STATE OF LAW AND JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE IN 1921 AND 1924 CONSTITUTIONS: A HISTORICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

It could be stated that the main target of this study is to embody the current process in Turkey within the context of Constitution of 1921 and 1924 that are regarded as Constitutions on process of establishing the Republic , regarding some elements such as State of Law and its inseparable elements , like separation of Powers , judicial independence and tenure of judges. The study has mainly risen from the question of what extent these principles mentioned above has come into being in these two Constitutions .Nevertheless, in the context of foundational regulations regarding to state of law , the starting point is that a thesis of a progression has been happening since the Ottoman Period. In line with mentioned aim, as starting from the movements of constitutionalism that accelerated on the last periods of Ottoman Empire ,at the period until the Constitution of 1961, constitutional developments that happened under the common share of the concepts of state of law and judicial independence in Turkey have been approached chronologically and been subjected to comparative analyses.Primary consequences as a result of descriptive method are ; a process regarding state of law and judicial independence within the context of Turkish modernisation has been happening since the 19th century, yet this process is viewed as an element that is unable to be internalised of an elite politic culture of both Ottoman’s and first establishing years of Turkish Republic’s and as a result of this it can be said that the principle of state of law remained as a theory during the periods of Constitutions of 1921 and 1924. In spite of constitutional and institutional regulations during the Constitution of 1924,just like the elites at the last periods of Ottoman empire,the founders of Turkish republic’s identifying themselves as modernist and reformist elites with the aim of creating a powerful state and with the worry of Continuity of the state ,can be shown as the main factor of weakness in practice.