The genesis of the ‘Exceptional’ Republic: the permanency of the political crisis and the constitution of legal emergency power in Turkey
Journal Article: The genesis of the ‘Exceptional’ Republic: the permanency of the political crisis and the constitution of legal emergency power in Turkey
Journal: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Date of Publication: 23 June 2019
Author: Zafar Yılmaz, (then) Chair of General Sociology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany; Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
How to Cite: Yılmaz, Z. (2019). The genesis of the ‘Exceptional’ Republic: the permanency of the political crisis and the constitution of legal emergency power in Turkey. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 46(5), 714–734. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2019.1634393
Abstract: Almost half of the political life has been experienced under the state of emergency and state of siege policies in the Turkish Republic. In spite of such a striking number and continuity in the deployment of legal emergency powers, there are just a few legal and political studies examining the reasons for such permanency in governing practices. To fill this gap, this paper aims to discuss one of the most important sources of the ‘permanent’ political crisis in the country: the historical evolution of legal emergency power. In order to highlight how these policies have intensified the highly fragile citizenship regime by weakening the separation of power, repressing the use of political rights and increasing the discretionary power of both the executive and judiciary authorities, the paper sheds light on the emergence and production of a specific form of legality based on the idea of emergency and the principle of executive prerogative. In that context, it aims to provide a genealogical explanation of the evolution of the exceptional form of the nation-state, which is based on the way political society, representation, and legitimacy have been instituted and accompanying failure of the ruling classes in building hegemony in the country.
The full text of the article and a .pdf version can be found here.
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