Determining effects of authoritarianism on executive power and public administration in Turkey

Abstract

The increasingly authoritarian regime in Turkey has been the subject of many studies in constitutional law and political science. As per the planned neoliberal policies put into action, the role of the state was redefined in 2001 and new elements were added to the administrative structure to play that role. Although the authoritarianism was being experienced with all these aspects in Turkey, a threshold was crossed especially with the experience of the state of emergency of 2016–2018. Clearly, Turkey can no longer be described as a constitutional democracy after the thresholds it has crossed on the way to authoritarianism. What made this transition easy is the legacy of the political regime/culture and public law that has carried on from the past. It can be said that even if Turkey’s shortcomings in terms as organization in line with the requirements of a pluralist, participatory, and deliberative democracy, and the rule of law during the time of the 1982 Constitution did not render today’s authoritarian order mandatory, it has certainly made it possible. In this section, I will examine the transformation effects of the authoritarianism that Turkey has experienced since the 2000s on the executive and administrative organization in the context of the rule of law and pluralist, participatory, and deliberative democracy.