Nebi Miş

The system of government in Turkey shifted from a parliamentary to an intrinsic presidential system, in which the president solely employs the executive power granted from the constitution, after the elections held on June 24, 2018. Following the elections, the central government was reorganized in quite a short time. While the reorganization process will continue for a certain period, it seems that the main policymaking actors and their role in the new system have substantially emerged. This study provides a legal and institutional analysis of how the public policy process and the roles and responsibilities of policy actors changed as a result of the restructuring of Turkey’s central government under the new presidential system.

This commentary analyzes the question of political transformation in Turkey, which has been a hotly debated issue for more than 40 years. Over the past decades, each proposal to reform the country’s system of government was met with resistance from critics and it was turned into a personal issue by targeting the plan’s supporters rather than the idea itself. After a brief analysis of the previous arguments, this study will focus specifically on the most recent efforts to adopt a presidential system, including the cooperation between the AK Party and MHP at the Parliament and the constitutional referendum, which will be held in 2017.

This study aims to measure the social perception created by the impact of the July 15 coup attempt. The social picture that emerged during and after July 15 deserves greater sociological attention. A total of 250 people were martyred in this upheaval, making it the bloodiest coup attempt in the history of coups in Turkey. Social resistance to the perpetrators transformed into “democracy watch” countrywide which lasted 27 days. As part of the study, interviews were conducted with 176 people who participated in the democracy watch in 9 cities and 12 squares. Hence, the codes of social consciousness developed about the coup attempt and the perpetrators, amongst others, are captured by how the society perceives the coup attempt.