A small but decisive step towards rule of law in Turkey?

"The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind," writes John Maynard Keynes in the opening sentence of The Economic Consequences of the Peace. "Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the … organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century."

Keynes wrote his book shortly after participating in the 1919 Paris Conference, but replace "Western Europe" with "Turkey" and you'll get a sense of what we felt like in the wake of the failed military coup attempt on the night of July 15. 

7/15 for Turkey is much like what 9/11 was to the United States - a major trauma that will leave an imprint on everything that comes after it. It has been three months now, and the country is still under a state of emergency. This is an appropriate constitutional response in democracies. France also activated a state of emergency after the terrorist attacks in its capital. 

There are many differences between the Turkish and French cases, but two are particularly striking. Turkey's state of emergency legislation was drafted by the government of the successful coup of 1980. It was designed for General Kenan Evren to run the country single-handedly with no checks and balances. Ironically, today's anti-coup government is not shy about wielding that power. Herein lies the first significant difference: Turkey and France are now both governed under a state of emergency, but there is judicial control over administrative decisions in France, while so far there is no such control in Turkey. The state of emergency in Turkey has temporarily abolished the separation of powers. 

The second difference is that Turkey, unlike its...