Summary On 12 December 2016, 316 deputies of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey submitted a constitutional amendment proposal which is mainly related to changing the parliamentary features of the system of government. The constitutional amendment bill was accepted by the Committee on Constitution of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey with minor changes. Hereafter, the bill was discussed and voted on in the Grand National Assembly. The Grand National Assembly passed the constitution al amendment bill by 339 of 550 votes which is not enough for coming into force but holding a referendum by the President of the Republic2. The constitutional amendment law was promulgated by the President of the Republic on 11 February 2017, and the referendum was held on 16 April 2017. According to the official results declared by the Supreme Electoral Council, 51.41% of the valid votes are in favour, while 48.59% voted for no. Hence, the amendments were approved and are subject to coming into force. This article aims to point out the newly-introduced Turkish system of government by comparing the legislative and executive relations of the relevant constitutional systems which in this case are presidential U.S.A., semi-presidential France and super-presidential Russia. The other purpose of the article is to remark the formation of the judiciary branch of the American, English, German and French constitutional systems for the comparison of the regarding constitutional amendment law provisions. In this respect, the article comprises of a comparative legal/constitutional research in terms of legislative-executive-judiciary relations.

Functioning of the parliamentary opposition during the period of the Constitution of 1921 and 1997 – selected issues

This article is a jubilee text, intended to celebrate the centenary of the adoption and entry into force of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1921. The author discusses the issues of the functioning of the parliamentary opposition in two historical periods of the 2nd and 3rd Republic of Poland, analyzing legal regulations and political mechanisms. Due to the limited volume framework of this study, this analysis has been limited to some issues only. Their selection was primarily determined by the similarities in the sphere of normative and political phenomena that can be noticed in both epochs. Hence, the article includes topics related to: the legal basis and the normative concept of the functioning of the parliamentary opposition, the impact of the parliamentary opposition on the appointment of positions in the internal organizational apparatus of the Sejm, relations between the parliamentary opposition and the Marshal of the Sejm, the levels of rivalry and cooperation between the parliamentary opposition and the ruling camp. The author’s argument leads to a bitter reflection that the existing parliamentary system has still not freed itself from the ballast of the past and is far from a system adhering to the developed standards of protection of the rights of the opposition that exist in modern countries.