Democratic Backsliding and Zones of Authoritarianism in Law

Since the early 2000s, the world has once again seen political leaders who came to power with elections take steps to curtail the accountability of democratic institutions and sideline their opponents to maximize their chances of winning in the next cycles of elections. Political scientists termed this phenomenon that affected a geography spanning from Venezuela to Hungary, from Turkey to Brazil, from India to the USA, democratic backsliding or subversion of liberal democracy (Bermeo Reference Bermeo2016; Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018; Lührmann and Lindberg 2019; Dixon and Landau Reference Dixon and Landau2021). They argued that the incremental nature in which incumbents tilted existing institutions to their favor and deteriorated their functions in the democratic process differentiated democratic backsliding from episodes of autocratization where political change occurred via coups and tanks (Bermeo Reference Bermeo2016; Waldner and Lust Reference Waldner and Lust2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018; Ginsburg and Huq Reference Ginsburg and Huq2018). Exploring the incrementality of change in this latest episode of democratic backsliding, they asked, “How do democracies die in the 21^st century?”

While the focus in studies responding this question varied from the tactics of elected incumbents (Bermeo Reference Bermeo2016; Scheppele Reference Scheppele2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018) to the strategies employed by the opposition (Kosar and Sipulova Reference Kosar and Sipulova2020; Gamboa Reference Gamboa2022), a group of scholars focused specifically on how incumbent political parties or strong leaders with autocratic dispositions instrumentalized legal norms and institutions in centralizing power (Corrales Reference Corrales2015; Scheppele Reference Scheppele2018; Landau and Dixon Reference Landau and Dixon2019; de Sa e Silva Reference De Sa e Silva2023a) and concealing their repressive tactics (Varol Reference Varol2014; Scheppele Reference Scheppele2018; Kadıoğlu Reference Kadıoğlu2021; de Sa e Silva Reference De Sa e Silva2023b; Negretto Reference Negretto2024). They showed that would-be authoritarians weaponized courts in banning opposition parties, eliminating presidential term limits, repressing opposition-held institutions, and upholding regime actions that tilted the electoral playing field heavily in their favor (Landau and Dixon Reference Landau and Dixon2019). They also presented that these political actors often respected the letter of the law, but violated its spirit, refused to follow unwritten rules of political conduct, or tweaked reigning interpretations of existing laws to undermine the functioning of democracies (de Sa e Silva Reference De Sa e Silva2023a).

In Hungary, the leader of the ruling Fidesz, Viktor Orban, for instance, filled independent institutions with party loyalists, expanded the length of their terms of office, and wrongfooted the opposition by changing parliamentary procedure to prevent them from speaking on the floor and offering amendments to government bills. With a constitutional supermajority that helped him change any law at his will, including the constitution, he consolidated power in his hands (Scheppele Reference Scheppele2018). In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez used the law by passing statutory and constitutional changes that supported his autocratic plans, abused the law by reinterpreting existing statutory or constitutional commands in ways that favored his pursuits, and disused the law by denying enforcement to legal norms that could present obstacles to his concentration of power (Corrales Reference Corrales2015). In Turkey, the governing AKP and its leader Tayyip Erdoğan relied on a variety of laws including the criminal code (Law No. 5237), the anti-terror law (Law No. 3713), the disinformation law (Law No. 7418), and the law against insulting the president (Law No. 5237/Article 299) alongside presidential decrees in pacifying their opponents, ascribing Erdoğan a special capacity for political leadership, and eventually transitioning the country to a hyper-presidential system with limited checks and balances (Akdeniz and Altıparmak Reference Akdeniz and Altıparmak2018; Kadıoğlu Reference Kadıoğlu2021; Över and Tuncer-Ebetürk Reference Över and Tuncer-Ebetürk2022). In all three countries, expanding the size of high courts—the Supreme Court in Venezuela and the Constitutional Courts in Hungary and Turkey—made it much easier for incumbents to dismiss justices and pressure the judiciary (Urribarri 2011; Szente Reference Szente2016; Esen Reference Esen2025).

While scholars highlighting the resemblances in the use of legal methods across these countries’ autocratization processes, labeled the deliberate use of legal norms and institutions in making a regime less democratic than it was before as “autocratic legalism” (Corrales Reference Corrales2015; Scheppele Reference Scheppele2018), others who recognized the variation in the preferred legal tools of autocratization and the patterns in which the tools are used (Levitsky and Loxton Reference Levitsky and Loxton2015; Landau and Dixon Reference Landau and Dixon2019; Balderacchi and Tomini Reference Balderacchi and Tomini2024), made calls for explaining the variation. Through empirical studies they presented that if “plebiscitarian means” was a typical strategy in Venezuela’s turn to authoritarianism, use of congressional supermajorities and the making of a new constitution came forward in Hungary, and use of constitutional changes strengthening presidential power dominated the legal dimensions of Turkey’s democratic backsliding process (Levitsky and Loxton Reference Levitsky and Loxton2015; Taş Reference Taş2015; Varol et al. Reference Varol, Dalla Pellegrina and Garoupa2017; Scheppele Reference Scheppele2018; de Sa e Silva Reference De Sa e Silva2023b).

In highlighting the variation in the legal tools mobilized by would-be authoritarians, a group of scholars specifically noted that in some cases, the legal instruments that incumbents drew on were legacies of previous episodes of authoritarian rule (de Sa e Silva Reference De Sa e Silva2023b; Machado et al. Reference Machado, Rodriguez de Assis and Pimenta2022). Zuma’s governance model in South Africa, for instance, repurposed colonial and apartheid laws that had designated “tribes” and “tribal authorities” (Davis et al. Reference Davis, Le Roux and Smythe2022). Modi in India relied on Article 22(3) of the Indian Constitution, which long authorized preventive detention in intimidating the political opposition (Das Acevedo Reference Avecedo2022). Similarly, Bolsonaro expanded existing authoritarian enclaves of police violence and impunity in undermining Brazil’s democratic process (Machado et al. Reference Machado, Rodriguez de Assis and Pimenta2022).

