— ÖZET—

— ABSTRACT —

The recent global decline in the protection of human rights cannot be explained solely through economic, social, or cultural crises. A growing body of evidence suggests that the erosion of democratic institutions often begins at the constitutional level, where legal frameworks once designed to safeguard liberty are gradually transformed into instruments of domination. This study defines this phenomenon as authoritarian constitutionalism—a mode of governance in which constitutions, instead of limiting state power, are reconstructed to legitimize its expansion.

Focusing on the Turkish experience between 2007 and 2018, the paper examines how successive constitutional amendments, plebiscitary referenda, and emergency decrees progressively dismantled the balance of powers and institutional guarantees of fundamental rights. What began as a political conflict between the executive and the judiciary in the early 2000s evolved into a systematic reconfiguration of the constitutional order. The 2007 presidential election crisis, the 2010 and 2017 constitutional referenda, and the prolonged state of emergency following the 2016 coup attempt collectively produced a new regime in which the executive subsumed the legislature and the judiciary under its control.

Drawing on Giovanni Sartori’s comparative framework of presidential systems, the paper argues that the so-called “Turkish-type presidentialism” represents neither a genuine presidential system nor a functioning parliamentary democracy, but a hybrid model where constitutional legitimacy masks authoritarian consolidation. Under this model, the concentration of power in the presidency, the subordination of judicial independence, and the normalization of exceptional measures have redefined the constitutional meaning of human rights. The principle of the rule of law has been replaced by a security-oriented rationale that privileges “national will” over individual rights, turning constitutionalism itself into a mechanism of exclusion.

This transformation exemplifies a broader global trend in which authoritarian leaders use constitutional and legal instruments to dismantle liberal guarantees from within. Turkey’s experience demonstrates how the rhetoric of popular sovereignty and the manipulation of constitutional procedures can produce an appearance of legality while eroding the substantive essence of democracy. Consequently, the crisis of human rights in contemporary Turkey is not merely the result of policy failures or social tensions; it is the outcome of a deliberate process of constitutional engineering that institutionalizes arbitrariness and impunity.

The paper concludes that any effort to address the global crisis of human rights must move beyond rights-based discourse and confront the deeper structural issue of authoritarian constitutionalism. The defense of human rights today requires re-imagining constitutional design not only as a legal framework but also as a political safeguard against the monopolization of power.