Death of Turkish Democracy: The “Turkish-Style” Presidential System

Abstract

Turkey has adopted the presidential system over parliamentarism in 2018 with the promise that the new system would bring more stability, democracy, and economic growth. As being the most recent country which changed its government system through a referendum to presidentialism, Turkey constitutes a very important example to be analyzed in order to see the effects of it after a long-adopted parliamentary period in the 21st century. This paper compares the basic features of democracy as well as the democratic presidential systems with the example of Turkey and aims at finding out if the presidentialism has performed well and if not, why, in the light of examples and chosen indicators. Findings of this study suggest that presidential system led to a “consolidation of power” which in its nature is anti-democratic. Analysis of certain indicators show that presidentialism did not perform well in Turkey on democratic, political as well as economic fronts.