Constitutional Justice

Abstract

Turkey was one of the first European countries to adopt a system of the judicial review of the constitutionality of laws. The Turkish Constitutional Court was established by the Constitution of 1961, and was conceived as an effective check over the often arbitrary power of parliamentary majorities. Indeed, one of the main weaknesses of the 1924 Constitution was the absence of an effective system of checks and balances. Since then, the Constitutional Court has played a major role in Turkish politics and often pursued an activist approach that put it in collision with the elected branches of government, as will be spelled out below.