—Dr. Hüseyin Yildiz, Visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and member of the advisory board of the International Kurdish University Germany (in formation)
Introduction
This post argues that the persistent ethnonationalist and state-centered orientation of the Turkish Constitution, exemplified by Article 66(1)’s definition of citizenship through “Turkishness”, undermines civic inclusion, pluralism, and fundamental rights—particularly political and cultural rights. This ethnonationalist conception of citizenship constitutes a structural obstacle to inclusive governance and to the success of the Kurdish peace process reinitiated at the end of 2024. Against the backdrop of renewed peace efforts with the Kurdish population and ongoing debates over drafting a new constitution, this contribution contends that any meaningful constitutional reform must entail a paradigmatic shift from a Turkish nationalist strong-state ideology characterized by authoritarianism (institutio) toward a rights-based, democratic framework grounded in the rule of law (constitutio). Only a constitutional order centered on human rights, pluralism, and an active civil society can sustain democratic governance and support lasting peace.
Historical Evolution of Citizenship in Türkiye’s 1924, 1961, and 1982 Constitutions
The dominant nationalistic–statist and illiberal political order is most clearly reflected in the Preamble and in Article 66(1) of the 1982 Turkish Constitution, which articulates citizenship not in legally neutral, territorially grounded terms associated with the designation “Republic of Türkiye,” the state’s official name, but instead through the concept of “Turkishness.” By framing citizenship through an ethnic formula—“Everyone bound to the Turkish State through the bond of citizenship is a Turk”—Article 66(1) departs from a civic-legal understanding of constitutional membership and situates the constitutional definition of citizenship within an ethnic ascriptive framework (Köker 2010, p. 61). Rather than grounding citizenship in the legal community of the Republic of Türkiye, this approach emphasizes attachment to the “state of the Turks” (Türk Devleti), privileging ethnonational identity over civic inclusion. Accordingly, citizenship functions not merely as a legal status of equal membership, but as a constitutionally mediated identity category, which structurally impairs constitutional equality and constrains pluralism.
This conception of citizenship is not unique to the current constitutional framework but has deep historical roots. It was retained in the 1961 Constitution, whose Article 54(1) reproduced the same formula and underlying understanding of citizenship. While Article 88(1) of the 1924 Constitution formally defined citizenship in civic terms, scholarly analysis indicates that it implicitly preserved a second, more ‘authentic’ conception of Turkishness with ethnic undertones (Yeğen 2004, p. 61; cf. Kirişçi 2000, pp. 17–18). Subsequent legislation, most notably the 1934 Law on Settlement, gave concrete expression to this ethnic inflection by systematically marginalizing non-Turkish populations, including Kurds and other minorities, and curtailing their cultural and political rights. Taken together, these constitutional and legislative developments consolidated an ethnically homogenized political community and reinforced a state-centered, identity-based constitutional paradigm.
This conception of citizenship is not unique to the current constitutional framework but has historical roots. Article 88(1) of the 1924 Constitution formally defined citizenship in civic terms; however, scholarly analysis indicates that it implicitly preserved a second, more ‘authentic’ conception of Turkishness with ethnic undertones (Yeğen, 2004; cf. Kirişçi, 2000). This latent ethnic dimension was given concrete legal expression through ordinary legislation, most notably the 1934 Law on Settlement, which aimed to assimilate and politically neutralize non-Turkish populations—including Kurds and other minorities—by forced resettlement, restricting freedom of movement, and promoting linguistic assimilation, thereby curtailing their cultural and political rights. As an instrument of demographic engineering in Kemalist nation-building, the law embodied the republican ideal of “one language, one culture, one ideal” (Turkification). Unlike the 1924 Constitution, the 1961 Constitution articulated this ethnic dimension of citizenship more explicitly in Article 54(1), a formulation later adopted verbatim in the 1982 Constitution. Taken together, these constitutional and legislative developments consolidated an ethnically homogenized political community and reinforced a state-centered, identity-based constitutional paradigm.
As a result, the state does not conceive the nation as a pluralistic civic community, but rather as an ethnically homogeneous and organic entity. Citizenship thus functions primarily as an identity-based attribution rather than a legal-political status, systematically marginalizing citizens who do not belong to the Turkish ethnic majority. This framing is reinforced by the concept of “Turkishness,” anchored in the constitutional preamble and incorporated into the text through Article 176 of 1982 Constitution. Consequently, the Republic of Türkiye is defined predominantly in ethnic-national terms rather than through civic membership within a rights-based constitutional order, sustaining an ethnonationalist paradigm that constrains democratic participation and pluralism and prioritizes state interests over rights-centered citizenship. This establishes a close connection between the ethnonationalist conception of citizenship and Türkiye’s deeply entrenched state-centered tradition, which underpins its authoritarian and illiberal constitutional governance.
