Experimenting with Presidentialism in Turkey: Venturing into the Unchartered Territory?

Institutional reform aimed practically at the restructuring of relations between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary has become a lingering topic in Turkish politics. The unrelenting debate on the role of Turkish presidents in the institutional design and consecutive reforms of an already atypical parliamentary system has gained further momentum in the last two decades. The endorsement in the 2007 referendum of direct popular elections for the presidency and the ensuing developments following the first direct popular election pointed at what may be considered a creeping presidentialization. The approval in the 2017 referendum of the elimination of the office of the prime ministry and the expansion of presidential competencies entailed the reshaping of legislative-executive relations. Throughout this process of amending the constitution, while the US variant of presidentialism has been discussed in detail, stunningly scarce references have been made to the Latin American trajectory. Based on the scrutiny of constitutional provisions and partisan presidential powers, the experimentation in Turkey with presidential system will be examined in this paper through a comparative outlook. Amidst the calls for a Turkish variant of presidentialism, the hallmark of the final settlement seems to be the considerably generous nature of the constitutional powers the President is entrusted with. While various specific issues are yet to be regulated by laws, the intertwining of the continuity of the unicameral legislature with that of the presidency has proven to be the most controversial aspect of the amendments. It is upheld in this paper that, interwoven through articles 106 and 116, the fate of the legislature and the chief executive seem to be sealed together by the constitution. The mutuality in the way the call for elections is formulated incorporates the potential for informally revising the provisions on tenure and term limits. It is claimed in this paper that the prospects for the shift to presidentialism to deliver on the expected outcomes advocated by the governing party such as doing away with coalition governments and attaining separation of powers with the corollary of the empowerment of the legislature remain to be far from certain. Given the strict nature of party discipline, any splitting of the ticket for executive and legislative offices on the part of the voters may lead to frequent electoral contests. Coalition building and bargaining to that end surface as the alternatives to executive instability. To the contrary, concurrent victories and congruence between the legislative majority and the executive office is bent on fostering concentration of power in the latter. The decline of the legislature cannot be averted under this possibility. It is the argument of this paper that, in a manner reminiscent of the Latin American experience, divided government can be expected to become the main check on the powers of the presidency in Turkey.