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Democracy and the Politics of Parliamentary Immunity in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Gürcan Koçan  and
Simon Wigley
Gürcan Koçan
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, İstanbul Technical University
Simon Wigley
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Bilkent University
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Extract

In Turkey there is currently a widespread public desire to narrow the extent to which parliamentarians are immune from the law. That desire is largely motivated by the perception that political corruption is widespread and that parliamentary immunity only serves to obstruct the fight against it. As a result, a number of political parties have based their electoral platforms on the promise to limit the scope of parliamentary immunity once in office. As of yet, none have carried through their promise and this has only served to reinforce the public view that parliamentarians see their immunity as a personal privilege. Irrespective of the merits of that charge, there is a genuine concern that confronts Turkish deputies, which means that they will be less likely to limit the immunity once elected. Their concern is that current law does not adequately protect civil and political liberties and that the judiciary is not yet sufficiently evenhanded in its treatment of political cases. In effect, the fight against political corruption has been frustrated in part because of the risk to free speech that exposure to the law might entail.

Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 33 , Fall 2005 , pp. 121 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2005

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