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.

The position of the president of the Czech Republic after the introduction of direct presidential elections

In 2011, direct presidential elections were introduced in the Czech Republic. The Author examines how this changed the position of the President of the Republic. The prevailing opinion among constitutionalists is that direct elections are an element of creating a strong position of the president in a democratic system, and the president elected in this way should have broad powers and play an important role in the political system of the country. Analyzing the provisions of the constitution and the political activity of the presidents of the Czech Republic, the Author concludes that, contrary to this thesis, the Czech legislator decided to balance the strong legitimacy of direct elections with a limited catalog of competences. This happened because the change in the way the president was elected was a political project, and not the result of a substantive debate on the constitutional order.