Besides its other aspects, the judiciary system of the states consists of several rules that limit political authority in favor of citizens in democratic regimes. The constitutional jurisdiction, as a part of the judiciary organ of the state, has also significant roles considering the legitimacy of the state and the political authority where the main principles of the state of law are adopted. To protect fundamental rights and liberties, to provide fair political power competition, and to limit political power authority excess can be given as other functions of the constitutional courts in democratic regimes. However, constitutional courts are often criticized on the grounds that they do not behave in the ways that democracy required. The content of critics generally consists of issues such as the interpretation of constitutions in a way that does not comply with the requirements of the rule of law under the influence of politics, or the interprets’ taking political decisions by replacing the field of politics and the politicization of the constitutional judiciary. On the other hand, one of the most significant discussions in law and political sciences is what the limits of the constitutional jurisdiction’s authority considering political issues are. Therefore, the first question in this study asks how the relationship between constitutional jurisdiction and politics should be. Identifying the incompatibilities between this ideal order and the implemented one will also guide the debates on the democratic legitimacy of both the constitutional jurisdiction and political regime. Additionally, it can be stated that constitutional courts stand out as the basic elements of cluster politics and law. Since its establishment, The Turkish Constitutional Court has been one of the judicial actors influencing, supervising, and regulating Turkish political life. The Turkish Constitutional Court has also become an institution that has been continuously debated and gradually questioned through its decisions since its foundation in terms of democratic legitimacy and its realm of authority's limits. Most of all, the court’s decisions are criticized on the grounds that it has crossed the line of its constitution-based authority and its actions have violated the principle of the separation of power. For this reason, the main aim of this study is to shine a different light on these debates through an examination of the political outputs of the Turkish Constitutional Court at first. By doing this, it has analyzed constitutional jurisdiction-politics relation through Turkey has focused on the outputs, especially its impacts on political life, of the Turkish Constitutional Court. The scope of the study was limited to the approximately forty-year period from the year 1961 when the Constitutional Court was established to the last years of the 1990s. It begins with a general overview of the explanations on the ideal content of constitutional jurisdiction and political mutual relations. Then, the relationship between constitutional jurisdiction and politics is tried to be explained by considering the theoretical debates on the origins of constitutional jurisdiction and the historical process of the development of constitutional courts. Afterward, the establishment, structural aspects, and functions of the Turkish Constitutional Court are discussed with regard to political cases of Turkish political life. Finally, political party closure cases in which the Constitutional Court has determined the constitutional jurisdiction-politics relations to a great extent are discussed through the study. The main argument of this study claims that the Constitutional Court, following its foundation, has operated as an institution restraining its “other” from the political sphere for a long time although constitutional jurisdiction theory supports the idea that limiting the political power in favor of citizens. In addition, the Court has taken protecting the regime’s security as a duty for quite a while. The study mainly promotes the claim that official ideology as its founder and safety concerns of the Turkish bureaucratic elite have shaped the structure of the Court and its impacts on political life. This relationship of the Court with the political sphere is explained with reference to the rationale for its emergence, its structural features, and its political outputs in Turkish political life. It also aims to contribute to relevant literature by addressing the theoretical explanations which discuss the mentality of establishment and functioning of the constitutional courts. The social contract and the hegemonic preservation theories are two different explanations in this study as well. When the relationship of the Turkish Constitutional Court with the political sphere is examined by considering the theoretical roots of the constitutional judiciary, it falls away from the arguments of the social contract theory because of its foundation that was done under the leadership of bureaucratic elitist groups that is far from the representing various segments of the society after a military coup. After all, several questions remain unanswered at present. Further studies should be done to investigate the Turkish Constitutional Court’s actions beyond the twentieth century to reach a better understanding of the relationship between constitutional jurisdiction and politics in Turkey.

Keywords: Political Science, Constitutional Jurisdiction, Politics, the Turkish Constitutional Court, Turkish Political Life