a given role in the hands of major parties and factions, be it a king or a president. The King of Italy during the period of Mussolini or Sultan Resat during the period of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, as well as some of the Soviet Russian presidents et cetera et cetera.


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Puppeteers... All the heads of absolutist regimes and the ones who use their circles or parties or factions as pawns, be it in the sincerity of a totalitarian regime or under the lie of democracy, and be it as a king or as a president of a state. Examples are Hitler in Germany, Stalin in Russia, Franco in Spain, Tito in Yugoslavia, Qaddafi (only a draft) in Libya and Inonu in our country, etcetera�


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Glorious mannequins... After sufficiently sticking to all the rules and administrative and social institutions, particularly in a democratic order, now there are the ones who believe that their wills are only so-called committed to the execution of state affairs, yet who are incapable of performing any governmental duty. They are unpretentious, unassertive people, beyond any party or faction. The best examples are the British kings and the presidents of some thoroughly democratic and civilized countries, particularly, presidents of France and Italy etcetera.


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The cacophony of authority between the presidency of the state and the presidency of the government in the state system caused Americans to unite both positions, so that the decentralized authority could be collected and balanced by a focused power of authority. As it can be seen, eventually everything comes down to being a focus personality. In this case, the president has to perform a type of artistic talent; keeping a balance between a democratic order and an authoritarian order and meeting the requirements of both qualities. This type is represented by De Gaulle of France. That is, personality, "central (focus) personality":
A personality bends and twists all other shapes and opens the way for the representation of truth and right, beyond all shapes. The "focus personality" is the one who treats the shapes as they deserve to be treated and the one who shapes them even when they are already shaped.

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