THE EVALUATION OF DEMOCRACY DISCOURSES IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL DOCUMENTS OF THE OTTOMAN STATE UNDER THE DEMOCRACY MODELS

Abstract

One of the most important criteria for the modernization and democratic values of a country is the measure of the value given to the law and the constitution in the country. The constitutional developments in the legal field, which can be regarded as the most important pillars of Ottoman modernization, are the most important and important issue in this regard. For the Ottoman Empire, we can think that the documents which are the first ones are very important in terms of modernization and democratization. As a matter of fact, these documents, which point a new government system in the Ottoman Empire, made important contributions to democracy and law. The aim of this study is to examine " Charter of Alliance", " Edict of Tanzimat" and " Edict of Reform" in the constitutional movements of the Ottoman Empire and to evaluate the contributions of these developments to democracy. Because of the fact that the state power and the powers of the state organs that use this power are limited in the basis of the constitutional movements, the contributions of these documents to the Ottoman State within the scope of constitutionalism are evaluated and the restrictions imposed on the state power are evaluated. In addition, it is tried to determine which of these documents are compatible with one of the ideal type democracy models or which ones. Thus, the contributions of these documents to the constitutionalism and democratization efforts of the Ottoman state are tried to be determined