Constitution of Turkey
constitution

The Constitution of Turkey, formally known as the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Anayasası), and informally as the Constitution of 1982 (Turkish: 1982 Anayasası), is Turkey's fundamental law. It establishes the organization of the government, and sets out the principles and rules of the state's conduct along with its responsibilities in regard to its citizens. The constitution also establishes the rights and responsibilities of the latter while setting the guidelines for the delegation and exercise that sovereignty belongs entirely and without doubt to the people.
The constitution was ratified on 7 November 1982. It replaced the earlier Constitution of 1961. The constitution was amended 21 times, three of them through a referendum: 2007, 2010, 2017, one of them partly through referendum: 1987. As of April 2017, 117 of the 177 articles of the Constitution of 1982 were amended overall.
History
The first constitution of the Ottoman Empire was adopted in 1876 and revised in 1908.
Since its founding, the modern Turkish state has been governed under four documents:
The Constitution of 1921,
The Constitution of 1924,
The Constitution of 1961, and,
The current Constitution of 1982.
The current constitution was ratified by popular referendum during the military junta of 1980-1983.
“Constitution of Turkey” enters the record as constitution. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Constitution, Turkey and constitution can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Constitution of Turkey” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Constitution, Turkey and constitution provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q646519. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1961, 2007 and 2010.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Constitution of Turkey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.