Türkiye’s Strong-State Tradition and Authoritarian Constitutionalism
An effective constitutionalization of state power in Türkiye requires a paradigmatic shift from a state-centered imperium absolutum toward a freedom-based imperium limitatum characteristic of liberal constitutionalism. Such a shift presupposes recognizing liberty as a foundational constitutional value and fundamental rights as pre-state, inherent, and justiciable norms capable of constraining public authority. By contrast, the current constitutional framework—aptly described as “authoritarian constitutionalism” (Işıksel 2013, p. 716)—prioritizes state organization and national unity over individual rights. This produces a structural imbalance between the organizational constitution (institutio) and the rights constitution (constitutio), with the former prevailing over the latter. Unlike rights-centered constitutional orders grounded in popular sovereignty and individual autonomy, the Turkish constitutional framework normatively elevates the state above society. As long as fundamental rights are mediated through the state and nation rather than individual freedom, they remain contingent and deprived of their guiding constitutional function. A shift from an illiberal, state-centered institutio to a rights- and freedom-based constitutio could liberalize the exclusive, ethnicized citizenship into an inclusive, rights-based model—thereby creating conditions conducive to advancing the Kurdish peace process.
The Kurdish Peace Process and the Drafting of a New Constitution
After peace efforts failed between 2013 and 2015, peace talks involving Kurdish actors (the PKK, an armed Kurdish non-state actor, and the HDP, a legally constituted pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey) resumed in October 2024, raising hopes for a resolution of the conflict with the Turkish government. If successful, this process could generate significant social, political, cultural, and economic benefits for both Turkey and the Kurds, with positive spillover effects extending beyond Turkey to the wider Middle East, particularly in terms of regional peace and stability. Since 1984, the conflict has resulted in approximately 40,000 civilian and military fatalities, underscoring the profound human cost of the prolonged absence of a durable settlement.
Against the backdrop of the renewed peace process and ongoing debates over drafting a new constitution, the success of this critical juncture in Turkish–Kurdish relations depends on the normative orientation of the AKP government’s constitutional project. The central question is whether the proposed new Turkish constitution will be grounded in liberal democratic principles and the rule of law, or whether it will reproduce a statist, nationalist, and illiberal paradigm. Continued adherence to an authoritarian state model rooted in a Turkifying conception of citizenship is insufficient to address the structural roots of the conflict. Such a constitution risks entrenching the long-term alienation of the Kurdish population from the state and legal order, making a sustainable peace process contingent on a constitutional transformation from an authoritarian institutio to a rights-based constitutio grounded in civic equality and inclusive pluralism—without which the process may stagnate. Since the adoption of the 1982 Constitution, Turkey has enacted numerous constitutional amendments; nevertheless, these reforms have not produced a rights- and freedoms-based transformation of the ethnically exclusionary conception of citizenship, which constitutes one of the key dimensions of the Turkish–Kurdish conflict. Assessing the trajectory and limits of these earlier amendment processes is therefore essential for evaluating whether the new constitution proposed by the AKP can move beyond this entrenched paradigm.
Constitutional Amendments in Turkey
Despite multiple rounds of constitutional amendments in 1995, 2001, 2010, and 2017, the foundational authority structure of the Turkish constitutional order continues to reflect a nationalist, state-centered conception of statehood. The amendment packages of 1995, 2001, and 2010 can be understood as incremental efforts to recalibrate Turkey’s constitutional order away from an statist-nationalist strong-state tradition toward a more liberal-democratic orientation grounded in democracy, the rule of law, and the promotion of individual freedoms—although progress remained incomplete and uneven.
In contrast, the 2017 reform package represents a decisive break from this trajectory. It is best understood as an instance of abusive constitutionalism (Landau 2013, pp. 195–200) and, more broadly, as a manifestation of autocratic legalism (Scheppele 2018, pp. 547–549), insofar as it purported to return to the original text of the 1982 Constitution while systematically weakening the core institutions of liberal-democratic constitutionalism and concentrating power in the executive. By transforming the executive from one branch among equals into the dominant center of authority within a hyper-presidential system tailored to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the reforms relegated both parliament and the judiciary to subordinate, largely instrumental roles, undermining the institutional balance central to classical separation-of-powers theory. The resulting constitutional order reinforced Turkey’s strong-state tradition and curtailed pluralistic, civil-society-based politics. Structurally, it exhibits affinities with Carl Schmitt’s conception of an executive-centered state, in which political authority is concentrated in the executive and insufficiently constrained by legislative and judicial counterweights. Even if one does not concede that the 2017 amendments amounted to a clear authoritarian reversion, they constitute an unequivocal case of constitutional retrogression (cf. Huq and Ginsburg 2018, pp. 92–99).