Recognizing the complexity and diversity of democratic backsliding experiences (Levitsky and Loxton Reference Levitsky and Loxton2018; Varol et al. Reference Varol, Dalla Pellegrina and Garoupa2017; Landau and Dixon Reference Landau and Dixon2019; Cianetti and Hanley Reference Cianetti and Hanley2021; Balderacchi and Tomini Reference Balderacchi and Tomini2024), this article zooms in on the mechanisms that underpin would-be authoritarians’ turn to pre-existing authoritarian enclaves in law. The article considers that a significant number of countries that recently experienced democratic decline, including the above mentioned cases of India, Brazil, and South Africa, are either “disjunctive” democracies where transitions from colonial or military rule to democracy left traces of authoritarian practice in “democratic” institutions (Holston and Caldeira Reference Holston and Caldeira1998; Poole and Rénique Reference Poole and Rénique1992; Schirmer Reference Schirmer1998; Gonzalez Reference González2020; Singh Reference Singh2023) or, as in the case of the USA, have illiberal legal orders (McCann and Kahraman Reference McCann and Kahraman2021) or repressive enclaves in their democracies due to extension of crisis time restrictions on fundamental rights beyond times of crisis (Scheppele Reference Scheppele2003; Cole Reference Cole2003; Gross and Aolain Reference Gross and Ni Aoláin2006; Ackerman Reference Ackerman2006; Kier and Krebs Reference Kier and Krebs2010; Hajjar Reference Hajjar2019). Based on this observation, the article asks what the uses of these enclaves that embed authoritarian norms and practices in law (de Sa e Silva Reference De Sa e Silva2023b; Machado et al. Reference Machado, Rodriguez de Assis and Pimenta2022) are for would-be authoritarians.

Path-dependent scholarship in social sciences has long argued that reliance on existing institutions may result from avoidance of the costs associated with institutional transformation (North Reference North1990; Pierson Reference Pierson2000), powerholders’ tendency to promote institutions that generate benefits for them (Collins Reference Collins1975; Weber Reference Weber1978), the functional contributions of an institution to an overall system (Merton Reference Merton1968; Rueschemeyer Reference Rueschemeyer1986), and people’s recognition of a given institution as legitimate (Linz Reference Linz1978; Scott Reference Scott, Powell and DiMaggio1991) (see Mahoney Reference Mahoney2000 for an extended discussion). In light of this literature, scholars highlighted the legitimacy arising from judicial review (Landau Reference Landau2017; Landau and Dixon Reference Landau and Dixon2019) and the lower costs of turning to existing courts as two mechanisms that explained the turn to courts as a tool of de-democratization (Sadurski Reference Sadurski2018; Landau and Dixon Reference Landau and Dixon2019). They further argued that existing illiberal legal traditions in law can be more easily tapped and exploited by new political actors without the need to test and legitimate the new tools (Morlino Reference Morlino2024). After all, expanding existing zones of authoritarianism was less politically and legally challenging than creating them, which would involve curtailing rights or debilitating accountability institutions (Machado and Pimenta Reference Machado, Rodriguez de Assis and Pimenta2022).

This article belongs to these studies that call for historical and political contextualization of would-be authoritarians’ legal tool choices. Along with Ginsburg and Simpser (Reference Ginsburg and Simpser2014), it claims that political leaders’ concerns and predilections driving authoritarian change can only be understood by reading changes in institutions in light of predecessor institutions. Through a case study of the AKP’s turn to Specially Authorized Courts in undermining Turkey’s “disjunctive” democracy, the article highlights coercive and legitimating benefits as two mechanisms underpinning would-be authoritarians’ turn to pre-existing authoritarian enclaves in legal systems.

Turkey presents a critical case due to its long history of oscillation between democratic and autocratic forms of rule (Kadıoğlu Reference Kadıoğlu2021) and extensive use of legal instruments in the suppression of political opposition (Kogacioglu Reference Kogacioglu2004; Belge Reference Belge2006; Bayır Reference Bayır2013). Having transitioned to democratic rule as early as 1950, Turkey has since experienced several military coup d’états (1960, 1971, 1980), and a military intervention in the form of a military memorandum from the military to the government in 1997, widely recognized as a post-modern coup (Kaptan Reference Kaptan2018). While compared to its counterparts in Chile or Brazil, where military dictatorships lasted over fifteen years, the military in Turkey traditionally refrained from staying in rule for extended periods of time; it sought to retain its say on major policy issues after transitions to democratic rule (Cizre-Sakallıoğlu Reference Sakallıoğlu1997).

The determinative position that the military had in the making of the 1961 and 1982 constitutions, for instance, rendered Turkey an example of authoritarian constitutionalism (Kaygusuz and Aydın Reference Kaygusuz and Aydın2020). The Constitutional Court of Turkey similarly emerged from the 1961 Constitution, drafted after the coup, as a “counter-majoritarian institution” with vast power to review the constitutionality of legislative bills and party programs (Kogacioglu Reference Kogacioglu2004; Belge Reference Belge2006; Aydın-Çakır Reference Aydın-Çakır2014; Esen Reference Esen2025). The National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu, MGK) and the Council of Higher Education (Yüksek Öğretim Kurulu, YÖK) were two other institutions founded after military coups to uphold the military’s power over national security and education. These and other institutions, along with the norms and practices that endowed the military with a tutelary position over civilian politics, led political scientists to categorize Turkey as a “hybrid” or “tutelary” democracy (Sarıgil Reference Sarıgil2011; Bali, 2013; Taş Reference Taş2015; Öniş Reference Öniş2016; Esen and Gumuscu Reference Esen and Gumuscu2016; Çalışkan Reference Çalışkan2017; Akkoyunlu Reference Akkoyunlu2017).

This article focuses on one of the many legacies of military rule in Turkey, namely, Specially Authorized Courts, a continuum of the infamous State Security Courts (Devlet Güvenlik Mahkemeleri, DGM). It explores the AKP’s instrumentalization of these courts in undermining Turkey’s “tutelary” democracy. State Security Courts in Turkey were founded after the military rule between 1980 and 1983, when the military, in alliance with conservative politicians, turned to the judiciary in the political fight against the left (Işıksel Reference Işıksel2013; Bakiner Reference Bakiner2016; Parslow Reference Parslow2018; Somer Reference Somer2018). When the AKP came to power in 2002, in line with the framework set by the European Union (EU) accession negotiations, it introduced reforms to the structure of these courts, presenting itself as the political agent of democratization in Turkey. Later, when the AKP abolished and “readopted” these courts (Soyaltin-Colella Reference Soyaltin-Colella2022), it framed them as a necessary evil to combat authoritarian actors in Turkish politics, particularly the military. This article demonstrates that the ruling AKP turned to these specialized courts not only for their greater capacity to jail, stigmatize, and intimidate the opposition but also for the opportunities they provided in obscuring such repression.

The article makes both empirical and theoretical contributions. Empirically, it brings the underexplored Turkish case into discussions on the coercive and legitimating uses of authoritarian enclaves in undermining democracies. Theoretically, by examining a case in which new authoritarians weaponized an authoritarian enclave against old authoritarians, the article presents how new political actors can exploit the public’s association of legal institutions with specific political actors. It thus calls for greater scholarly attention to the histories embedded in legal institutions and how aspiring autocrats leverage these histories to legitimate their repressive actions.

