TOBB - Constitution Platform Project
In light of Turkey’s need to prepare a new constitution through democratic debate, this project was designed to provide a platform for the expression of societal expectations regarding the basic principles upon which a new constitution should be based. The activities within the scope of the project were aimed at forming a comprehensive source of practical and theoretical knowledge regarding constitution making in order to promote democracy, the rule of law and human rights.
The project was executed by TEPAV as part of its role as a think tank. TEPAV was responsible for providing technical assistance to TOBB through managing and implementing the project and fulling its role in line with its vision to design a participative and deliberative constitution making process in two ways.
First, the Project had the objective of designing a transparent and participative constitution making process. Accordingly, TEPAV aimed at compiling and documenting the views of the civil society and the citizenry about the future constitutional text as the expression of a consensual future by enabling their broadest possible participation in the process. The project itself encouraged the exercise of the basic human right to freedom of expression by inviting the participants to take part in interactive sessions at the Citizen Assemblies where they expressed their opinions and voted on the options about the new constitution under ten headings: freedom of expression and political association, coexistence, economic and social rights, the principle of social state and positive discrimination, quality of public services, religion-state relations, government system, independence of the judiciary, elections and political parties, local administrations, and nature and cultural assets.
Two targeted Citizen Assemblies were organized in order to capture the constitutional demands coming from two specific groups, women and young persons, whose overall participation to the constitutional process was observed and measured to be very low. The Women’s Citizen Assembly was especially designed to address the challenging socio-economic status of women in Turkey and how this could be alleviated by constitutional means. The Youth Citizen Assembly was designed to address the youth perspective with regards to the issue of redesigning basic rights in the new constitution specially focusing on higher education system.
Another particular focus of the Citizen Assemblies was regarding the ways to improve cultural minorities’ representation. The set of questions concerning citizenship and local administrations was meant to address this vital issue. On the whole, the main agenda of Constitution Platform Citizen Assemblies was to provide a venue of civic education for citizens and inform them of their internationally recognized basic rights.
Secondly, outside the scope of its role in the Constitution Platform, TEPAV provided in-depth theoretical studies and brought in international experience in order to prepare a rich source of information that could feed into the contemporary constitution making debate.
The first phase of the project (2007-2010): Search conference, national workshop, Ankara Workshop, Constitution Experts Seminar Series.
The second phase of the project (2011-2012): Facilitating the formation of the Constitution Platform Initiative which brought together 13 professional organisations and trade union confederations; organizing and managing, in direct cooperation with the Constitution Platform Initiative, “Turkey Speaks” Citizen Assemblies in 12 provinces of Turkey (Ankara, Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, İzmir, Antalya, Samsun, Bursa, Trabzon, Erzurum, Gaziantep, İstanbul); preparing, publishing and distributing Constitution Working Papers; organizing an international conference on the “Constitutional Reform in Times of Democratic Transition”.
Project website:
http://www.anayasaplatformu.net/
- Constitution Studies