Parliamentarism vs. Presidentialism
Turkish society is deeply divided along ideological and ethnic lines; in such contexts, presidential systems are widely regarded in the comparative literature as ill-suited (Lijphart 2001, pp. 171–175); Lijphart 2025, ECPS, 8 July; (Stepan & Skach 1993, pp. 4, 5, 7); (Mainwaring 1993, pp. 215–217); (Linz 1990, pp. 56–58). In multi-party, pluralistic societies, democratic consolidation is more strongly associated with parliamentarism than with presidentialism. Parliamentary systems—particularly when combined with proportional representation—are better equipped to accommodate the political, cultural, and social heterogeneity characteristic of such societies. Furthermore, this concept was represented as a political tradition in Ottoman–Turkish society for more than 150 years (Özbudun 2022).
By contrast, the 2017 constitutional reforms established a presidential system based on a majoritarian, winner-takes-all electoral mechanism for the presidency, including a runoff requirement only if no candidate secures an absolute majority in the first round. This design concentrates power in the hands of the president and reproduces vulnerabilities particularly evident in the Turkish context, most notably the weakening of institutional checks and balances and the subordination of the judiciary, which has been brought under near-total control of the president (Göztepe 2021, p. 429). Because presidential executive authority is secured for a fixed term and insulated from parliamentary confidence, the system weakens incentives for coalition-building and inclusive governance. Parliamentary systems, in contrast, foster coalition-building and inclusive governance, features more conducive to democratic consolidation.
Constitutional Reform: Recalibration for Democracy, Rule of Law, and Civil-Cultural Rights
Advancing the peace process with the Kurdish population requires abandoning policies and constitutional conceptions that undermine the rule of law, democracy, and human rights. Judicial independence and a parliament oriented toward civil-society-based, republican conceptions of the common good must be effectively guaranteed, while the supremacy of the executive should be curtailed to restore a genuine balance in which the legislature and judiciary constrain state power. In drafting a new constitution, the government must ensure that these institutional reforms are systematically incorporated. Only through such a recalibration of authority can Türkiye establish a constitutional framework conducive to democratic governance and sustainable peace.
Within this framework, the recognition of cultural identities—most notably the protection of mother tongues and related cultural rights for citizens outside the Turkish ethnic majority—should not be construed as a threat to state unity. Embedded in a rule-of-law-based constitutional order, cultural rights are governed by binding, universally applicable legal norms. A pluralistic constitutional state (constitutio), grounded in freedom, dignity, and legal restraint, provides the most sustainable foundation for social cohesion because it reconciles individual and collective freedoms with a shared commitment to the constitutional order rather than ethnic homogenization.
Conclusion
Accordingly, a new Turkish constitution, as envisaged by the AKP government, should guarantee a rights-based citizenship that upholds cultural and political pluralism without compromising state unity. Reforming the traditional state-centric model would create space for democratic mechanisms capable of addressing both individual and collective rights. A shift from state dominance to a society-centered model would foster a conception of citizenship that is inclusive—recognizing individual rights—and differential—acknowledging collective dimensions of belonging, regardless of ethnic origin, religion, worldview, or gender. Such a transformation—from an order of domination to one of liberty, institutionalized through law and an active civil society—can reconcile unity with pluralism; it would establish a constitutional framework that supports democratic institutions and fosters sustainable peace between the Turkish majority and Kurds and other non-Turkish communities. While many countries have constitutions, few are designed to manage conflict or ensure governance that is both effective and rights-based; most function as assembled frameworks rather than strategically engineered systems (cf. Horowitz 2008, pp. 1230–1231). The planned Turkish constitution should avoid this pitfall, being purposefully designed to manage conflict while guaranteeing democratic, inclusive governance grounded in the rule of law.
Suggested citation: Hüseyin Yildiz, Citizenship, the Kurdish Peace Process in Türkiye and Constitutional Reform, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Feb. 12, 2026, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/citizenship-the-kurdish-peace-process-in-turkiye-and-constitutional-reform/