Turkey’s Gerontocratic Constitutional Moment

In less than a year, Turkish politics has undergone a profound realignment. It began in October 2024 with a remarkable speech by Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and President Erdoğan’s chief coalition partner. In one of the most cryptic U-turns of his career, Bahçeli—long a hardliner on the Kurdish question—proposed reopening the long-frozen peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the separatist armed group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. Even more astonishingly, he floated the possibility of parole for Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK’s long-imprisoned leader, on the condition that “the PKK lay down its arms.” What followed were months of diplomacy. Several delegations were dispatched to İmralı Island, where Öcalan has been held since 1999. Then, in late February, Öcalan issued a quasi-manifesto, read aloud at a live press conference by prominent figures of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party). In it, he declared that the conditions for a durable political settlement had finally emerged and called on the PKK and its affiliates to “disarm and dissolve.”

March brought the second act of the realignment, this time in the form of a multipronged legal offensive against Ekrem İmamoğlu, the popular mayor of Istanbul and widely seen as Erdoğan’s most viable rival in a presidential race. First, İmamoğlu’s university diploma, a constitutional requirement for presidential eligibility, was revoked by an administrative decision of the university president’s office. The very next day, sweeping corruption charges were filed against him, culminating in his arrest on March 19, alongside several close associates. The legal flaws and political stakes of these moves have already been discussed in detail on this blog (see, for two excellent commentaries, [here] and [here]).

Since then, however, both the scale and trajectory of the campaign have shifted.  What began as a targeted effort against İmamoğlu has expanded into a broader crackdown on the Republican People’s Party (CHP) as a whole: seventeen of its mayors are in prison. Meanwhile, efforts are also underway to fragment and incapacitate the CHP from within. One such attempt comes from a faction loyal to Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the former CHP leader whose career has been defined by a string of electoral defeats against Erdoğan. This group is now seeking to annul the 2023 party congress that resulted in Kılıçdaroğlu’s ouster, citing procedural irregularities and alleged pressure on delegates, in a bid to restore the status quo ante—that is, to depose his younger successor and current chair, Özgür Özel. The legal basis for this challenge is exceedingly thin, but if it succeeds, it would amount to nothing less than an externally driven, court-assisted restructuring of Turkey’s oldest political party and its leadership.

In short, the tectonic plates of Turkish politics are shifting, and at the center of this transition stands a cast of aging men, each well past seventy. Öcalan and Kılıçdaroğlu are both 76; Bahçeli is 77; Erdoğan—remarkably, the youngest of the group—is 72. Yet their convergence is not merely a matter of age or gender. What binds them, at least rhetorically, is a shared commitment to constitutional reform. Erdoğan calls for a new “civilian” constitution. Öcalan, in his manifesto, advocates “a new social contract between Kurds and Turks.” Bahçeli appears fully on board, and Kılıçdaroğlu seems willing to do whatever it takes to secure a favorable judgment. Whether their visions for Turkey are compatible—or whether any formal amendment process will materialize at all—remains to be seen. Still, the mismatch is hard to ignore: the very figures now casting themselves as agents of renewal are, in no small part, the architects of the existing order. Hence, if one adjective captures this constitutional moment, it is gerontocratic, for it is driven by old men, their stale vocabulary and self-serving ambitions.

Shifting alliances

What explains this strange coalition of the old? Why are these actors now embracing positions that would have been unthinkable not long ago? Recall that only a few years ago, even a neutral remark about the pro-Kurdish DEM Party was enough to invite accusations of siding with the PKK. No one leaned more heavily on this charge than Devlet Bahçeli himself, before his rebranding as peace-broker-in-chief. Some commentators attribute the government’s newfound appetite for renewed peace to broader shifts in regional geopolitics: the collapse of Assad’s regime in Syria, Iran’s waning influence, Israel’s expanding sphere of dominance. Perhaps. But I remain skeptical. These accounts credit Ankara and its political elite with a degree of foresight they have done little to earn.

My own reading is far less charitable and emphasizes a convergence of self-interests. Take President Erdoğan, for instance. In recent months, both he and his aides have been signaling the possibility of his running for a third presidential term. To do so, however, they must circumvent a concrete constitutional obstacle. Article 101, as amended in 2017, explicitly states that no one may serve more than two terms as president. Yet in the same amendment package lies a conspicuous loophole—one flagged by the Venice Commission at the time. Under Article 116(3), if the Grand National Assembly votes to renew elections during a president’s second term, that president becomes eligible to run again. The vote can be held at any time and requires no particular justification; but it must be supported by a three-fifths majority (360 MPs), a threshold Erdoğan’s coalition does not currently meet.

Enter the current realignment. With the right concessions, Erdoğan could bring DEM Party MPs to his side, reaching two distinct thresholds: one to renew elections under Article 116(3) of the Constitution and another to initiate a constitutional amendment via referendum under Article 175(4). But the significance of this maneuver extends far beyond legislative arithmetic. Erdoğan knows that support for the AKP is slipping. Co-opting the Kurdish bloc would fracture anti-regime dissent on the streets, thanks to the vague symbolism of peace.  Why, then, are Kurdish actors engaging at all? It seems they have their own calculus, recognizing that current political circumstances afford them some leverage. Their longstanding demands—expanded cultural and linguistic rights, a redefinition of Turkish citizenship under Article 66, and the release of Abdullah Öcalan—cannot be achieved solely through ordinary legislative or administrative channels. They require constitutional give-and-take. To be clear, I do not fault the pragmatism. Politics, after all, runs on shifting alliances.

