Conclusion
The 2011-2013 experience of the AUK was an exercise in constitution-making that remained as an exercise. For scholars, its minutes offer a great insight but remains as such. It is easy to argue that it was destined to fail when the participating political actors had such divergent positions and were clinging to their red lines in an institutional design that did not foster trust-building.
Absence of a dispute-resolution process when the debates hit deadlocks, provided the ammunition to hold onto political parties’ initial policy preferences.[1230] The requirement to have absolute agreement between four parties also made the dynamic less flexible. Political parties did not gradually converge on polarizing issues such as citizenship, education in mother tongue, decentralization and presidential system but instead insisted on their own proposals. The ruling-party’s insistence on a shift to presidential system inhibited the rest of the commission from engaging in meaningful participation when they anticipated such transformation would take place in any case. However, a detailed look into the minutes on the unamendability issue reveals that the failure to clearly define the procedure of making a new constitution, not having a guideline on the unamendability clause of the 1982 Constitution and not establishing an understanding of the spirit of the new constitution, has played a significant role in complicating the process. Questions exhaustively discussed remained unresolved: Is it possible to change the unamendable articles? If so, how? Will the new constitution maintain an unamendability clause? If so, which articles will be protected from amendment?The commission did agree on articles that are relatively easy to “reconcile”, most related to basic rights and freedoms. However, the members of the commission could not agree on most contentious issues of Turkey related to Kurdish issue, the relation between state and religion and the form of government—specifically AKP’s insistence to switch from the parliamentary system.
True, it was not simply the impasse over unamandable articles that led to the dissolution of the commission. In addition to major contestation regarding a shift to presidential system advocated by the AKP, the realpolitik of the upcoming elections also made it unlikely that the political parties could reach consensus. According to Article 15 of the Working Methods, the commission was to be repealed if any of the political parties withdrew from the table. With the local elections in March 2014 and the presidential elections in August 2014 and unable to move forward, the commission reached a deadlock and was incapable of overcoming it. The ruling party, AKP, which would later espouse a unilateral approach to constitutional change, withdrew from the table. Sharing the development that the commission had reached an impasse, Cemil £i^ek- the president of the commission announced that it was time to conclude the work of the body. After years of disagreement among constitutional law professors of Turkey regarding unamendability, politicians proved that they also could not settle it.
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