Turkut, Emre2025-10-242025-10-242014978-605-5120-96-2#DEĞER!https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12899/4072Political Science Conference, POLITSCI '14 -- DEC 10-12, 2014 -- Istanbul Univ, Istanbul, TURKEYThe international law obligation to repay debt of a predecessor government has never been absolute and has been frequently limited and offered exceptions by many researchers and authors. Some of them may be regrouped under the concept of odious debt. Odious debts are debts that should not be binding for the citizens of a country, as they were contracted by an illegitimate government without their consent and were spent against the interests of the public. It has been almost a century since the formalization of the odious debt concept. Despite the increased political and academic attention over the last decade, the doctrine has limped along in the legal imagination throughout. Basically, the odious debt controversy is a challenge to find out a practical legal doctrine without undermining the legal basis of sovereign borrowing. In other words, the doctrine provides an elegant legal construct but seeks utility and applicability to actual situations. One thing is clear that there are compelling reasons to reform and promote this elegant legal construct as a policy on the international plane; however this must be done through strictly limited circumstances. This paper points out moral imperatives and economic justification for an odious debt policy. It pays a special attention to Patrick Bolton and David Skeel's definition of 'odiousness' and proposes a future road map for its implementation. In this way, it tries to show some complications, for both moral aspect and economic realities. It further discusses that odious debt doctrine may solve the ethical problems into the sphere of international fiscal law. It finally concludes that a true odious regime policy may rein back some odious regimes since the current debate no longer involves odious debts, but the debts of an odious regime. A well-functioning odious debt policy may serve as an effective instrument to take a stand against odious regimes.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessinternational law; odious debt; sovereign borrowing; Alexander SackConference Object167176WOS:000469908100015N/A