Türk Siyasal Hayatında Anayasa Yargısı-Siyaset İlişkisi: Türk Anayasa Mahkemesi

Abstract

Abstract: Constitutional courts are often criticized for not being impartial or exceeding their jurisdictional authority in matters related to the politics. The general views and evaluations requiring the constitutional courts to be independent and impartial have also supported the claim that courts’ activism in political life poses problems, and those claims can be read as one of the grounds on which the criticisms are placed. Thus, the areas of discussion and criticism focusing on the position of the constitutional courts in political system also generate the ground that the legitimacy of relationship between politics and constitutional jurisdiction is measured and the efforts to determine the jurisdictional authoity take place. Hence, the study which primarily focuses on the relationship between constitutional jurisdiction and politics in Turkey, aims to specify the areas of discussion and criticism by analyzing the outputs of the Turkish Constitutional Court. It also deals with discussions specific to Turkey in the relevant literature by addressing the theoretical explanations about the emergence and development of the constitutional courts. The main argument of this study claims that the Court has operated as an institution restraining its “other” from political sphere from its foundation years to the end of the twientieth century, although constitutional jurisdiction theory requires limiting the political power in favor of citizens on the basis of rule of law. Those outputs of the Court related with politics are explained by using of its founding logic, structural characteristics and political outputs. After all, this study advocates that official ideology as its founder and safety concerns of Turkish bureaucratic elite have mainly shaped the structure of the Court and its impacts on political life. In addition, the Court have taken protecting regime’s security on as a duty quite a while. Structured Abstract: Besides its other aspects, the judiciary system of the states consists several rules that limit political authority in favor of citizens in democratic regimes. The constitutional jurisdiction, as a part of the judiciary organ of the state, has also significant roles considering the legitimacy of the state and the political authority where main priciples of the state of law are adopted. To protect fundamental rights and liberties, to provide fair political power competition and to limit political power authority excess can be given as other functions of the constitutional courts in democratic regimes. However, constitutional courts are often criticized on the grounds that they do not behave in the ways that democracy required. The content of critics generally consist of issues such as the interpretation of constitutions in a way that does not comlpy with the