Authoritarian Legacies in Law and Democratic Backsliding: The Case of Turkey’s Specially Authorized Courts

Abstract This article examines the connections between existing democratic deficits in law and contemporary democratic backsliding processes. To undermine the democratic process, present-day autocrats employ various legal strategies, including enacting new legal institutions (such as constitutional amendments or key statutory reforms) or manipulating existing ones. Focusing on a legal legacy of military rule in Turkey, the Specially Authorized Courts, this study argues that in consolidating power, autocrats also capitalize on pre-existing authoritarian zones within legal systems. In Turkey’s case, the AKP government has leveraged the exceptional procedures of Specially Authorized Courts to silence adversaries while simultaneously framing its reforms to the structure of these courts and the trials held at these courts as efforts to democratize the country and eradicate authoritarian legacies. As a result, the AKP masked its repressive actions behind a narrative of democratization in the early stages of Turkey’s democratic regression. Overall, the article presents both the coercive and legitimating uses of pre-existing “zones of authoritarianism” in law in contemporary processes of democratic backsliding. In doing this, it highlights how aspiring autocrats exploit the histories embedded in legal institutions to obscure their repressive actions.