Data and Methods

The argument presented in this article is based on qualitative document analysis. The documents have been selected and analysed based on their relevance, significance, and meaning to the emergence, restructuring, and abolishment of both State Security Courts and Specially Authorized Courts. The changes made to the status and structure of the courts are captured through an analysis of the 1982 Constitution (Law No. 2709), the Anti-Terror Law (No. 3713/1991), the Turkish Penal Code (Law No. 765), the Turkish Criminal Procedure Code (Law No. 5271), and the official statements of reasons for abolishing of State Security Courts and Specially Authorized Courts. The analysis of legal texts is complemented with data on political actors’ publicly provided justifications for founding, restructuring, and abolishing State Security Courts and Specially Authorized Courts.

The ruling AKP’s justifications and the details of court cases seen at these courts during the rule of AKP are captured through the AKP’s election manifestos, party pamphlets, booklets published by the Office of the Prime Minister, the records of the debates in the National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, TBMM) on the abolishment of State Security Courts and Specially Authorized Courts, and news stories that appeared in the dailies Hürriyet, Milliyet, Cumhuriyet, and online news portals of the BBC, NTV, T24, Duvar, and Bianet. In documenting the political opposition’s stance on the foundation, restructuring, and abolishment of State Security Courts and Specially Authorized Courts and the trials executed in these courts, the article relied on non-governmental organization (NGO) pamphlets, campaign documents, documentaries, books by leading activists, EU Commission reports on Turkey’s progress towards EU accession, and the debates in the TBMM on the abolishment of State Security Courts and Specially Authorized Courts.

A “Zone of authoritarianism” in Turkey’s “Tutelary” Democracy: State Security Courts

On the 12^th of September, 1980, the military intervened in politics in Turkey. Following the coup d’état, martial law was declared in all provinces. In the three years of military rule that followed, one of the most obvious expansions of executive authority took place in the court system as military courts took on the role of the civilian judicial system. In a very short time, military courts detained and tried over 230,000 people, executing fifty among them (T24 2016; Parslow Reference Parslow2018). Arbitrary exercise of judicial power marked these courts’ decisions on the status and rights of the detained. Cases were opened on fabricated grounds of membership in communist organizations, people were detained for years without charge, and detainees faced torture and mistreatment under detention (Öktem Reference Öktem2011).

Following the termination of martial law and the organization of elections in 1983, Turkey started transitioning to democracy. In this transition, while Turkey’s criminal jurisprudence reassumed its role, military leaders normalized their incursion into it by founding a special criminal court system that existed alongside the general criminal courts of Courts of Peace (Sulh Ceza Mahkemeleri), Courts of First Instance (Asliye Ceza Mahkemeleri), and Aggravated Felony Courts (Ağır Ceza Mahkemeleri)Footnote ¹ . While criminal courts’ use for the punishment of political opposition predates the 1980 coup d’état (Ertür Reference Ertür2022), these courts, also known as State Security Courts, which began to operate on May 1^st of 1984 in eight cities across Turkey,Footnote ² formally entrenched military rule into civilian politics. In their panels, a military judge sat alongside two civilian judges (Parslow Reference Parslow2018). As provided by Article 143 of the 1982 Constitution (Law No. 2709), State Security Courts “deal[t] with offenses against the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation, the free democratic order, or against the Republic whose characteristics are defined in the Constitution, and offenses directly involving the internal and external security of the state.”

Turkey’s transition from military rule to democracy overlapped with the beginning of the armed conflict between the Turkish military and the Kurdish PKK, which took more than 40,000 lives and, with brief cessations of fighting, continued up to this day (Türkmen Reference Türkmen2021). In the context of the conflict, a state of emergency was declared in eleven Kurdish-dominated cities in the southeast of the country, remaining in force until the end of 2002. On April 12, 1991, in the context of this conflict, an Anti-Terror Law (Law No. 3713) came into effect. With this law authorities not only gave unsweeping powers to the security organs and the judiciary (Tezcür Reference Tezcür2009; Yeğen Reference Yeğen2011) but also removed the articles of the old Turkish Penal Code (Law No. 765) (Articles 140, 141, 142, and 163) that regulated political crimes from the scope of the penal code, renamed them as terrorism, and placed them within the new law (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014). In this environment, the legal system increasingly relied on State Security Courts and specialized police forces such as “The Branch for the Fight against Terrorism” (Terörle Mücadele Şubesi) in treating political opposition and producing a steady stream of political prisoners out of journalists, publishers, human rights advocates, and politicians on the grounds that they posed a security threat to the state (HRW 1997; Işıksel Reference Işıksel2013). State Security Courts’ jurisdiction thus extended to everything political, ranging from human rights to anything that the state construed as separatist propaganda, within which rubric even singing a song in Kurdish or protesting the use of cyanide in mining could qualify (Nebiler Reference Nebiler1990; Cizre Sakallıoğlu Reference Sakallıoğlu1997; Keyder Reference Keyder2004; Tahincioğlu Reference Tahincioğlu2022).

According to the statistics provided by the Ministry of Justice, between 1986 and 2002, 73,986 files were seen at the State Security Courts. Of the 214,885 people put on trial at State Security Courts between 1990 and 2002, 82,095 people were convicted (Duvar 2022). Those arraigned before these courts lacked guaranteed access to an attorney during the detention period, faced extended periods of trial, and provided testimonies during interrogation in the absence of counsel (HRW 1997). These courts were also uneven in the enforcement of the law and the application of sanctions. A leading novelist of Turkey, Yaşar Kemal, who was put on trial at State Security Courts over the 1990s for his statements on the state’s repression of the Kurds in Turkey, described his experience at State Security Courts as one of being subjected to arbitrary political power:

In State Security Courts, an act tolerated in one case—whether exempt from prosecution or even deemed praiseworthy—could be prosecuted in another. At times, the courts enforced penalties with strict severity, while at other times, they showed leniency. Their definitions of state security and terror were inconsistent, as were their decisions on whether and how to punish a crime. This unpredictability spread uncertainty and fear, affecting not only those on trial but also the broader society.

Political theorists have long addressed arbitrary exercise of power as a limit on freedom (Skinner Reference Skinner2008; Pettit Reference Pettit2012; Lovett Reference Lovett2012). In their definition, arbitrariness emerges when power is exercised at the will or pleasure of the powerholder. In Turkey, as State Security Courts enforced law and applied sanctions unevenly, they exercised power arbitrarily, not only depriving the defendants of basic rights protections but also spreading fear to the political opposition (Bobrow Reference Bobrow2004). For nearly fifteen years, State Security Courts thus represented a continuum with the practices of martial courts, functioning as a “zone of authoritarianism” in Turkey’s “tutelary” democracy.

