Exercise 2: What Accountability Actually Disappeared With the Prime Minister's Office — Possible Solution ================================================================================================================== This exercise asks, using the fused-vs-separated executive distinction from Political Theory Fundamentals Chapter 9, what specifically changed about the relationship between Turkey's executive and its legislature once the office of Prime Minister was abolished in 2017 - not just that the office disappeared, but what kind of accountability went with it. THE FUSED-EXECUTIVE MODEL, BEFORE 2017 Under the 1982 constitution's original design, the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers were drawn from, and directly answerable to, the Turkish Grand National Assembly. This is the real, defining feature of a fused parliamentary executive: the government in office only continues to govern for as long as it retains the confidence of the legislature. If the TGNA had genuinely withdrawn its support, the Prime Minister's government could, in principle, fall - a real, ongoing form of day-to-day legislative leverage over who actually runs the country. THE SEPARATED-EXECUTIVE MODEL, AFTER 2017 Once the Prime Minister's office was abolished, the President became sole head of both state and government - appointing Vice President(s) and ministers directly, with no parliamentary confidence vote required at any point. This is the real, defining feature of a separated presidential executive: the President is elected independently of the legislature, serves a fixed five-year term, and cannot be removed from office simply because the TGNA no longer supports the government's own policies. WHAT ACCOUNTABILITY ACTUALLY DISAPPEARED The accountability that disappeared is specifically the ongoing, confidence-based check - the real, structural fact that under the old system, the actual day-to-day government could be brought down between elections if it lost the legislature's support. Under the post-2017 system, the President's own removal (short of impeachment mechanisms, which are a separate and much narrower process) depends entirely on the next scheduled election, not on any ongoing legislative confidence requirement. The TGNA still passes laws and can refuse to pass a president's proposed legislation, but it can no longer force a change of government simply by withdrawing support from it. ANSWER: What disappeared with the Prime Minister's office was the ongoing, confidence-based accountability that defines a fused parliamentary executive - the real possibility that the government in power could fall between scheduled elections if the legislature withdrew its support. What replaced it is the separated-executive model's own form of accountability instead: a President who is independently elected, serves a fixed term regardless of the legislature's day-to-day confidence, and answers to voters only at the next scheduled election rather than to parliament on an ongoing basis. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ It goes beyond noting that an office was abolished and instead names the specific structural mechanism (confidence-based removability between elections) that the office's existence had provided, and explains precisely what replaced that mechanism rather than simply restating that the system "became presidential."