05 January 2023
Interfering with Free Speech and the Fate of Turkey
On 21 April 1998, the then mayor of İstanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was sentenced to one year (subsequently reduced to ten months) in prison and a hefty fine by the State Security Court of Diyarbakır for “incitement to hatred and hostility on grounds of religious discrimination”. His criminal act was that of reading two provocative verses from the poem “Divine Army” by Cevat Örnek (“the minarets are bayonets, the domes are helmets / mosques are our barracks, the faithful our soldiers”) during a rally of the Islamist Welfare Party (of “Strasbourg fame”) in 1997. Twenty-five years after the aforementioned rally, Turkey experienced a free speech case involving another conservative-leaning political figure on the rise: on 14 December 2022, İstanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was sentenced by İstanbul’s 7th Criminal Court of First Instance to a term of imprisonment of two years, seven months and fifteen days for criminal defamation. Continue reading >>
0 
16 December 2022
Back to the Future
After over nine months of preparatory meetings, the Turkish opposition coalition consisting of six political parties have announced their constitutional amendment proposal. While it has been plausibly argued in this blog that constitutional restoration in the case of Turkey can be conducted without necessarily amending the Constitution, the main cause unifying the opposition coalition at the moment is a comprehensive proposal for constitutional amendment that allegedly aims for transitioning towards a ‘strengthened’ parliamentary system. In this blogpost, I will evaluate several key provisions of the opposition’s proposal and explain its likely path towards adoption in the aftermath of the upcoming general elections. Continue reading >>
0
13 December 2022
Good Job, Move On
In early December, six political parties from the Turkish opposition have announced a joint and comprehensive constitutional reform proposal. If enacted, the proposal would amend a total of 84 articles of the Turkish Constitution, almost half of the nation’s governing charter. While this proposal deserves praise as a unique example of consensus building in Turkish political and constitutional history, the opposition should now focus on winning the upcoming elections instead of getting bogged down in the details of the proposal. Continue reading >>
0
20 October 2022
Silenced, Chilled, and Jailed
As Turkey is in the process of getting ready for the general and presidential elections of June 2023, a recent legal reform has created much concern regarding freedom of expression and increased threat of online censorship in the country. Citizens have called the amendment a ‘censorship law’, while some prominent civil society organizations have voiced their concern about the law creating avenues for a dystopian crackdown when the elections are just around the corner. Continue reading >>
0
28 September 2022
The Resistance-Deference Paradox
The Turkish Constitutional Court demonstrates the resistance-deference paradox as a pattern in its judicial behavior under autocratic pressure. The docket management strategies including prioritization and late responsiveness are also employed in politically sensitive cases. The deferring stances of the Court legitimize autocratization when core issues of the regime are at stake. In these cases, the Court develops an autocratic partnership that makes itself an unreliable actor without any commitment to judicial ethos. The resistant stances of the Court trigger the political backlash and clashes with the judiciary, leading to further contestation of political autocratization. Continue reading >>
0
07 February 2022
9/11 on Turkish Shores
The 9/11 attacks exposed the precariousness of the public sphere, however, they did not result in a dramatic shift in the Turkish public sphere. Rather, the coup attempt of 2016 turned out to be Turkey’s “9/11 moment.” Continue reading >>
0
21 April 2021
How Many Times Can the ECtHR Turn its Head
In the ruling Ahmet Hüsrev Altan v. Turkey of 13 April, the European Court of Human Rights did not find an ulterior motive in the prolonged pre-trial detention of a journalist in Turkey. The Court also refused to find “pattern and tendency” in the treatment of civil society and independent journalism in Turkey. This approach is not limited to Article 18 case law: The Court’s entire jurisprudence on Turkey lacks systematic analysis. Continue reading >>
0
07 April 2021
Turkey’s Constitution of 1921 and Turkey’s Culture Wars of 2021
2021 marks the centennial of Turkey’s so-called ‘Constitution of 1921’. Interestingly, both academics and politicians, who don’t often see eye to eye, describe the document in praiseworthy terms. An interesting picture has emerged as a consequence: Two diametrically opposed worldviews (largely secular constitutional law scholars on the one end and AKP officials and supporters on the other, to put it crudely) drawing inspiration from the same document but with different motivations and in order to reach different outcomes. Continue reading >>
0
22 March 2021
An Unconstitutional Setback
After almost 10 years after ratification, President Erdoğan issued a decision on Saturday, 20 March, withdrawing Turkey from the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. This withdrawal constitutes an unconstitutional setback, not only in the protection of at risk women, but also in terms of President Erdoğan’s usurpation of legislative powers. Continue reading >>
0
16 March 2021
Year One: Reflections on Turkey’s Legal Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Ever since the first officially reported COVID-19 case in the country in March in 2020, Turkey, like most of the world, has taken measures to control the pandemic. The measures taken by Turkey included limitations on freedom of movement, closing schools and moving to online teaching at schools as and universities, restrictions on business opening hours, cessation of prison and detention visits, prohibition of resignation for healthcare staff, and, more stringently, the introduction of curfews. Continue reading >>
0