What unsettles me is that we have been here before. Between 2013 and 2015, similarly ambitious talks unfolded between the PKK and the state, accompanied by a flurry of hopeful op-eds. Whether that process could ever have yielded a lasting solution is debatable. What is clear is that it was abandoned the moment Erdoğan saw a more advantageous electoral path—and it was the Kurds, particularly in the region, who paid the highest price. I see little reason to believe this time will be different. This is one of the central ironies of gerontocratic claims to renewal. When old men stay in power too long, they carry with them the weight of broken promises and disavowed positions. Kurdish elites may choose not to see this and continue with their Faustian bargains. But such choices have consequences.

Old friends, empty narratives

Whatever one makes of the motives or merits of this course, the country will have yet another constitutional conversation. A commission of eleven has already been formed and tasked with drafting a new constitution in the coming months. It is chaired by Serap Yazıcı Özbudun, a scholar of constitutional law and, until recently, an opposition MP elected from the CHP’s lists. Just a few months ago, and with unapologetic ease, she left her group and joined the AKP. Yazıcı Özbudun is no stranger to the party or to its periodically revived ambition for a so-called “civilian constitution,” having supported similar initiatives in 2007 and 2010. In the years that followed, as the AKP’s authoritarian turn became impossible to ignore, she joined the ranks of disillusioned liberal intellectuals, a group she now appears to be leaving behind.

But it is not only old alliances that are being rekindled; we are also witnessing the return of exhausted narratives. That, perhaps, is only natural in a political life with such little generational turnover. Chief among them is a phrase now repeated ad nauseam: a new civilian constitution. It is true that the 1982 Constitution was drafted under the oversight of a military junta and long bore the imprint of its tutelary origins. Yet that same text has since been amended more than a dozen times—most notably through three major revisions approved by national referenda under successive AKP governments. Of its 177 articles, 134—nearly three-quarters—have already been rewritten. Today, military tutelage is not even a distant memory for younger generations. If one were to choose a symbolic date marking the AKP’s definitive triumph over the so-called Kemalist establishment, that year might well be it. For this generation, civilian politics, with all its failures and successes, is the only reality they have known. Against this backdrop, the repeated invocation of a “civilian constitution” as a cure-all provokes not hope but something between boredom and disdain.

The limits of gerontocratic politics

Hence the final, and perhaps most consequential, feature of gerontocratic politics: its inability to energize, inspire, or project genuine conviction. In principle, politics conducted in a constitutional key—the idea that we, the people, act and decide—should foster collective deliberation, reduce civic alienation, and broaden political horizons. This is the core premise of Bruce Ackerman’s influential theory of “constitutional moments”: that there are periods in a polity’s life when foundational rules and assumptions are redefined, even if the constitutional text remains formally unchanged. In their own ways, Erdoğan, Öcalan, and Bahçeli each appear intent on staging such a moment. Just a few days ago, Erdoğan delivered a much-advertised “historic” speech, declaring that “the doors of a great Turkey, a strong Turkey, a Turkish Century have been opened wide.” Bahçeli, for his part, continues to herald the advent of an “inclusive constitutional order” in which everyone is ostensibly meant to find their place. But what does any of this actually mean? Outside the privileged beneficiaries of the regime and its patronage networks, who truly feels that the Turkish Century has arrived? And how credible is it for a political coalition that, as recently as 2023, accused half the country of siding with terrorists to now promise constitutional inclusion?

The reality is that Turkey is no longer in 1982, 1998, or even 2007. In those years, calls for a “civilian, liberal, inclusive constitution” still carried a degree of credibility, as did those making them. There was a reductive but resonant narrative in which the AKP cast itself as the authentic voice of the demos, determined to democratize the country against the counter-majoritarian guardianship of the Kemalist establishment. This story no longer persuades. What Turkey needs today is a different conversation, even a new to see what went wrong and what must be done. Yet those capable of articulating something genuinely new—of transforming diffuse discontent into concrete demands and political agendas—are either marginalized or imprisoned. And it’s not just high-profile political figures in their prime, like Can Atalay or Ekrem İmamoğlu, who now sit behind bars. Thousands of university students regularly face detention or prosecution for nothing more than carrying a banner.

This is the very image of gerontocracy: old men and their pet projects crowding out younger voices, faces, and idioms. To be sure, gerontocracy is not a uniquely Turkish affliction. In a recent series of essays, Samuel Moyn traces the phenomenon in both its pre-modern and modern forms, paying particular attention to its contemporary salience in American politics. The Democratic Party’s paralysis over Joe Biden’s nomination—and the catastrophic defeat that followed—is just one recent example. But Turkey’s version is distinctive in one crucial respect: its aging leaders do not merely cling to power—they style themselves as agents of youth, novelty, and renewal. Worse still, they obstruct the channels of succession through carceral means, silencing those who might genuinely embody generational change. If high literature and quality television are any guide, old age paired with coercive hubris is a perilous mix. From King Lear to Logan Roy, the tragic examples are many.