Theories of exceptional executive powers in Turkey, 1933–1945

Abstract

AbstractTurkish constitutions have generally sought to limit the executive branch’s emergency powers by codifying and subjecting them to judicial and parliamentary supervision. In practice, however, ever since the single-party regime of the interwar years, cabinets have wielded wide powers to suspend rights and exercise discretion concerning both security issues and property and finance regimes. The result has been a legal system that, barred from explicitly embracing executive prerogative as a matter of principle, has instead dispersed “exceptional” powers throughout the fabric of the statutes, temporary laws, regulations, and decrees with which the state articulates its authority. The task of maintaining a semblance of normality and coherence within this scattered and contradictory system has been left to legal theoreticians. This article examines how three such theoreticians—the law professors Sıddık Sami Onar, Ali Fuad Başgil, and Ragıp Sarıca—responded to the cabinet’s recourse to emergency powers during the troubled 1930s and 1940s. Instead of defending rule-of-law principles, I argue, these formative figures integrated prerogative into the sphere of ordinary legality, thereby transforming exceptional powers into a normal mode of governance.