A Short Political History of the Legal Profession in Turkey

Year 2019, Volume: 7, 27 - 38, 14.01.2020

Seda Kalem

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. 

Keywords

Legal profession, law and modernization, law and politics, legal reform

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