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Abstract
Under Turkey's democratic breakdown, the Turkish Constitutional Court offers a case study to identify the dynamics of judicial politics in electoral autocracies. Although the Court has been subject to criticism regarding its low commitment to the political pluralism and rights-based approach previously, the current situation presents itself differently. It is marked by a massive erosion in democratic qualities including an abuse of the judiciary against dissents in an unprecedented manner. Yet, the Court is still formally independent and empowered through constitutional norms such as the fixed tenure, retirement age, and jurisdiction in crucial matters. Since the institutional guarantees of the Constitutional Court are untouched, it has still the potential to become a major political player. Therefore, its study may also contribute to the comparative scholarship on the role of constitutional review under new pressures of the third wave autocratization that contraction and expansion dynamics of judiciaries can be better understood. The present study aims to feature the judicial politics of the Court under Turkey's current democratic regression by conceptualizing a resistance-deference paradox on the ground politically significant cases.

"This book examines the subject of constitutional unamendability from comparative, doctrinal, empirical, historical, political and theoretical perspectives. It explores and evaluates the legitimacy of unamendability in the various forms that exist in constitutional democracies. Modern constitutionalism has given rise to a paradox: can a constitutional amendment be unconstitutional? Today it is normatively contested but descriptively undeniable that a constitutional amendment--one that respects the formal procedures of textual alteration laid down in the constitutional text--may be invalidated for violating either a written or unwritten constitutional norm. This phenomenon of an unconstitutional constitutional amendment traces its political foundations to France and the United States, its doctrinal origins to Germany, and it has migrated in some form to all corners of the democratic world. One can trace this paradox to the concept of constitutional unamendability. Constitutional unamendability can be understood as a formally entrenched provision(s) or an informally entrenched norm that prohibits an alteration or violation of that provision or norm. An unamendable constitutional provision is impervious to formal amendment, even with supermajority or even unanimous agreement from the political actors whose consent is required to alter the constitutional text. Whether or not it is enforced, and also by whom, this prohibition raises fundamental questions implicating sovereignty, legitimacy, democracy and the rule of law."--