ABSTRACT
The pandemic in the first year accentuated the on-going process of executive aggrandisement in Turkey under its new presidential system that came into full effect in 2018. Turkey’s wide-ranging response to the COVID-19 pandemic was based on centralised, top-down executive measures without a clear legal basis; differentiated in a potentially discriminatory way across age and risk groups as well as types of business and gatherings; and enforced with little or no legislative and judicial oversight. Another notable feature of the Turkish pandemic response was the legal harassment and criminalisation of those who criticised the measures taken and selective enforcement of restrictions. This chapter reviews these four key features of the first year of the pandemic in Turkey.
