Making the Turkish ‚Social Constituency‘

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Given the finding that most of the existing literature on constitution-making in Turkey follows a perspective of normative model-building and therefore primarily addresses the issue of democratization “from above,” this thesis proposes a complementary perspective “from below.” In this context, a particular innovative view arises in that the re-constitutionalization process is taken as the starting point for two processes: the integration of the Turkish citizenry in terms of an emerging demos and the legitimation of the emerging polity framework. This perspective does not assume pre-existing identification among the citizenry, which in the best case would be included and hence reflected in a legitimate polity framework. Instead, the emergence of legitimate polity structures is not just seen as a question of institution building from above or as being responsive to citizens’ demands, but rather as crucially dependent on the development of a vivid public sphere, which increasingly involves citizens in public debates and interaction.