Noah Feldman, Columnist

Turkey's Judicial Purge Threatens the Rule of Law

Erdogan's removal of 2,745 judges and prosecutors signals the nation's legal system is now a partisan institution.

July 18, 2016 at 3:49 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Death of a judiciary.
Photo: -/AFP/Getty Images

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In the wake of the coup attempt, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan can hardly be blamed for purging the military. But firing 2,745 judges without any investigation or demonstrated connection to the coup is another matter. The action threatens the rule of law in Turkey going forward. And the way it was done signals some of the methods Erdogan can be expected to use in the weeks and months ahead.

Turkey is a constitutional democracy. If it sounds strange to you that the head of state could just fire judicial officials, your legal instincts are correct. Erdogan lacks that constitutional power -- and technically, he didn’t exercise it.