Turkey’s constitution-making process since the first Ottoman constitution in 1876 has been an enigma for researchers, who have questioned how and by whom the constitution is prepared and to what extent it is authoritarian or liberal. The Failure of Popular Constitution Making in Turkey traces and investigates the story of the failure of Turkey’s popular constitution-making process during 2011–13, offering an in-depth analysis from various angles, including political theory, comparative politics, sociology, history, constitutional and comparative law, and media studies.
The book consists of eight chapters in three parts. In the introductory part Felix Petersen and Zeynep Yanaşmayan present the 150-year constitutional history of Turkey. The first constitution-making process, accomplished in 1876, transformed the Ottoman regime from a monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. This experience had a huge impact on modern Turkey’s first constitution, drafted in 1921 by the prerepublic Turkish National Assembly. During the republican era Turkey drafted three...
