Turkey’s Switch to Presidential System: Presidentialism à la Turca or Latin-American style of presidentialism?

This article focuses on the switch from parliamentary to presidential system in Turkey. The 2017 constitutional amendments were introduced after a failed coup d’état and were approved by a referendum, held under a state of emergency. Its supporters have argued that it is a uniquely designed government system while its critics have argued that the transformation would produce a “Latin American-style” or “executive” presidential system. This study, disregards systemic features that are presumably characteristics of parliamentary and presidential systems and examine the recently introduced system in terms of executive-legislative relations. The study achieves two goals. First, it investigates how the executive-legislative relations changed as a result of constitutional changes. Second, it examines to what extent the presidential style in Turkey is similar to what Cheibub et. al. (2011) define as Latin American breed of presidentialism defined by strong executive lawmaking power.