TR Dizin İndeksli Yayınlar Koleksiyonu / TR Dizin Indexed Publications Collection
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14365/4
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Article Transforming the Judiciary Into the Rulers’ Proxies: the Case of Hagia Sophia(2022-12-18) Bahçeci, Barış; Yolcu, SerkanThis article examines from a critical perspective the judgment of the Turkish Council of State (Danıştay) in 2020, which invalidated the executive decision of 1934 regarding the designation of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul as a museum. We argue that Council of State did not really perform adjudication of a legal dispute in this case, but rather functioned as a proxy of the executive power for particular reasons. As a matter of fact, we argue the justifications regarding the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the right to property on which the decision was based to be a falsification. Moreover, the developments before and after the decision demonstrate this judgement to be a product of a non-judicial motivation. Lastly, the sequence of political actions regarding the conversion of several other museums into mosques that have been observed in Turkey over the last ten years implies the non-judicial dynamics behind the Council of State’s decision regarding Hagia Sophia. Our analysis reveals the political decisions that would possibly be the subject of criticism by domestic opponents and the international community to have been eliminated by referring the issue to the packed courts in order to avoid all undesired consequences.Article Shifting Financial Privileges From Dynasty To Parliament in the Emergence of Modern Turkiye(Istanbul University Press, 2023-09-27) Bahçeci, BarışThis study deals with the emergence of modern Turkey in the axis of the change in financial privileges. In this respect, the acts of the parliaments are analysed with a descriptive approach. While the parliament conducted the liquidation process of the Ottoman dynasty, it also created some new privileges for its members. This study examines this simultaneous process. The liquidation process started in 1908 with the establishment of a constitutional monarchy initiated by the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti). Only after 1920, a national assembly convened under a new leadership in Ankara continued the process and seized the assets of the dynasty, ended tax privileges, and cut their allowances in 1924. However, during the same period, parliament extended the financial status of its members with laws enacted even unconstitutionally. Despite that allowances of MPs were increased, and rules creating pension rights turned into a legislative behaviour that set an example for the following decades too. Moreover, parliament also established financial privileges by tolerating the economic activities of its members. Thus, financial privileges based on blood ties were replaced by another type of privileged status in parallel with the transfer of sovereignty. © The Author(s), 2023.