Appli̇cati̇on of the law on meeti̇ng and demonstrati̇on i̇n Turkey

Today, citizens show their reactions on economic, military, social and especially political events in their countries with meetings and demonstrations. Especially in recent years, there have been many meetings and demonstrations conducted for various reasons and purposes in the whole world with the participation of great masses. Since individuals think that they can make themselves heard better by the political administration when they act together in a collective manner, it attracts attention that meeting and demonstration rights are used more in democratic countries. We observe that the right of meeting and demonstration in our country is used more efficiently. Although the issue of preventing the meeting and demonstration rights for the celebration of "1st of May Workers' Day" is brought to agenda every year before and after the actual day, the meeting and demonstration rights have become an interesting topic debated over in the public opinion especially after the "Gezi Park Events" in 2013. Since the meeting and demonstration right is among the classical (personal-political) rights, its history dates back. In our country, we can observe similar rights being regulated with various legal arrangements in the Ottoman History. In the Republic of Turkey, on the other hand, the legal arrangements of meeting and demonstration rights have had a course with ups and downs throughout history. The stages of the meeting and demonstration rights in the Republic of Turkey have been examined briefly in our study. We explained the changes in the legal system by giving examples from especially the 1961 Constitution and 1982 Constitution by comparing them. We tried to explain the problems observed in the application of the Meeting and Demonstration Rights Law 2911, and the interventions of the administration and the security forces in the light of legal aspects. Since the approach to some rights and freedoms in our country is not in the way it should be in developed countries, the legal arrangements and actual applications of the meeting and demonstration rights have shown variations from period to period. For this reason, up-to-date events that have been reflected in press have been frequently made use of in our thesis. Keywords: Meeting, Demonstration, Freedom of Expression, Using Force