This dissertation examines the role of the social struggles and alliances in shaping the Constitutional Court rulings that structure core political controversies in Turkey. By adopting Joel Migdal’s State-in-Society approach, the Court is conceived as an organization that exists in an environment of conflict. By following a process oriented approach, this study analyzes the ways in which the relation between the Court and other actors influence the Constitutional Court of Turkey’s motives, capacity and manner of activism mainly during the period under the 1961 Constitution. This study argues that the limits of the Court’s power and its role in structuring the core political controversies that define and divide society can be explained by looking at the alliances formed between the Court and other actors. Alliances extend the jurisdiction of the Court by opening new avenues for political intervention and creating a support network for the reasoning and the justification of its rulings. By comparing the Court’s activism under the 1961 Constitution and under the 1982 Constitution, it is demonstrated that neither the nature nor the influence of these alliances remains static. In fact, this dissertation points out that we need to make a conceptual differentiation between two forms of alliances; strategic alliances and judicial coalitions. Strategic alliances refer to implicit alliances between the Court and other actors formed around an issue, whereas judicial coalitions refer to alliances based on a common normative framework and a shared identity. Whereas the Court’s activism in the first period is best described in terms of a strategic alliance, its activism in the 1990’s and 2000’s is best described with the term judicial coalition. / 10000-01-01