Pending Challenges in Turkey’s Judiciary

GTE Policy Brief (Istituto Affari Internazionali) No. 20, January 2015

by Ergun Özbudun *

This paper deals with the status of the judiciary in Turkey, specifically the composition and powers of the Constitutional Court and of the High Council Judges and Public Prosecutors (HSYK) and the measures pursued by the AKP government in changing these since the December 2013 crisis. It argues that the AKP government’s establishment of its control over the judiciary will certainly lead to a wider use of a selective application of the law. Turkey now stands on the borderline between illiberal (or electoral) democracies and « competitive authoritarian » regimes. If the AKP obtains a constitutional amendment majority in the forthcoming general parliamentary elections, it will certainly attempt to change the system of government to a super-presidential one and to restructure the Constitutional Court.

Document prepared for the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in the context of the IAI-Istanbul Policy Center-Mercator Foundation project « Turkey, Europe and the World », January 2015.

* Ergun Özbudun is Professor of Political Science and Constitutional Law at Istanbul Sehir University.

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