PURSUING A CONSTITUION IN TURKEY: LOOKING FOR A BR AND-NEW SOCIAL CONTR ACT OR AWAITING THE SAME-OLD SOCIAL PRESCRIPTION?

Abstract

Turkish political life has been under the strong influence of the National Security Doctrine since the first military intervention in 1961. The said influence became more explicit after the 1980 coup d’etat which led to the preparation of a state-oriented constitution. A great deal of effort has been made to liberalize and normalize Turkish political life since the early 1990s, and more than one-third of the Constitution has been amended to particularly meet the European Union’s criteria. However, no amendment and de jure liberalization seems to satisfy the public and politicians’ ‘thirst’ for a new and civil constitution. Accordingly, all the political parties and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have given pledges to prepare a new, individual-oriented constitution after the June 2011 general elections. This paper is intended to seek for the possibilities and the facts under which the prospective and ‘highly anticipated’ constitution can be formed with references to national security doctrine, the 10% threshold for political parties in the general elections, the NGOs participation in the process, the ‘constitution fetish’ among the public, ‘historical path of erstwhile constitutions etc. It can be assumed that these points will elucidate the answer of following question: “Shall the new constitution be a social contract or another text that is redolent of a social prescription from above?”

Keywords

• Social Contract,National Security Doctrine

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