A Qualification Matter for Democracy: Abolishment of State Security Courts

While State Security Courts began their operations in 1984, the first attempt to establish them dates back to the 1970s. In the aftermath of the 1971 military intervention, the military has focused attention on the possibility of establishing permanent special courts to deal with political offenses and made the establishment of such courts a condition for the eventual holding of free elections and the restoration of full civilian rule (Çelenk Reference Çelenk1976). With amendments made to the 1961 Constitution and the support from the political right, State Security Courts were founded as a specialized kind of court to try charges against the security of the state (Uysal Reference Uysal2001).

However, their establishment sparked fierce disputes among politicians and lawyers, as well as large-scale strikes and mass demonstrations beginning in 1973. Protests against these courts culminated in the “General Mourning” general strike, organized by the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers’ Unions (Devrimci Işçi Sendikaları Konfederasyonu, DISK) in September 1976. Referring to the State Security Courts as “class courts” and “martial courts in lack of martial law,” unions, leftist politicians, and civil society organizations opposed their establishment, citing the political nature of their judgments and the threat they posed to the working class, human rights, and democracy (Çelenk Reference Çelenk1976; Çelik and Şafak Reference Çelik and Şafak2020).

The demonstrations lasted for about a week, drawing over 100,000 participants and leading to the layoff of approximately 3,000 workers. However, they also played a crucial role in preventing the institutionalization of the State Security Courts in the late 1970s (MITÇG 2017; Çelik and Şafak Reference Çelik and Şafak2020; UIDD 2022). While few in number, some Islamist politicians of the time also opposed the establishment of State Security Courts, framing them as a threat to religious freedom (Uysal Reference Uysal2001). In 1976, when the Constitutional Court declared State Security Courts unconstitutional, political opposition in Turkey viewed their abolishment as a step forward in the country’s democratization (Hale Reference Hale1977; Parslow Reference Parslow2018).

When State Security Courts entrenched themselves in Turkey’s “tutelary” democracy as a zone of authoritarianism after the military rule in the 1980s and the ratification of a new constitution in 1982, political opposition adopted the same language of democratization that, since the courts’ very first foundation in the 1970s asked for their abolishment. Human rights activists of the 1980s and the 1990s, primarily from leftist and pro-Kurdish political groups, likened State Security Courts to the specialized courts institutionalized by fascist regimes of Mussolini in Italy and the Vichy regime during WWII in France, addressing them as an instrument of state coercion (Nebiler Reference Nebiler1990).

In the late 1990s, State Security Courts’ abolishment became a significant agenda for Human Rights Organizations (IHD 1997; DKÖG 1998; Öndül Reference Öndül2008). In 1997, a coalition of eighteen NGOs, the “Freedom against State Security Courts Initiative,” organized a campaign to advocate the courts’ abolition, calling for an episode of mass mobilization (DKÖG 1998). The campaign lacked the mass societal support that the campaigners of the 1970s enjoyed. Nevertheless, its participants, primarily from civil society organizations, described State Security Courts as an exceptional institution that accompanied the anti-democratic laws of the legal order of the 1971 and 1980 coup d’états. Accordingly, State Security Courts were a continuation of martial courts in civilian dress. They embodied the unlawfulness of the legal order of the coup d’état by silencing and suppressing the political opposition and destroying hope. Their abolishment was therefore essential to the achievement of democracy and human rights in Turkey (IHD 1997; DKÖG 1998).

This episode of contentious mobilization that extended into 1998 also included boycotts by lawyers and defendants who refused to attend their own trials that were held at the State Security Courts (Milliyet 1998; Ensaroğlu Reference Ensaroğlu1998). The campaign and the boycotts then evolved into an act of civil disobedience where a group of 1,080 publishers, intellectuals, activists, journalists, and writers organized the “Initiative against Criminalization of Thoughts” to stand in solidarity with Yaşar Kemal, the famous novelist, who was put on trial at a State Security Court for his statements on the Kurds’ repression by the state (Yurdatapan Reference Yurdatapan2000). The activists republished Kemal’s words for which he was tried. To expose the special procedures at work in State Security Courts and the arbitrariness in their decision making, they forced the court to decide on whether it should take them all under custody (Yurdatapan Reference Yurdatapan2000).

During this period, international organizations—most notably the United Nations Human Rights Council and the EU—became major players in Turkish politics. In 1998, the UN’s Working Group on Forced Disappearances and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture visited Turkey, meeting with judges and prosecutors from the State Security Courts and other bureaucrats. Their reports highlighted issues related to these courts’ procedures, as well as the court personnel’s disregard for already problematic court procedures (Gülmez Reference Gülmez1999).

Similar questions on State Security Courts were raised by the EU in this period. After at least a decade of economic and political tensions between Turkey and the European Economic Community (EEC)Footnote ³ , on April 14, 1987, Prime Minister Özal applied for full membership to the community. Throughout the 1990s, the European Community (EC) consistently emphasized the need for democracy and the eradication of inhumane practices in Turkish courts and prisons (Eralp Reference Eralp2009), paving the way for significant democratization reforms in the following years. Despite fluctuations in Turkey’s relationship with the EU (see Aybey Reference Aybey2004 and Eralp 2009 for an extended discussion), the EU officially recognized Turkey as a candidate for full membership in 1999. From 1999 to 2005, Turkey underwent an extensive reform process to meet the EU’s criteria for initiating accession negotiations. The first Accession Partnership Document, issued to Turkey by the EU in 2001, identified judicial reform as a short-term priority, explicitly listing the abolition of State Security Courts as one of the accession criteria (Soyaltin-Colella Reference Soyaltin-Colella2022).

The language of the EU that demanded Turkey to reform its legal structure overlapped with the language of the political opposition in the 1990s that recognized the State Security Courts’ abolishment as a step forward towards Turkey’s democratization. In the same period, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) consistently held that due to the presence of a military judge on their benches, the State Security Courts in Turkey lacked independence and impartiality, which violated the right to fair trial of applicants tried in these courts (Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights) (Kurban et al. Reference Kurban, Erözden and Gülalp2015).

Correspondingly, the EU repeatedly underlined that in the presence of a military judge, State Security Courts were impartial and raised questions regarding the independence of courts. It further noted that to join the European Union, Turkey had to remove the special procedures that provided fewer protections for the defendants in State Security Courts than do procedures in Turkey’s ordinary courts. Accordingly, incommunicado detentions, interrogations without a lawyer, torture and other ill treatment, the length of proceedings, confession-based evidence gathering, and defendant-statement-based convictions were widely practiced at these courts and these special procedures raised questions about the availability of a fair trial system that was indispensable to the level of democracy required to join the EU (European Comission 1998; European Comission 1999; Joseph R. Crowley Program Reference Crowley Program1999; European Comission 2000; European Comission 2001; European Comission 2002; European Comission 2003; European Comission 2004; Yılmaz Reference Yılmaz2004).

