region-europe

1. This, the current Constitution of the Republic of Turkey is no longer the same constitution, the Constitution of 1982. Yes, even partial, but sequential or re-iterated rounds of amendment can produce a new constitutional regime or material constitution. This is what happened in Turkey through amendment rounds in 1987, 1995, 2001, and 2004. It was under European pressure in the first decade of the 21st century that the demand for formal constitutional replacement was adopted by Turkish political actors, supposedly in the place of the method of sequential amendments. Was the idea of an entirely new, civilian constitution wrong? No, for two reasons. The first is the problem of legitimacy, caused by tainted origins. This problem undermines the necessarily preservationist review function of the Constitutional Court. The second is the problem of freezing. Some features of constitutions, though formally changeable, are never sufficiently altered in reform, because incumbents significantly benefit from them.

This post was first published a few weeks ago. It is being featured today because of the very interesting comment by Maija Andersone-Spurina from Latvia and to encourage further discussion.  – J.G.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Europe has gone through unprecedented changes. Two decades later, there are still conflicting ideas about what Europe means and who belongs or should belong. Moreover, there still is a long shadow cast by the Holocaust, with distinct differences in how to live under the shadow. While there seems to be a tacit understanding in Western Europe of the importance of the Holocaust in twentieth century Europe, there is a rising focus on national suffering in many east European countries that marginalizes the European genocide. Memory and history are in tension, weakening understanding of national pasts and challenging the connection between the east and the west of Europe, weakening European unity.