The Constitution of Turkey — Written by the Generals Who Tortured Their Own Citizens.
Turkey — Constitution Profile
| π Active Since | November 7, 1982 |
| π️ Government | Presidential Republic |
| π Capital | Ankara |
| π Total Amendments | Nearly 20 times since 1987 |
| ✍️ Drafted By | Military Junta after 1980 Coup |
| π€ President | Recep Tayyip ErdoΔan |
The Constitution Written by Torturers — And Still in Force Today
On September 12, 1980, tanks rolled through the streets of Turkey for the third time in two decades.
General Kenan Evren, Chief of the Turkish General Staff, led the military against the government of Suleyman Demirel. Five generals seized total control of the country.
What followed was not just a change of government. It was one of the darkest periods in modern Turkish history.
Out of the hundreds of thousands of people jailed by the military regime, scores were tortured, and several hundred died in custody. Tens of thousands of people were stripped of Turkish citizenship.
It was this same military junta — the architects of mass torture and political repression — who sat down and wrote the constitution that still governs Turkey today, more than four decades later.
A Constitution Built to Make Sure Democracy Could Never Get Too Strong Again
The generals who wrote Turkey's 1982 constitution were not interested in protecting citizens. They were interested in protecting the state from its own citizens.
In writing the 1982 constitution, military officers and the bureaucratic elite took the lead in creating a more restrictive constitution, designed to shield the Turkish state from the turbulent democratic politics of the years between 1960 and 1980. The emphasis was placed on defining the state's role and privileges rather than the citizen's rights.
The language itself revealed the priorities. Many articles can be translated with the phrase "The state shall..." In its initial formulation, the state was referred to as "sublime" and "sacred."
A constitution that calls the state sacred is a constitution that was never designed to serve the people who live under it.
The Process That Excluded Everyone Except the Generals
Most constitutions, even flawed ones, involve some form of political negotiation. Turkey's 1982 constitution did not.
A new constituent assembly was chosen by the National Security Council, but this time members of all political parties were excluded.
Every political party that had existed before the coup — left, right, center, regardless of ideology — was banned from the process of writing the document that would govern their own country.
The new constitution was to be approved by a bicameral Consultative Assembly, of which the five-man National Security Council retained ultimate control. When it was finally put to a referendum in 1982, the same military that had banned all opposition parties presented the public with a single choice — approve the new constitution, or reject it and remain under direct military rule indefinitely.
The Constitution Nobody Believes In — But Everybody Lives Under
More than forty years after it was written, Turkey's constitution remains deeply controversial across the entire political spectrum.
It is no wonder that the 1982 constitution holds virtually no legitimacy on most of the Turkish political spectrum, from the Islamist right to the secular left.
There is in fact broad agreement that the current constitution, drafted at military behest in 1982, must be replaced. Concerns about this document's failure to guarantee basic civil rights are shared across the Turkish political spectrum.
It is one of the rare political documents that nearly every faction in a deeply divided country agrees should not exist in its current form — and yet it has survived, amended but intact, for over four decades.
Amended Nearly 20 Times — But Never Replaced
Rather than writing an entirely new constitution, Turkey has spent decades patching the 1982 document instead.
The 1982 constitution was amended nearly 20 times over three decades, from 1987 to 2017. Most amendments came in the form of packages changing multiple provisions at once.
Until 2017, amendments to the constitution largely shared a common characteristic — they were designed to liberalize, democratize and civilianize the constitution, slowly stripping away the military's original design, piece by piece, amendment by amendment.
Then, in 2017, the direction of constitutional change reversed entirely.
The Referendum That Turned a Parliamentary System Into One-Man Rule
In April 2017, Turkish voters approved a constitutional referendum that fundamentally transformed the country's system of government.
With the introduction of "Turkish-style presidentialism," President ErdoΔan perfected the art of a new constitutional authoritarianism, clearing the way to remain in office for years to come.
The office of Prime Minister was abolished. Presidential term limits were restructured. The president gained sweeping new powers over the judiciary, the budget, and the bureaucracy — concentrating authority in a single office to a degree unseen since the era of single-party rule decades earlier.
Critics noted the irony immediately — a constitution written by generals to prevent any single political force from becoming too powerful had, through legal amendment rather than coup, been transformed into a framework for exactly that outcome.
The Torture Instruments Displayed Before the Vote That Was Supposed to Fix Everything
In 2010, ahead of an earlier constitutional referendum, Turkey put something extraordinary on public display.
A wooden pole used to suspend suspects by their arms. A baton used to beat prisoners on the soles of their feet. Cables used to give electric shocks.
These instruments — relics of the 1980 coup era — were exhibited in Ankara ahead of a vote on constitutional reforms, a stark reminder of exactly what kind of regime had written the document Turkish citizens were now voting to amend.
Erdogan's appeal to voters to "end the shame of coups" was supported by amendments limiting the power of military courts to try civilians and withdrawing the legal immunity previously enjoyed by the coup leaders themselves.
A constitution born from torture chambers was, decades later, being amended specifically to hold accountable the people who had built those chambers in the first place.
The New Constitution ErdoΔan Now Wants to Write
The story of Turkey's constitution may not be finished.
Erdogan refers to the 1982 constitution as a "military constitution," and has now appointed a ten-member legal committee to draft an entirely new constitution, which he claims will be "civilian and liberal."
Critics across the political spectrum remain deeply skeptical, given ErdoΔan's own role in concentrating presidential power through the existing document's amendment process.
Whether Turkey ever truly escapes the legal architecture built by the generals of 1980 remains one of the most consequential open questions in modern Turkish politics.
Constitution at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Military Coup | September 12, 1980 |
| Constitution Drafted By | National Security Council (Military Junta) |
| Approved by Referendum | November 7, 1982 |
| Total Amendments | Nearly 20 (1987–2017) |
| Major Amendment | April 2017 — Presidential system introduced |
| Office Abolished | Prime Minister (2018) |
| Previous Coups | 1960, 1971, 1980 |
| Current President | Recep Tayyip ErdoΔan |
| Official Language | Turkish |
| NATO Member | Yes |
π₯ Read the Constitution of Turkey
Read the complete, official English text of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey:
π Read Constitution of Turkey — Official Constitutional Court Website
Written by generals who tortured their own citizens. Amended nearly 20 times. Eventually used to concentrate power in a single office. Which part of Turkey's constitutional story surprised you the most? Tell us in the comments below.
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