As democratizing Turkey in the path to EU accession became a major theme in political discussion, a greater number of people recognized the abolishment of this “zone of authoritarianism” in Turkey’s democracy as a standard to be achieved. In this manner, in Turkey’s “tutelary” democracy, an authoritarian zone that deprived citizens of basic rights protections and spread fear to the political opposition through its arbitrary decisions, has come to coexist alongside a growing demand to advance rights and build impartial institutions of law and justice.

The AKP’s Self-Presentation as a Democratizing Force: Abolishing State Security Courts

The AKP came to power in Turkey in 2002. During its first term in office, demand for democratization was high in the society. The preceding coalition government had started a rigorous reform process on the path to Turkey’s full membership of the EU. In fact, in 1999, alongside multiple other reforms, the coalition government had removed the military judge from State Security Courts’ panels to signal that it was taking a step forward in satisfying the criteria toward starting the accession negotiations. Being tied hand and foot with the accession reforms during its initial term in office, the AKP officially abolished State Security Courts in 2004 in the context of the 7^th EU Adaptation Package, signed into law (Law No. 5170) by President Sezer on August 6, 2003.

The statement of reasons for the decision of State Security Courts’ abolishment, signed by the then prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan, stated that their abolishment was “a necessity of a modern, democratic, constitutional state where human rights-based jurisprudence is foundational.” The statement further underlined that the abolishment of institutions that did not fit these criteria had become an expectation and necessity for both the state and the society in Turkey (TBMM 2004).

The AKP had its roots in the political Islamist movement in Turkey. Historically, state institutions in Turkey’s tutelary democracy had generally approached the Islamists as a national security threat to Turkey’s secular identity—although to different degrees and with varying understandings of secularism (Özdemir Reference Özdemir2024)—closely tracking their activities. In a socio-political environment where Islamists demanded more religious majoritarianism and less anti-theocracy, and secular actors rallied for less majority-religionism and more anti-theocracy; the Constitutional Court’s adjudication, for instance, involved an apprehension of secularism that consisted of religious majoritarianism and anti-theocracy (Özdemir Reference Özdemir2024). In this context, many of the AKP’s founding members experienced closure of their previous parties by the Constitutional Court and faced prosecutions at State Security Courts as defendants (Yeşilada Reference Yeşilada2023). In fact, in 1998, the State Security Court in the city of Diyarbakır convicted Tayyip Erdoğan, one of the founders and the leader of the AKP, to ten months in prison under Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code on the grounds that he had incited hatred based on religion (NYT 1998; Shambayati Reference Shambayati2004).

At its foundation, the AKP claimed to have abandoned the Islamist views of its predecessors, identifying as a conservative democratic party that is made up of individuals from different political points of view (White Reference White2014; Yeşilada Reference Yeşilada2023). During the party’s initial term in office, its members claimed not to hold any grudge against the military or the institutions that upheld its power in politics. In its engagement with these actors, instead of presenting itself as an advocate of Islamist politics and a challenger of the secularist system, the AKP often praised secularism as a prerequisite for democracy and stressed the party’s commitment to the goals set by the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Altınordu 2016).

Pursuing a rather indirect way in challenging the secularists, it presented itself as an agent that intended to correct the errors of the previous state establishment, in particular the military (Çınar Reference Çınar2006). The political opposition of the 1990s and the EU had already identified these errors as “zones of authoritarianism” in Turkey’s “tutelary” democracy. To consolidate the party’s image as a center-right party, while restructuring the institutions that allowed the military to exercise tutelary power over the political process, the party capitalized on the EU reforms and the discourse that identified democratization with the removal of military influence in Turkey.

During this period, secularist opposition actors grew increasingly suspicious of the AKP’s Islamist goals. In this context, the main opposition party, the CHP, sought to stall the government’s legislative agenda. The president of the time, a secularist and former head of the Constitutional Court of Turkey, exercised his authority to veto the government’s bureaucratic appointments and proposed legislation (Esen Reference Esen2025). Senior military officials pressured the AKP behind closed doors to push for policy reversals (Ciddi and Esen Reference Ciddi and Esen2014). International observers, however, have increasingly accepted the AKP as a system-oriented political party with a moderate religious orientation (Yeşilada Reference Yeşilada2023).

The coalition government that preceded the AKP had portrayed the EU reform process as a means of democratization, societal co-operation, and consensus-building, emphasizing the “desire for reform” shared by all segments of the society (Hürriyet 2001). In an environment of international support and national political standoff, AKP appropriated this discourse and used it to present itself as a unifying force in an economically and politically shattered nation. It identified democracy with the will of the nation and described itself as the authentic agent for the realization of the will. It pointed to the political reforms as a means of building trust between the state and the society, securing a “social contract” (toplumsal mutabakat in Turkish) among the various parts that make up the nation, and imagining a common ideal of the future (Erdoğan Reference Erdoğan2005).

Specifically, in abolishing the State Security Courts, the AKP adopted the language of the political opposition of the 1990s and the EU, which presented the abolishment of military legacies as a step forward in democratization. In its election manifesto declared before the 2007 elections, titled “In Trust and Permenance: Do Not Stop, Keep on Going,” the AKP counted the abolisment of State Security Courts amongst the AKP’s accomplishments that provided more room for full practice of fundamental rights and liberties, provided citizens with a fear and anxiety free, secure environment to live, ensured a democratic constitutional state by guaranteeing justice. The manifesto pointed to the courts’ abolishment as one of the indications that the AKP was committed to the goal of democratizing Turkey (AKP 2007). AKP politicians also referred to the abolishment of State Security Courts in their public speeches to claim that they are committed to democratizing Turkey. In the months preceding the 2010 referendum, the Minister of Labour and Social Security from the AKP counted the abolishment of State Security Courts as one of the major steps taken towards their ultimate dream of democratization (Cumhuriyet 2010).

Such a depiction of democratization as civilianization garnered support not only from the AKP’s conservative supporters but also from liberals and some leftists, who had been advocating for democratization since the 1990s (Akça Reference Akça2018; Kaygusuz Reference Kaygusuz2018). The reforms, including the abolishment of State Security Courts, thus created expectations to have more room for peaceful political challenges and spread hopes regarding democratization. Scholars, human rights organizations, and journalists expressed that the reforms introduced to the judiciary by the 7^th EU Adaptation Package, including the abolishment of State Security Courts, would potentially reduce the state’s arbitrariness toward political opposition (Bobrow Reference Bobrow2004). The AKP thus used an existing “zone of authoritarianism,” along with the other reforms undertaken as part of the EU adaptation packages, to present itself as an actor that democratized Turkey by curbing the military’s dominance in politics. This self-presentation proved useful in obscuring the party’s subsequent actions targeting political opposition.

