06 April 2024
Why Party Bans Often Don’t Work
In July 2008, in an intensely debated and enormously consequential case, Turkey’s Constitutional Court weighed whether to close the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban its 71 leading members, including then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Six of the eleven justices voted in favor – falling just one vote short of the super-majority required to dissolve the AKP and bar its leaders from politics for five years. More than 15 years after the AKP closure case, Turkey has experienced significant democratic backsliding, and Erdoğan has secured a third term as president, extending his tenure in office into 2028. Although the tools of “militant democracy” may be useful, the Turkish case suggests that targeted legal interventions, rather than sweeping party bans, may be more effective at safeguarding democracy. Continue reading >>
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13 March 2024
What is Living and What is Dead in the Turkish Parliament?
On January 30th, 2024, the Turkish Parliament officially revoked the mandate of Can Atalay, an opposition MP representing the earthquake-affected city of Hatay. Atalay's incident, from its inception to the recent parliamentary drama, not only exposes the diminished authority of the Constitutional Court but also exemplifies the tacit cooperation among the regime's loyal officers—judges, MPs, or civil servants. In this subtle network, the Parliament occupies a peculiar place with its distinct symbolism, serving as a fig leaf for authoritarian politics. Continue reading >>
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02 June 2023
Boiling the Frog
In the wake of Turkey's recent presidential elections, previous blogposts objected to characterizing authoritarian regimes such as Turkey, Hungary and India as ‘competitive’ solely by virtue of regular elections, which are formally free but fundamentally unfair. However, this blogpost argues that the prior ones missed the main problem in Turkey: The playing field in Turkey is not only “massively tilted in favor of Erdogan” now; it has always been tilted in favor of the majority – long before Erdoğan. This blogpost discusses the slow death of Turkish electoral competitiveness. First, I describe the politico-legal context that enabled Erdogan’s rise. Second, I contrast the developments in Turkey regarding election competitiveness to European legal standards and strikingly late political demands. Continue reading >>
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17 February 2023
Shutting Down the Internet to Shut Down Criticism
In the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes which hit southwestern Turkey, internet connectivity had enabled civil society to provide additional on- and off-site assistance. However, the use of social media is not seen as innocent by Turkish authorities. Immediately after the earthquakes, authorities started to use legal instruments to silence the use of social media platforms even at the expense of utilizing its benefits during catastrophic times. Continue reading >>
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24 January 2023
The Sultan’s Last Dance
Long-time ruler Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently declared that he would run for president for the last time in the upcoming elections in 2023, indicating the end of his political career that stretched over four decades. This may sound like a strategic move to mobilize voters but it is actually not possible for him to run again according to the current constitution. The possibility for a renewed or "last" run for office does not lie in the hands of Erdoğan alone. Continue reading >>
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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 >>
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30 December 2022
#DefendingTheDefenders – Episode 4: Turkey
In the fourth episode of #DefendingTheDefenders we talk about the situation of lawyers in Turkey with Veysel Ok. He is an attorney in Istanbul and the Co-Director of the Media and Law Studies Association, a non-profit which monitors and defends freedom of expression cases against journalists. Continue reading >>
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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 >>
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10 May 2022
De-AKPification
Opinion polls by Turkey’s reputable polling firms consistently indicate that the governing AKP and its de facto coalition partner, the far-right nationalist MHP, are losing their popularity and heading to a potential defeat in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections of 2023. As an anti-AKP victory, or at least the real possibility thereof, draws near day by day, a vital question arises: how should opposition forces treat AKP operatives in the judiciary and bureaucracy? Is it possible to “de-AKPify” ex- or soon-to-be-ex-AKP operatives? Continue reading >>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 >>
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