Post-2016 Turkey: if the taxonomic puzzle on the notion of Competitive Authoritarianism might open the door to a Semantic Constitution type’s debate

In the aftermath of two major breakthroughs, the failed coup of July 2016 and the Constitutional referendum of April 2017, the Turkish polity has fallen into a severe state of turmoil. In this precarious state of the art, a burgeoning corpus of academic literature has emerged with the scope of shedding light upon Turkey’s institutional transition. An impressive number of scholars while employing a prevailing taxonomical attitude have been engaged in a passionate debate over the real nature of the novel Turkey’s political regime, ranking it inside the umbrella of competitive authoritarianism. At the same time, a thorough academic discussion that seeks, instead, to classify the renewed constitutional text appears to be lacking. This paper intends to examine to what extent the recourse to the Semantic Constitution type, where the power process is frozen in the interests of those who actually hold power (Loewenstein 1969), might successfully explain the reformed Constitution of Turkey.