The South Atlantic Quarterly 118:1, January 2019 doi 10.1215/00382876-7281684 © 2019 Duke University Press Saygun Gökarıksel and Z. Umut Türem The Banality of Exception? Law and Politics in “Post-Coup” Turkey L aw has been at the very core of the ongoing social and political economic processes, variously described as “authoritarianism,” “right-wing pop- ulism,” and “de-democratization.” These pro- cesses, commonly associated with the rise of unchecked executive power and curtailment of civic and political freedoms and the debates around them, are not limited to any single country or region, but seem to be part of a global trend that operates unevenly and differentially across the world. Turkey is no exception to this trend, as exemplified in an academic conference held at Northwestern University, “Law and Politics in Turkey: Reform, Authority and Emergency” (Octo- ber 26–28, 2017). Bringing together more than twenty papers and several keynote speeches, the conference revealed not only the centrality of law, but also the broad outlines of academic thinking about questions of legality, power, and politics in contemporary Turkey. In this essay, we want to elaborate on the relationship of “authoritarian- ism” and legality, taking this conference as our point of departure. Our focus is mainly on Tur- key, but we believe the problems surrounding this country would also trigger signifcant questions and initiate a critical dialogue about the intricate Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-pdf/118/1/175/559740/1180175.pdf by University of California Santa Barbara user on 15 January 2019