Legitimating Repression: The AKP’s Weaponization of Specially Authorized Courts Against the Military

When State Security Courts were abolished in 2004, Specially Authorized Courts were founded in their place as a specialized form of already existing Heavy Penal Courts. Like their predecessors, Specially Authorized Courts were authorized to try cases involving organized crime, terrorism, and state security in reference to the Penal Code (Law No. 5237) and the Anti-Terror Law (Law No. 3713) (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014). Specially Authorized Courts also still had exceptional procedural rules that allowed them to hold suspects for extended periods of time under arrest, restrict suspects’ access to lawyers, conduct investigations out of their jurisdiction—creating a hierarchy between their prosecutors and those of other courts—, and eliminate defense counsel’s authority to examine the case file (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014).

This “formal readoption” allowed the AKP to reintegrate exceptional courts and their procedures into the penal system (Soyaltin-Colella Reference Soyaltin-Colella2022). It also enabled the party to extend its patronage networks into special courts. As one prosecutor, who served in both State Security Courts and Specially Authorized Courts, recounted, the prosecutor who initiated trials against military officers a few years after the “readoption” was, in fact, appointed to the Specially Authorized Courts during this process (Ayvaz Reference Ayvaz2017; Kesler Reference Kesler2017)Footnote ⁴ .

In 2007, a political crisis erupted over the election of a new president when the AKP nominated then-Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, triggering massive anti-government demonstrations and an e-memorandum from the Chief of the General Staff. The crisis ultimately led to an early election during which the AKP portrayed members of the main opposition party, CHP, as secularist elites who unjustly treated Gül and defied the national will (Esen 2025). The election resulted in an AKP victory with 46.6% of the vote. With another term in office—this time with a president from its own ranks—the party abandoned its conciliatory approach toward the secularist power holders in the military, bureaucracy, academia, media, and civil society.

A year earlier, in 2006, the European Council had made the decision regarding Turkey’s accession to the EU that no chapter would be closed until Turkey extended the terms of the Additional Protocol to Cyprus, which required Turkey to apply the provisions of the customs union to all EU member states, including the Republic of Cyprus (Soyaltin-Colella Reference Soyaltin-Colella2022).Footnote ⁵ Such halting of the accession negotiations with the EU gave further momentum to the AKP’s crackdown on the secularists in political institutions (Kaygusuz Reference Kaygusuz2018). The party started openly targeting them as political enemies, and redesigning the relationships between secularists, Kurds, and the pro-Islamic in accordance with its own interests (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2021; Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2022). Such a redesign involved the AKP’s turn to the exceptional procedures of Specially Authorized Courts that enabled the arbitrary exercise of power over political opposition.

During the AKP’s second term in office, Ergenekon, Balyoz (Sledgehammer), and the KCK trials emerged as three major trials heard at Specially Authorized Courts that enabled the AKP in jailing, stigmatizing, and delegitimizing its secularist, leftist, and pro-Kurdish opponents. In the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials, members of the military, bureaucracy, academia, media, and civil society, including the former Chief of the General Staff, were accused of destabilizing the political arena and toppling the AKP government (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2022). In the Ergenekon case, where the first indictment was filed in 2008, pro-government prosecutors charged the defendants with membership in a clandestine ultra-nationalist organization called the Ergenekon terror organization. This group was accused of plotting to generate chaos in society by attacking minority groups, bombing mosques, and assassinating public figures, all to justify staging a coup by the military (Rodrik Reference Rodrik2011).

Many of the suspects in the Ergenekon trial had a troubling history of human rights abuses. Among them there were retired soldiers, notorious for their documented involvement in torture and the orchestration of assassinations during the 1990s, members of political pressure groups infamous for filing legal complaints against leftist, liberal, or Kurdish journalists and intellectuals on charges of insulting “Turkishness,” and university presidents known for their discriminating against pro-Islamic, Kurdish, and leftist students and academics. However, there were also suspects who were known primarily for their strong secularist views. Due to the disreputable background of many suspects, human rights advocates, and a wide range of civil society actors from pro-Islamic, pro-Kurdish, and leftist backgrounds, viewed the trial as an opportunity to expose past crimes, address injustices committed by the military, hold accountable those who had previously evaded punishmet, and challenge the military’s influence over politics in order to set a new precedent for justice in Turkey (Köstepen Reference Köstepen2018).

When the legal proceedings in the Ergenekon trial expanded to include a military simulation workshop called Balyoz (Sledgehammer), which was portrayed as a rehearsal for a coup plot, a new investigation into the upper echelons of the military was set off (Jenkins Reference Jenkins2011). The Balyoz investigation, which was named after this workshop, started in January 2010 and charged 365 suspects, including eighty-nine generals and admirals, for preparing a plan that would stir up chaos and justify the overthrow of the AKP with a military coup.

Between these two trials, the KCK trials began in April 2009 with the detention of pro-Kurdish politicians, journalists, academics, opposition lawmakers, and citizens. The first major indictment in these trials was filed about a month after the pro-Kurdish political party, Democratic Society Party (DTP), made significant gains in the March 2009 local elections, winning victories against the AKP in numerous municipalities in the Kurdish majority south-eastern cities of Turkey. The indictment accused the defendants of membership in, leadership of, or providing aid to the outlawed militant PKK’s underground network, the KCK (Casier et al. Reference Casier, Jongerden and Walker2011; Bayır Reference Bayır2013). In December 2009, mass arrests followed the resumption of clashes between the PKK and the Turkish Armed Forces, the Constitutional Court’s decision to ban the DTP, and the AKP’s declaration of an end to what it termed the “democratic opening”—an initiative with the declared aim of resolving the Kurdish conflict. The trials gained further momentum in 2010 and 2011 (Türkmen Reference Türkmen2021).

In all three trials, the trial process took many years, trials spread countrywide, and thousands of people were incarcerated, intimidated, and stigmatized (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014). By 2011, solely in the Ergenekon case, one-tenth of the Turkish Armed Forces’ generals and admirals were arrested (Gürsoy Reference Gürsoy2012). In the KCK trials, between 2009 and 2013, around 8,000 Kurdish politicians, intellectuals, and activists were detained. Some were later acquitted, while others were convicted (Türkmen Reference Türkmen2021). All three trials were also closely watched by the public, allowing the government to play with public perceptions regarding those who were on trial and those who stood in solidarity with them. The year 2011 was a turning point in Turkey in that the country would wake up to a new series of detentions each day in one of these three trials. According to an Associated Press survey, in 2012 one one-third of the world’s terrorists lived in Turkey (Temelkuran Reference Temelkuran2012).

