Valentina Rita Scotti’s Constitutional Law and Politics in Türkiye: From Atatürk to Erdoğan offers an account of Turkey’s struggles with democracy, law, constitutionalism, and politics from the final decades of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. Adopting a holistic perspective, the book seeks to trace the evolution of legal structures and political dynamics across a long historical trajectory. Constitutional law and politics are fields that resist easy separation. This is particularly true in the Turkish context, where the boundaries between legal frameworks and political practice have historically remained deeply intertwined, rendering attempts to analyze them in isolation analytically limited. In this respect, the title chosen by Scotti is both compelling and conceptually appropriate, signaling from the outset the book’s central premise: that constitutional development in Turkey can only be understood through sustained engagement with political power.
The book is structured around five main chapters. In the introduction, Scotti foregrounds the lives and historical significance of two emblematic figures who have profoundly shaped modern Turkish political history: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. By juxtaposing these two leaders, the author establishes the broader temporal and analytical framework within which the book situates its discussion of constitutional change and political authority.
The first chapter surveys late Ottoman political and legal developments. It revisits the Empire’s relations with Europe, the capitulations regime, and the legal status of foreign communities, while also addressing religion’s role in governance and the evolving relationship between the military and the sultan. The discussion then turns to the intellectual and political environment preceding the establishment of the Turkish Republic, examining competing visions of nationhood, Islam, governance, and women’s place in public life.
The second chapter analyzes the 1921, 1924, 1961, and 1982 constitutions and explores how perceived deficiencies in each framework prompted subsequent constitutional redesigns. Scotti argues that the defining feature of the 1924 Constitution was the gap between its formal provisions and practical implementation, which she associates with its majoritarian character (p. 43). While this diagnosis raises important questions, the causal link between institutional design and implementation failure would have benefited from more sustained theoretical or empirical substantiation. To that end, engagement with Stefan Voigt’s influential work “Mind the gap: analyzing the divergence between constitutional text and constitutional reality” could have deepened this discussion, particularly given Turkey’s illustrative significance as a case in which the divergence between constitutional text and constitutional reality has progressively widened. The chapter’s analysis of the 1961 and 1982 constitutions is more fully developed. Scotti convincingly situates the liberal orientation of the 1961 Constitution within the ideological polarization of the 1960s and traces how the 1971 intervention curtailed newly expanded freedoms. The 1982 Constitution is presented as a framework designed less to shield citizens from the state than to protect the state from society, a characterization consistent with much of Turkish constitutional scholarship (p. 49).
The third chapter traces debates over secularism from the early Republic to the present, addressing major controversies including: the Hat Reform of 1925; the Council of Higher Education’s (Yükseköğretim Kurulu; YÖK) 1984 decision to permit headscarves (türban) at the tertiary level; the Constitutional Court’s (Anayasa Mahkemesi; AYM) controversial headscarf ruling in 1989; the establishment of “persuasion rooms” at İstanbul University during the post-modern coup period; the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) 2008 constitutional initiative to amend Articles 10 and 42 to lift the türban ban; and the party’s near closure by the Constitutional Court later that same year. The discussion is thorough; nevertheless, two omissions merit attention. First, the distinction between French laïcité and Kemalist secularism (p. 67) could have been enriched through engagement with Ahmet Kuru’s framework of assertive secularism. Second, the absence of sustained analysis of European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence on religious symbols – particularly Şahin v. Turkey – represents a missed opportunity to situate Turkish secularism within a broader European legal context.
The fourth chapter opens by examining the constitutional role assigned to the military under the 1961 and 1982 constitutions, particularly its mission to safeguard the country against internal and external threats. Scotti revisits the well-established observation in the literature that Turkish democracy has historically operated as a form of “military tutelary democracy,” emphasizing the military’s enduring role as a guardian of the constitutional order. At the end of the chapter, the author turns to the AYM, tracing its transformation from a guardian of the constitutional order into an institution whose authority is increasingly disregarded. Through milestone cases like Atalay, Kavala, Gergerlioğlu, and Altan, the author meticulously demonstrates how AYM decisions have been disregarded and circumvented by lower courts, including the Court of Cassation and assize courts.
The last chapter traces the treatment of fundamental rights and liberties from the establishment of the Republic to the present day. Scotti focuses particularly on freedoms of speech, media, and academia, examining how these rights have been articulated at both constitutional and statutory levels. The author argues that, in practice, the state often presents the exercise of fundamental rights as a concession or “gift” to citizens, rather than as an inherent entitlement guaranteed under the law. This framing underscores the persistent asymmetry between formal legal protections and the practical realities of rights enforcement in Turkey.
Like any scholarly work, Scotti’s volume has some shortcomings. The most substantial concerns arise from the comparative framework through which the book seeks to interpret modern Turkish political history, particularly its attempt to place Kemalism and Erdoğanism within a shared analytical category as collectivist ideological projects. Such an undertaking is not problematic in itself; on the contrary, placing these two influential figures of modern Turkish political history and the systems associated with them in comparative perspective has considerable analytical potential. Precisely because of this ambitious analytical scope, however, this approach requires careful engagement with the historical, sociological, economic, and constitutional contexts shaping each phenomenon. In this book, these contextual foundations remain comparatively underdeveloped, limiting the analytical depth of the comparison. A project seeking to interpret the trajectory of the Republic from the late Ottoman period to the present through these two emblematic figures would ordinarily necessitate a more clearly defined analytical scope and more fully substantiated arguments. Moreover, while Kemalism – despite extensive criticism – constitutes a relatively well-defined and widely recognized doctrine, it remains unclear what precisely is meant by “Erdoğanism.” The concept lacks a clearly articulated theoretical foundation in the text and is at times treated as if it possessed a degree of doctrinal coherence and acceptance comparable to Kemalism, an assumption the book does not sufficiently substantiate.
