Revisiting the Debates on the 2010 Constitutional Referendum in Turkey: Democratic Transition or Authoritarian Populism?

Basit Öğe Kaydı
dc.contributor.authorTaşçıoğlu, Irem
dc.date.accessioned2026-04-04T18:44:18Z
dc.date.available2026-04-04T18:44:18Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.departmentİstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi
dc.description.abstractThis article revisits the scholarly debates on the AKP’s constitutional amendment package that was put to vote in the 2010 Turkish Constitutional Referendum. It takes the democratic theorist Andrew Arato and law professor Aslı Bali as major representatives of the two opposing views on the political implications of the reform proposal. It compares and contrasts their arguments particularly in light of their different assessments of the amendments which concern the restructuring of the judiciary, especially the Turkish Constitutional Court. It argues that their fundamental controversy with regard to the democratic or authoritarian nature of these amendments is rooted in the contrast between Bali’s predominantly context-bound and Arato’s predominantly global approach. While Bali affirms the reform proposal as a democratic step forward in transcending the persistent legacy of the Kemalist authoritarian “tutelary” regime represented by the Constitutional Court, Arato interprets it as a manifestation of the global populist-authoritarian retreat that expresses itself most visibly through assaults on the independent judiciary. After a critical reading of these two approaches, this paper finalizes by way of introducing a new framework that would counterbalance the context-bound approach with the global one and vice versa that would arguably provide a new perspective through which one could unveil the particular characteristics of the AKP’s populist constitutional politics at the time of the Referendum.
dc.identifier.doi10.14782/marmarasbd.1410719
dc.identifier.endpage174
dc.identifier.issn2147-6926
dc.identifier.issue2
dc.identifier.startpage153
dc.identifier.trdizinid1271141
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.14782/marmarasbd.1410719
dc.identifier.urihttps://search.trdizin.gov.tr/tr/yayin/detay/1271141
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/11411/10053
dc.identifier.volume12
dc.indekslendigikaynakTR-Dizin
dc.language.isoen
dc.relation.ispartofMarmara Üniversitesi siyasal bilimler dergisi (online)
dc.relation.publicationcategoryMakale - Ulusal Hakemli Dergi - Kurum Öğretim Elemanı
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.snmzKA_TR-Dizin_20260402
dc.subjectLiberal Democracy, Populism, Kemalism, Turkish Constitutional Court, Judiciary, 2010 Constitutional Referendum
dc.titleRevisiting the Debates on the 2010 Constitutional Referendum in Turkey: Democratic Transition or Authoritarian Populism?
dc.typeArticle

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