While the evidentiary materials in the KCK cases relied on police surveillance reports of telephone and email exchanges of suspects, minutes from meetings, and photos and videos taken at public demonstrations (Hakyemez Reference Hakeyemez2016); the indictments in the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials were primarily based on alleged written plans and manuals, meeting notes, internal memos, conversations between suspects recorded in surveillance operations (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014). The illegal collection of evidence—such as the fabrication of evidence, wiretaps that violated individual privacy and communication rights protected by Article 20 and Article 22 of the Turkish Constitution, and the selective release of these documents to the media to manipulate public perception—became a central issue in the trials (Önderoğlu Reference Önderoğlu2015; Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2022; Esen Reference Esen2025). The Balyoz trial almost solely relied on data from a single CD, allegedly recorded in March 2003, yet the data contained references to events dated as late as 2008 (Rodrik and Doğan Reference Rodrik and Doğan2010). In 2019, the Presidential Office acknowledged the use of fabricated evidence in all three trials (T24 2019). In 2009, the Ministry of Justice revealed that 113,270 people, including fifty-six judiciary officials, had been wiretapped as part of the Ergenekon investigation between 2006–2009. That same year, courts across the country requested the surveillance of the phones of 33,037 people (Köse Reference Köse2012). Beyond the reliance on illegal evidence, courts frequently disregarded evidence that supported the defendants’ claims (Rodrik Reference Rodrik2011; Kaptan Reference Kaptan2018).

The three trials also became notorious for their lengthy indictments and the rights violations that the indictments brought on. The Ergenekon case consisted of the unification of twenty-two indictments, which totaled 17,000 pages, with an additional fifty-one case files that included 120 million documents, 100,000 telephone wiretaps, statements of 1,360 persons, and statements of 153 secret witnesses. The indictments in the KCK case similarly totaled as long as 11,679 pages (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014). In the trials, suspects stayed in detention for 1–2 years while waiting for these lengthy indictments to be prepared without knowing what they were accused of. Using pre-trial detentions as a punitive measure toward political opponents, a practice which long defined politically motivated criminal proceedings in Turkey, continued to constitute a violation of defendants’ rights. In the KCK trial, there were even persons arrested by mistake due to name similarity, yet they have still not been released after the recognition of the mistake (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014). Moreover, because of the length of indictments, the courts generally summarized indictments in the courtroom, which was unlawful and constituted a reason for appeal (Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014).

Outside the courtroom, the police raided the homes and offices of the suspects in the early morning, searched their houses for evidence, and placed the suspects in police cars in front of the press, while the public watched the raids on TV. During the operations for the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials, military members were brought to court through intense and unsettling police raids, often turning into displays of police power over military officers (Jenkins Reference Jenkins2009; Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2022). In the public presentation of the trials, pro-government journalists and media outlets assumed a leading role. It is important to note that this occurred at a time when the government was increasing its control over the news media, with allied businessmen taking over mainstream outlets, and secularist, leftist, and pro-Kurdish journalists being incriminated for alleged membership in terrorist organizations as part of ongoing political trials (Yesil Reference Yesil2016; Över Reference Över2021). In this environment of rising pressure on counter news narratives, authorities involved in the investigations and prosecutions leaked sensitive evidence to pro-government media to have the suspects convicted in the court of public opinion (Polat Reference Polat2016).

Pro-government journalists regularly supported the irregularities in the courtroom through their own false claims. The newspaper that broke the Balyoz story, Taraf, for example, repeatedly wrote that the coup plot documents carried the signatures of the defendants and failed to retract the claims when proved false (Rodrik Reference Rodrik2011). The Gülenists’ media flagship, Zaman, similarly reported at various times that the Balyoz CDs carried authenticated fingerprints, that civilian staff had admitted preparing the coup documents, that military prosecutors had certified the coup plans as genuine—all of which were later proved to be false (Rodrik Reference Rodrik2011; BBC 2015; Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2022). When wiretaps of suspects were made public with the publication of indictments, the details of suspects’ private lives, such as their wives’ travels or their random comments in private conversations ridiculed on TV by pro-government journalists to publicly humiliate them.

Leading figures of the AKP participated in this process of abasement by presenting the suspects as evil enemies of the nation. They labeled the defendants of Ergenekon and Balyoz trials as “leeches that sucked the blood of the nation” (NTV 2009) and the defendants of the KCK trial as those “dynamiting the unity and solidarity” of the nation (Kırmızıtaş et al. Reference Kırmızıtaş, Leylak and Pınar2011). In one striking example from 2008, the deputy prime minister of the time, Bülent Arınç, described the legal efforts to prosecute military officers as “the country’s cleansing of its bowels” (Sözcü 2016). A year later, he likened the conflict between the AKP and the military to the confrontation between Abraham and Nimrod, which in the Islamic tradition is held to be a confrontation between good and evil. He then asked if “those troublemakers with insatiable appetites [would] be the rulers in Turkey again? … Should Turkey go back to its dark days? Or should the AK Party that rises like the sun on that darkness—thank God—proceed on its way without falling from power?” (NTV 2009). Suspects were thus demonized, criminalized, and stripped of the public respect that they previously enjoyed.

Aside from stigmatizing the defendants, the AKP and pro-AKP media also presented the courts’ rulings as actions that democratized Turkey—often using democratization interchangeably with undermining military tutelage in Turkey. Ergenekon and Balyoz trials were framed as an opportunity to bring Turkey’s deep state on trial and clip the wings of an illegal organization that engaged in numerous assassinations, disappearances, provocations, and disinformation campaigns in the past decades. In 2008, Prime Minister Erdoğan called himself the prosecutor of the Ergenekon trial, claiming to act on behalf of the nation as the trial’s prosecutor (T24 2016). In 2009, this time likening the Ergenekon trial to the Mani Pulite (clean hands) judicial investigation into political corruption undertaken in Italy in the 1990s, he made it clear that he regarded the defendants as guilty and the trial process as a means of democratizing Turkey (Akın Reference Akın2012).

In this environment, a significant segment of the population supported the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials, believing that perpetrators of previous violence were finally being held accountable. For many, securing judgments took precedence over addressing irregularities in the proceedings. As late as November 2010, the Commission of the European Union stated in its progress report that the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials “remain an opportunity for Turkey to strengthen confidence in the proper functioning of its democratic institutions and the rule of law” (European Commission 2010).

At the same time, however, opposition began to form in defense of the suspects. This growing opposition—though far from being a united front— comprised the secularist main opposition party CHP; the pro-Kurdish party BDP; the secularist, leftist, and pro-Kurdish defendants of the trials; and the personal networks of the defendants. Despite being disjointed and uncoordinated, elements of this opposition worked to expose the irregularities in the judgments of the Specially Authorized Courts and challenge the legitimacy of their decisions. Similar to their predecessors in the 1970s and 1990s, they called for the abolition of the Specially Authorized Courts, emphasizing the continuity between these courts and courts martial. They argued that abolishing the Specially Authorized Courts was a necessary step for Turkey’s democratic development.

