2025/07/21 by Nobuyoshi Fujinami · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Judicial and Constitutional Studies #Turkey's Politics and Society
paper · doi:10.1163/9789004734661_009
openalex publication_date 2025/07/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
This chapter argues that the idea of continuity is crucial to understanding the Young Turks’ conception of constitutionalism through an examination of their publications on constitutional and administrative law. Ahmet Şuayıp, Babanzade İsmail Hakkı, and Celalettin Arif – three jurists from different backgrounds and political orientations – jointly rejected radicalism endorsing gradual reforms instead. Drawing on a collective memory of constitutionalism and a tradition of legal scholarship, they advocated for a constitutional turn in the caliphate based on the sovereignty of the nation. The Young Turk jurisprudence sheds light on the hitherto neglected intellectual aspects of Ottoman constitutionalism, in particular its modern conservatism with regard to law and the state.