In 1924, Turkey abolished the Ottoman Caliphate through a statute numbered 431, or Law No. 431. The construction of the statute was somewhat ambiguous in that it stated that the Caliphate was abolished because that institution was inherent to the State and the Republic, thus almost justifying its abolishment as a separate institution on the grounds that to keep it would be superfluous. Today, a very marginal political faction in Turkey is using this construction to argue that, despite the repeated references to secularism in the Turkish Constitution, it would be perfectly constitutional to reintroduce the caliphate. The legal consensus, however, is that the caliphate is abolished and cannot be reintroduced.
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