In July 2011, the main opposition party, the CHP, proposed a bill to abolish Specially Authorized Courts. The party grounded the bill in these courts’ violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and their being a continuation of State Security Courts (Milliyet 2011). Representatives of both the CHP and the pro-Kurdish opposition party BDP further underlined that these courts were not fit with democratic practice. The leader of the CHP claimed: “There are no specially authorized courts in democracies. These are courts of operation, courts martial” (Milliyet 2012). Similarly, labeling the KCK trial as a means of silencing pro-Kurdish opposition, the leader of the BDP, Selahattin Demirtaş, pointed to the abolishment of these courts as a necessity for the proper practice of democracy (Cumhuriyet 2012).

Journalist Ahmet Şık, who was detained in the Ergenekon trial and became a symbol of the mobilization against the political nature of the trials, similarly expressed that Specially Authorized Courts “made [the opposition] look at martial courts with mercy and gratitude” (Şık Reference Şık2012). Emphasizing the arbitrariness at work in the trials heard in the Specially Authorized Courts, he described his own experience as a defendant as one of being ambushed. Şık had been part of the civil disobedience initiative in the 1990s aimed at revealing the arbitrariness of State Security Courts’ judgments, when the famous novelist Yaşar Kemal was put on trial at a State Security Court. Sixteen years later, he found himself on trial at Specially Authorized Courts, while a group of 125 journalists, activists, and academics worked on the manuscript of Şık’s unpublished book, contesting the courts’ acceptance of it as evidence of membership in a terror organization. The activists published the manuscript as co-authors to stand in solidarity with Şık, aiming to expose the arbitrariness in Specially Authorized Courts’ judgments. In a 2014 interview, Şık openly highlighted the continuities in the repressive use of the two court systems alongside the discontinuities in actors overseeing trials as he drew comparisons between his case and Yaşar Kemal’s:

In 2012, amid the Ergenekon, Balyoz, and KCK trials, and the growing opposition to the judgments of the Specially Authorized Courts, the governing AKP took the decision to close these courts as part of a judicial reform package (Law No. 6352). Similar to the abolishment of State Security Courts, the ruling party framed the closure as a way of democratizing the country by dismantling institutions that carried the authoritarian rule of the military into civilian times. In response to the opposition’s claims that the AKP was using the coercive tools that it claimed to be dismantling, the party capitalized on the societal demand to punish the perpetrators of previous state violence. It justified its continued use of Specially Authorized Courts as a necessary measure in the effort to democratize Turkey by dismantling the remnants of military rule. The AKP claimed that it would eliminate these courts once they fulfilled their task of democratization. For example, AKP MP, Mustafa Elitaş, noted that the trials conducted in these courts represented a step forward for democratization and that once they were completed, all elements hindering democratization and democracy in Turkey would be eliminated, including the courts themselves, which were a product of military rule (Bianet 2013).

In 2013, the Office of the Prime Ministry published a booklet titled “Silent Revolution,” with a foreword by the then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, to present the major policy actions taken by the AKP. The booklet framed the AKP government’s policies between 2002 and 2012 as part of a “revolution” that transformed Turkey into a more “democratic, free, prosperous, peaceful and secure” country by removing the influence of military tutelage. In this context, it addressed the abolition of both the State Security Courts and the Specially Authorized Courts as a response to “the rightful criticisms” directed at these special courts since their inception in 1973.

The booklet claimed that the abolishment of these courts was a crucial step in the broader transformation of “the security paradigm” in Turkey, which, “in opposition to the global developments since 9/11 that narrowed liberties,” democratized and expanded human rights. It further positioned the abolishments as a means to shift the perception of the “nation” as a “threat” and to build trust between the state and the nation. The booklet argued that the abolishments also contributed to the transition from an authoritarian understanding of the state to a democratic one, portraying the reforms as part of an abandonment of exceptional measures and a “normalization in the judiciary” (TC Başbakanlık Reference TC2013).

This discourse, when considered against the backdrop of the courts’ use in repressing the AKP’s secularist, leftist, and pro-Kurdish political opponents, reveals that the party turned to these courts not only because of their greater capacity to pacify the opposition, but also because of the opportunity that they provided in obscuring repression. Morlino (Reference Morlino2024) argues that legacies of authoritarianism persist not only in formal institutions but also in people’s collective memories. In this case, the public’s association of Specialized Courts with military rule in Turkey provided the AKP with an opportunity for discursive maneuvering. Claiming to be a democratizing political agent that combats authoritarian actors and institutions in Turkey, the AKP framed the courts and the arbitrariness defining their decisions as necessary evils in this fight. In doing so, amid rising repression of its political opponents, it obfuscated criticisms regarding autocratization.

The reform package (Law No. 6352) that abolished Specially Authorized Courts in 2012 founded Regional High Criminal Courts in their place. It thus confirmed the continued existence of two crystallized criminal justice systems in Turkey, with the Criminal Procedure Code continuing to represent the regular procedure of criminal judgment, and the Anti-Terror Law the exceptional criminal justice system (Özhabeş Reference Özhabeş2013; Kars Kaynar Reference Kars Kaynar2014). In fact, when the Turkish Constitutional Court ruled that Balyoz defendants’ rights to a fair trial were violated, and the defendants in the Balyoz and Ergenekon trials were acquitted, they were re-tried in these courts, with some defendants facing jail terms while others were fully cleared of charges. The KCK trials similarly continued to be seen in High Criminal Courts (BBC 2015; ANF 2024; Esen 2025).

Since the abolishment of Specially Authorized Courts, the Turkish judiciary has also encountered major political crises, most notably the dissolution of the alliance between the AKP and the Gülenists after the December 2013 corruption probe and the July 2016 Coup attempt (Kaygusuz Reference Kaygusuz2018; Onbaşı Reference Onbaşı2020). These developments led to the removal and reappointment of thousands of judges, as well as the trial and sentencing of judges who had overseen the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials, in newly emerging terror cases against the Gülenists, once an ally of the AKP (Kaygusuz and Aydın Reference Kaygusuz and Aydın2020; Soyaltin-Colella Reference Soyaltin-Colella2022; NTV 2024; Esen Reference Esen2025). Considered alongside the most recent terror trials targeting Gezi protesters and opposition political party leaders, they attest that the exceptional criminal justice system in Turkey continues to assert its coercive use. The legitimating uses of Specially Authorized Courts, however, concluded when the AKP removed its opponents in the military from their posts in the early stages of de-democratization.