A related concern arises from issues of conceptual framing, particularly regarding terminological choice. While this does not negate the book’s scholarly value, certain naming practices may shape readers’ perceptions of analytical neutrality. Throughout the text, Erdoğan is consistently referred to by his full name or surname, whereas the founding father of the Republic is predominantly identified as “Kemal,” with “Atatürk” used only intermittently. For example, the text states: “while Kemal imposed a de facto single-party system, Erdoğan has established a regime that … still holds periodic elections” (p. 3). This issue is significant because one of the most enduring and sensitive political fault lines in contemporary Turkey revolves around attitudes toward Atatürk himself. In a highly polarized political environment, even seemingly minor linguistic choices may inadvertently signal ideological positioning to readers. Regardless of authorial intent, the asymmetrical use of personal names may therefore invite interpretive ambiguity.
Another important limitation lies in the book’s tendency to move beyond its central analytical focus, introducing a wide range of historical and foreign-policy discussions that would ordinarily require extensive engagement with specialized scholarship. Many of these topics – such as Armenian suffering or Turkish–Israeli relations – are addressed only briefly and without sustained citation, with interpretive claims presented in the author’s own voice rather than grounded in the relevant interdisciplinary literature. This expansion not only diverts attention from the book’s primary constitutional and political–theoretical framework but also generates avoidable analytical risks. For instance, the use of the term “hostage crises” in reference to developments following October 7, 2023 may unintentionally invite readers to question the work’s analytical neutrality, illustrating how engagement with highly contested external debates can shift attention away from the book’s core contributions (p. 91). A more restrained focus on constitutionalism and political theory and practice might have preserved analytical coherence and prevented such difficulties.
The diffusion of focus also appears to affect sections where deeper historical grounding would have been particularly valuable. The treatment of the late Ottoman period, especially in relation to constitutional law, remains comparatively schematic and engages only minimally with an extensive body of scholarship on Ottoman legal and constitutional developments. Existing studies by scholars such as Faroz Ahmad, Kent F. Schull, Avi Rubin, Noémi Lévy-Aksu, and Sedat Bingöl – to name just a few – suggest a much richer historiographical context than is reflected in the book. As a result, the Ottoman past occasionally appears insufficiently integrated into the longer constitutional trajectory connecting the late Empire to the Republic, producing an impression of historical simplification where greater analytical depth would have strengthened the overall argument.
Beyond these substantive concerns, some smaller factual and editorial issues merit brief mention. The text states that a three-fifths majority in the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (TBMM) requires 300 votes (p. 100), although the correct threshold is 360. Similarly, the Turkey Wealth Fund is dated to 2013 (p. 123), despite having been established in August 2016 through Law No. 6741 following the failed coup attempt. The book also shows occasional inconsistency in institutional abbreviations: the National Security Council appears both as its Turkish abbreviation (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu; MGK) (p. 48) and its English abbreviation (NSC) (p. 148). This variation may cause minor confusion and require readers to revisit earlier sections. These issues do not undermine the book’s overall argument, but greater factual precision would strengthen its reliability and could easily be addressed in future editions.
Nonetheless, despite these limitations, the study makes some meaningful contributions to the literature. Although the conceptual grounding of Kemalism and Erdoğanism remains uneven, the author succeeds in evaluating both traditions without adopting a partisan stance, assessing their respective strengths and shortcomings from a comparatively balanced perspective. This positioning is particularly valuable in a field often shaped by competing ideological interpretations. Indeed, by navigating between a Kemalist tradition that tends to justify early republican reforms and opposing perspectives that criticize the Mustafa Kemal era, the author offers a relatively detached analytical vantage point. A similar balance characterizes the discussion of the Erdoğan period, which simultaneously acknowledges policy achievements and processes of democratic erosion. In this respect, the study constitutes a worthwhile addition to the growing body of objective scholarship on modern Turkish political history.
Second, the book’s extensive bibliography alone constitutes a significant scholarly resource. The reference section serves as a practical guide for researchers, offering a comprehensive gateway into the literature on modern Turkish constitutional and political development. Scholars entering the field could consult the bibliography as a starting roadmap and gain access to a substantial body of relevant sources without the immediate need for extensive additional searching.
Who, then, stands to benefit most from this work? The book will be particularly useful for readers who are newly engaging with late Ottoman reforms as well as with the broader trajectory of Turkish political and constitutional transformations, and who seek a concise yet informative overview. However, for readers already possessing substantial background knowledge and seeking deeper empirical or archival detail, the study may appear more synthetic in nature, as it largely consolidates and summarizes arguments already present in the existing literature rather than advancing highly specialized new empirical findings.
