A Short Political History of the Legal Profession in Turkey

Abstract

This paper aims to offer a brief historical account of legislative and professional developments concerning the Turkish legal profession within the larger socio-political against a backdrop of political struggles. The original ideological alliance between the profession and the Republic has been a key determinant of the profession’s positions with respect to social and political issues, especially in the early decades of the new state. The relationship, however, has always been influenced by the changing national and international political context. Whereas the profession seemed content to subordinate itself to the executive until the 1950s, the transition to a multi-party system intensified political polarisation, generating controversies about the profession’s relationship with the State. In the following decades, the global leftward movement encouraged many lawyers to actively challenge illegalities. The increasing authoritarianism and widening social and political cleavages of 1980s and 1990s, by contrast, led to a resurgence of the Kemalist constituency within professional associations. In recent years, efforts by the Government to assert absolute control over the state apparatus have provoked the profession to assume even more visibility as a political actor.