JURISTS OF WAR AND PEACE: SIDDIK SAMİ ONAR (1898–1972) AND ALİ FUAD BAŞGİL (1893–1967) ON LAW AND PREROGATIVE IN TURKEY

• Published in: International Journal of Middle East Studies
• Main Author: Parslow, Joakim
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2018
• Subjects: sami
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020743817000939; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0020743817000939

Abstract The jurists who entered Turkish academia during the 1930s built the foundations of their discipline under a regime that became increasingly authoritarian as war drew closer. Like their peers in Italy and France, therefore, they had to produce coherent doctrines but also support the frequent use of exceptional emergency powers. How did they solve this contradiction? More importantly, what consequences did their solutions have for the use of emergency powers after the war? This article adopts a Deleuzian reading of two strategies with which Turkish jurists met that challenge, approaching their work not simply as theories about law but also as models for the role law should play in the articulation of public authority. Focusing on Ali Fuad Başgil and Sıddık Sami Onar, law professors at Istanbul University, I argue that although both professors supported the regime, only a situational doctrine of the kind Onar produced was capable of ensuring that jurists would have a place in the exercise of “exceptional” state powers after the 1950 transition to democracy.