Siyasal Parti Yasaklarının Ortaya Çıkışı: Militan Demokrasinin Dünü, Bugünü ve Yarını Üzerine Değerlendirmeler
Authors: Anayurt Ömer 
Published: January 2024

Political parties, which are communities organized to obtain political power and implement a certain program, are the cornerstones of democracy. With their emergence, democracy has begun to be mentioned together with political parties. Today, it is even indicated in the constitutions that democracy has indispensable institutions. Depending on this relationship and development, it is now described as a "state of parties". Due to this special position in democracies, political parties have benefited from wide freedoms for a long time. There were no preventive or suppressive restrictions or prohibitions regarding the programs and projects to be implemented neither in coming to power nor after coming to power. The protection of democracy against political parties has been seen as a paradox for many years, and since democracy is based on the will of the people; Therefore, a paradigm of thought has become dominant that the people can even eliminate democracy if they wish and replace it with a model that suits their wishes. In this context, imposing a prohibition on political parties, which are concrete expression tools of the people's will, has been seen as a "democratic dilemma". However, the rapid rise of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (NSDAP) led by Hitler, gaining the parliamentary majority through an alliance in 1933, and then establishing the national socialist dictatorship regime using the opportunities provided by the constitution, gave rise to a new debate in the theory of democracy in the context of political parties. Karl Loewenstein, who was of German origin and escaped from the Nazi Regime and settled in the USA, clarify the thesis that Weimar democracy should be redefined and create its self-defence against anti-democratic initiatives, ideas and organizations, and explained this view with the concept of "militant democracy". Thus, the view that political parties that aim to eliminate democracy by using the opportunities and tools of democracy should be prohibited has become increasingly accepted in Europe. The Weimar-based understanding of militant democracy does not comply with the prohibitions on modern political parties. Because political parties based on totalitarian ideology have almost disappeared and there is almost no possibility of them coming to power democratically. Therefore, today, rather than alternative political parties to democracy, there are political parties that remain within democracy, but erode and devalue democratic values, and many elements are incompatible with democracy. For this reason, protecting democracy has moved to a different context. In this study, discussions about the past, present and future of political party bans will be touched upon, and examples from various countries will be given on how militant democracy is understood in European countries. What kind of sanctions are applied to political parties in modern democracies; The answer to the question of what procedures and conditions are taken into account in these sanctions will be sought.