{"id":286278,"date":"2026-05-29T15:51:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T15:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/?p=286278"},"modified":"2026-05-29T15:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T15:52:10","slug":"who-struck-a-blow-to-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/who-struck-a-blow-to-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Who struck a blow to democracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

HALKWEB GUEST AUTHOR\/Sermet ERDEM<\/strong> One of the most intensely debated issues in Turkey recently has been the allegations regarding the Republican People's Party congress and the judicialization of these allegations. However, it is not enough to evaluate this debate only within the usual tensions of contemporary politics. Because the issue goes much deeper than an intra-party power struggle; it touches upon the question of the conditions under which democratic representation can be considered legitimate and the limits to which the legal order protects the free political will.<\/p>\n

As a matter of fact, the process known as the \u201cCHP congress trial\u201d was brought to the judiciary when allegations arising from the congress process itself became visible, rather than a political crisis narrative constructed entirely from the outside. The alleged contacts between delegates, attempts to influence voting preferences and the alleged interest relations in some of the allegations were publicized while the convention was in progress; the process was discussed not only among political actors but also among journalists and party insiders. Therefore, the issue is an organic crisis of representation that developed within its own dynamics rather than an externally constructed engineering.<\/p>\n

It is precisely at this point that the debate moves out of the political realm and takes on a legal character. Because democratic representation gains meaning not only with the establishment of the ballot box, but also with the formation of the will that emerges from the ballot box in a free, equal and free from external interference. Systematic interventions in the process of the formation of the will render not only the result but also the founding ground of legitimacy directly questionable.<\/p>\n

In this framework, the institution of \u201cnullity\u201d in Turkish civil law is not only a technical invalidity regime, but also a constitutive threshold for which wills the legal order will recognize.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Modern legal orders often present themselves as a technical organization of norms. However, law is not merely a set of rules; it is a constitutive regime of legitimacy that determines which will is considered legitimate, which acts are protected and which boundaries cannot be crossed. For this reason, legal orders consider some breaches of law as ordinary violations, while others are considered as a direct threat to their very existence. The institution of \u201cnullity\u201d in Turkish civil law is a product of this second area.<\/p>\n

In Turkish civil law, nullity refers to severe and irremediable disabilities that prevent a legal transaction from being recognized by the legal order as a valid transaction from the beginning. The basis of nullity lies in the relationship between the legal transaction not only in terms of the will of the parties, but also with the public order, public morality, personal rights and mandatory norms that the legal order aims to protect. Therefore, nullity, unlike a simple lack of form or a procedural defect that can be remedied later, is a severe type of invalidity that expresses the constitutive rejection of the legal order on the transaction.<\/p>\n

In Turkish law, the normative basis of nullity emerges primarily in the provisions of the Turkish Civil Code and the Turkish Code of Obligations. In particular, pursuant to Article 27 of the Turkish Code of Obligations, transactions contrary to the mandatory provisions of the law, morality, public order and personal rights are deemed null and void. This provision shows that nullity is not only a technical matter of private law; it is a result of the legal order's reflex to protect its own founding values. Likewise, the provisions of the Turkish Civil Code regarding the rule of honesty, the prohibition of abuse of right and the protection of personal rights reveal that the legal order protects legitimate and protectable wills, not only formal declarations of will.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this framework, nullity arises in the event that there are severe illegalities that cannot be accepted in terms of public order in the establishment stage, constituent elements or consequences of a legal transaction. The disability in question here is not in a secondary or external element of the transaction; it is a deterioration that occurs directly in the recognizable nature of the will of the transaction by the legal order. For this reason, a transaction that is invalid cannot become valid later on by the will of the parties, the passage of time or actual practices. This is because the legal order does not recognize such a transaction as a legitimate legal transaction from the beginning.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it is precisely at this point that the relationship between nullity and public order becomes visible. Public order is not only a narrow concept that refers to the administrative or political security of the state; it refers to the constitutive normative field that protects the basic legal, moral and constitutional structure of society. Although the legal order leaves some legal transactions to the free will of individuals, if certain limits are exceeded, it shows a reflex to protect not individual interests, but directly the social order and common legal structure. For this reason, transactions contrary to the public order are not only considered objectionable for the parties; they are also considered as threats to the existence conditions of the legal order.<\/p>\n

