Feminist constitutional narratives, the pandemic and hyper-presidentialism in Turkey

Abstract

Constitutional resilience has been tested by various crises worldwide, and the COVID-19 pandemic constituted another litmus test for global constitutionalism. In Turkey, the pandemic came three years after a constitutional revision introduced hyper-presidentialism in 2017, which undermined the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances. This article looks at the period that begins with the official announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and ends with the assessment of the general elections of May 2023 to document three years of hyper-presidentialist constitutionalism and the counter-responses to it proposed by the Turkish feminist movement and the constitutional institutions that still remain autonomous from the executive. By combining conventional constitutional methods with the critical feminist positionality approach, this article diagnosed the impact of the pandemic on authoritarian regime-building. Based on feminist constitutionalism, this scholar activist approach shed light on some overlooked aspects of the pandemic in Turkey, such as persistent déconstitutionalisation and its link with anti-gender politics, to reveal the living essence of authoritarian constitutionalism and the evolution of hyper-presidentialism in Turkey.