Consortium for Social Research on Turkey (CSRT) in collaboration with Center for Policy and Research on Turkey (Research Turkey) and the Student Collective of Turkey at the New School invites paper submissions for a full-day conference on constitutional politics in Turkey to be held at the New School for Social Research, New York, on March 4, 2016.
About the Conference:
Once again, calls for a new constitution in Turkey has taken a center stage following unexpected victory of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP) in the November 2015 elections. Although a new constitution has been on the agenda since the 1982 Constitution was drafted and ratified under the guidance of a military regime, current quest for a new constitution is obscured over a possible switch to a presidential system. On the one hand, a new constitution is seen as an inevitable step for the peace process and democratization. On the other hand, the AKP and President Erdoğan aim to establish a presidential system to consolidate their power. As the governing party has already stated their plans for a new constitution, 2016 will be a critical year for constitutional politics in Turkey. The conference aims to bring together scholars for a discussion on constitutional politics in Turkey from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Possible topics might include:
- Politics of new Constitution: Democratic Beginning or Authoritarian Consolidation?
- Prospects of a regime change and debates on presidentialism
- Constitution-making and Kurdish Question
- Constitution-making/amending in Turkey: Past Experiences, Future Prospects
- Constitutionalism in Turkey
- Constitutional Court in Turkey
Confirmed participants include Andrew Arato (The New School), Seyla Benhabib (Yale), Fuat Keyman (Istanbul Policy Center / Sabanci), Silvia von Steinsdorff (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).
Eligibility: submissions are invited from scholars of all ranks, including doctoral students.
Publication: Selected papers will be considered for publication in a special issue of Research and Policy on Turkey.
Submission Instructions: Interested scholars should email abstracts (no more than 300 words) by February 5, 2016 to the following address:csrt.ny@gmail.com
Notifications: Successful applicants will be notified by February 12, 2016
Costs: All participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.
About CSRT
Consortium for Social Research on Turkey is an academic network of historical, comparative and theoretical scholarship focusing on politics and society in Turkey. CSRT aims to establish an academic platform to promote critical thinking and multidisciplinary research, scholarship and publications on Turkey and on contentious political, social, economic, and cultural questions related to the case; to deepen and enhance international collaboration among scholars and students across the disciplines with a shared commitment to research and teaching about Turkey; and to develop international collaborative research projects bringing a diversity of scholars together on specific topics to offer a focused platform for sharing and expanding this collective research.
About Centre for Policy and Research on Turkey
Research Turkey is an independent, non-partisan, non-governmental organisation devoted to policy analysis and research focusing primarily on contemporary Turkey. It aims at sharing a wide range of publication types including reviews, interventions, political, economic and social analyses, working papers, interviews and commentaries, by following interdisciplinary trends in the global world and examining Turkey and the global world from different points of view. Against the tendency to homogenise perspectives in the media and to reduce complex political and social reality to simplistic analysis, it welcomes theoretical and political pluralism to reach a more comprehensive, multi-sided understanding of contemporary Turkey in its global context. www.researchturkey.org
About the Student Collective of Turkey
SCT is founded by a group of New School students in the Spring 2014 as a democratic, non-profit organization with the aim to provide an environment of open discussion and dialogue. The purpose of the Collective is to engage in academic, cultural, political and social activities and promote mutual support among members of the New School community who share an active interest in Turkey.