In Turkish law, the concept of illegality is not limited to formal violations of positive norms. Pursuant to the explicit provision of the Turkish Code of Obligations, breach of morality is also recognized as a ground for nullity. Thus, Turkish private law does not envisage an absolute break between law and morality; it considers moral violations that reach a certain intensity as violations of the legal order at the same time. Transactions that undermine human dignity, instrumentalize personality, create a relationship of exploitation or severely violate the social ethical order are considered not only morally problematic but also legally invalid. This approach also has a constitutional basis. The provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey on human dignity, the rule of law, the democratic state and the protection of fundamental rights constitute the upper normative framework guiding private law relations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This general legal framework is of direct importance for the internal functioning of political parties and the formation of their decision-making bodies. This is because political parties are not merely ordinary private law legal entities or ordinary civil society organizations in a modern democratic state of law. On the contrary, political parties are constitutional structures that directly participate in the formation of the constitutional order, ensure the functioning of the democratic representation mechanism and play a constitutive role in the formation of the public will. It is for this reason that the Constitution defines political parties as indispensable elements of democratic political life.<\/p>\n

Therefore, election processes for the general assembly, congress and decision-making bodies of political parties cannot be considered as mere technical organizational activities. It is a necessary consequence of constitutional legitimacy that these processes are conducted in accordance with the principles of democratic competition, electoral security, equality, transparency, honesty and free will. The legitimacy of democratic representation depends not only on the holding of formal elections, but also on the manifestation of the will of the electorate free from pressure, manipulation, organized manipulation and unlawful interference.<\/p>\n

In particular, attempts to manipulate the will of delegates or voters in an organized manner, to put them under pressure, to manipulate them through interest relations, or to determine the outcome of elections through unlawful methods cannot be seen solely as an internal party disciplinary problem. Such interventions constitute grave violations of the law that undermine the constitutive legitimacy of the democratic representation mechanism. This is because a democratic election is not merely a technical voting procedure; it is the embodiment of the principle of free political will protected by the legal order.<\/p>\n

In this context, it is not possible for the legal order to protect an electoral process shaped by organized interventions that eliminate the democratic electoral will. The illegality here does not consist of a secondary deficiency of the electoral process that can be remedied later, but is directly related to the formation of the will and the constitutive element of democratic legitimacy. Therefore, offices obtained through methods that eliminate democratic competition, disrupt electoral equality or cripple the will of the electorate in an organized manner cannot be considered legally protectable legitimate statuses.<\/p>\n

A contrary approach would result in the contradiction of the rule of law with its own founding principles. This is because the rule of law is a normative order that recognizes as legitimate not only the results but also the manner in which those results are achieved. If the rule of law recognizes as legitimate the political offices obtained as a result of processes that systematically cripple the democratic will, then the rule of law denies its own basis of legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Therefore, severe and organized will defects that occur in the formation processes of political party organs are public order problems that should be evaluated within the scope of the nullity regime of Turkish civil law. The protection by the legal order of a will formed by methods that eliminate democratic legitimacy is incompatible with both the mandatory provisions of the Turkish Civil Code and the Turkish Code of Obligations and the fundamental principles of the constitutional democratic order.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the issue is not only about irregularities in the internal workings of a political party. The real issue is the conditions under which democratic representation can be considered legitimate and at which point the rule of law will protect its own founding principles. For the democratic rule of law must protect not only the results of elections but also the conditions of the formation of the will that gave rise to those results.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the institution of nullity is not only a technical sanction of invalidity, but also a mechanism for the legal order to reconstitute and protect itself. Absolute nullity expresses the constitutive rejection of certain forms of actuality by the legal order. The law may recognize some infirmities as remediable afterwards; however, it cannot show the same tolerance in terms of severe unlawfulness that eliminates the formation of the democratic will.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Because sometimes law does not only establish order; it also draws boundaries. And in some cases, the only way for the legal order to protect itself is to exclude the legally unprotectable from the world of law.<\/p>\n

This is the first condition for purification.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HALKWEB KONUK YAZAR\/Sermet ERDEM T\u00fcrkiye\u2019de son d\u00f6nemde kamuoyunun en yo\u011fun bi\u00e7imde tart\u0131\u015ft\u0131\u011f\u0131 meselelerden biri, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi kurultay\u0131na ili\u015fkin iddialar ve bu iddialar\u0131n yarg\u0131sal s\u00fcrece ta\u015f\u0131nmas\u0131d\u0131r. Ancak bu tart\u0131\u015fmay\u0131 yaln\u0131zca g\u00fcncel siyasetin ola\u011fan gerilimleri i\u00e7inde de\u011ferlendirmek yeterli de\u011fildir. \u00c7\u00fcnk\u00fc mesele, bir parti i\u00e7i g\u00fc\u00e7 m\u00fccadelesinden \u00e7ok daha derinde, demokratik temsilin hangi ko\u015fullarda me\u015fru say\u0131laca\u011f\u0131 ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":286279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gundem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286278"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286281,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286278\/revisions\/286281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}