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3 - Regime Cycles, Constitution Making, and the Political System Question in Ottoman and Turkish Constitutional Developments

from Part II - Contextualizing Constitution Making in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Felix Petersen
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Zeynep Yanaşmayan
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut for Social Anthropology
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Summary

A democratic constitution-making process was carried out in Turkey from 2011 to 2013, but failed to produce a new constitution. In 2017, the ruling Justice and Development Party amended the existing 1982 Constitution, imposing radical changes on the political system and introducing the so-called Turkish-style presidential system. This chapter argues that such changes and movements are part of a distinct and regular cyclical oscillation within the political system from relatively authoritarian to relatively democratic phases and back again. These regular swings are created by an intense power struggle between ideologically competing forces. Each cycle has its own characteristic institutions and political system preferences. In authoritarian phases the power of the assembly is diminished, as are the checks and balances on political power. Democratic phases, on the other hand, support assembly power, political participation, basic rights, and constitutional checks and balances. The history of constitution making in Turkey reflects and reinforces these regime cycles.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Failure of Popular Constitution Making in Turkey
Regressing Towards Constitutional Autocracy
, pp. 84 - 117
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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