The program is too presumptuous for a government weakened by two years of friction with the organs of the establishment, according to analysts. But the top politicians of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) are determined to go through with the program. Though not all the AK Party politicians are aware of its details, all are aware that the success of the program would be a life buoy for the AK Party in a hostile political environment.

For AK Party members, the situation is clear: The program will be carried out not because the government is up to the task, but because it has no other option. AK Party parliamentary group deputy chairman Nihat Ergün is frank enough to admit that even the program itself was a product of a lack of options. "The Third National Program is important in the sense that it defines the priorities of the government." Stressing that the program was shaped according to the priorities set by the EU, Ergün said it was important that the EU was there to prevent arbitrary program priorities that may change from government to government. AK Party Yozgat deputy and parliamentary group deputy chairman Bekir Bozdağ could not agree more.

He complains that Turkey was not able to free itself from the vicious discussions of the political agenda based on abstract argumentations and crises. "We should see the Third National Program as a golden chance to get out of this atmosphere," he said in an interview with Sunday's Zaman.

Neither politician accepts the charge that the government won't be able to find the necessary funds to see the program through. The cost of the four-year program to Turkey will be a relatively low 21.8 billion euros, and about 8.2 billion euros of this is expected to be provided by the EU. A large part of the necessary funds will be spent by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to work on upgrading cities' drainage, water treatment and waste disposal systems to meet EU standards. Though the numbers may seem quite high, experts say the government sends local governments in Turkey more than 13.6 billion euros each year. That is the amount the government will need to spend on the infrastructure upgrade projects. But whether such a huge amount of funds (8.2 billion euros) will actually be provided by the EU is not clear yet.

Bozdağ says that, compared to the risks inherent in the problems that will be solved through the program, the expense is not too high. "Turkey needed these environmental investments long ago. We are still piling garbage at dump sites; waste is poured directly into streams without any treatment. The expense may be high, but Turkey is strong enough to handle it," he said.

Ergün says the budgetary deliberations should be conducted with a holistic eye. "The investments that will be made for the environment will decrease expenditures on health issues. This is not a one-way spending mechanism," he told Sunday's Zaman.

One of the obstacles facing the implementation of the Third National Program is the fact that some of the legal changes it calls for will necessitate constitutional amendments. Laws such as the Ombudsman Law, the law on the Court of Accounts and the law on the structure of the Supreme Board of Prosecutors and Judges (HSYK) require constitutional amendments. These laws were all contained within the Second National Program, but even the then-powerful AK Party government couldn't pass them through Parliament.

Some of the features in the Third National Program are actually leftovers from the First National Program of 2000, and the fact that they were not successful then indicates the difficulties awaiting the AK Party government. Among these leftovers are changes to the Political Parties Law, the Election Law and the Law on the Financing of Political Parties. The passage of these changes will necessitate not only determination on the part of the government and the opposition, but also a readiness to give up the disproportional advantage the current election legislation provides for the larger political parties.

A stumbling block to any constitutional amendment is the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). The CHP has already declared that it won't support any constitutional amendment that will be brought to Parliament by the AK Party. Even worse than the lack of cooperation from the opposition, the AK Party also faces strong resistance from the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court, which has set a precedent with its decision to audit constitutional amendments according to content, will be able to do so whenever the CHP appeals to the court for the annulment of any constitutional amendment. A particular issue that will probably be brought before the court is the civilian inspection of the expenditures of the military establishment. Experts point out that the support of the CHP during the Second National Program was one of the essential elements of the AK Party's success in 2003 and 2004 in passing a record number of EU-related reforms. The Third National Program will most likely be missing that support.

An expert on civilian-military relations in Turkey, columnist Ali Bayramoğlu does not think the content of the Third National Program is too ambitious. But he thinks that the government is too weak to see it through. Commenting on the civilian inspection of military expenditures that the program calls for, Bayramoğlu recalls that civilian inspection was already enabled in theory by legal changes in 2002. "But this was not an automatically activated inspection mechanism. It was to be done by Parliament in the name of the Court of Accounts only when the deputies asked to do so. The problem in Turkey is not the ability of the government to pass laws making new regulations, but to pass the bylaws and standing orders to activate those laws. The bylaw of inspection of army expenditures by the Court of Accounts has not been passed yet. We have a country where certain protocols and bylaws have more power than laws. Look at the Bylaw of the National Security Council [MGK]. Only with a civilian and military consensus can these be changed," he explained. Bayramoğlu believes that only through a public campaign and EU support for the renewal of the negotiation process can the government find the determination to push for change on issues related to the military. "If, for instance, the bylaw that will codify the inspection of military expenditures incorporates a 'precondition of confidentiality,' that kind of an inspection will not be a valid one," he said.

Adnan Tanrıverdi, president of the Society of the Defenders of Justice (ASDB), which lobbies for the rights of military personnel dismissed because of their religious beliefs, is optimistic about the legal review of the decisions of the HSYK and the Supreme Military Council (YAŞ). The right of appeal against the rulings of these two institutions is something the EU has long been pushing for, and Tanrıverdi believes that the government will be able to carry out this change. But he is not so optimistic about changes to how decisions of the European Court of Human Rights are handled in Turkey. Though the national program includes a change in the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK) that will make the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights binding in Turkey, Tanrıverdi thinks that the decisions of the court on unjust treatment of religious beliefs won't be changed.

TODAYSZAMAN