This paper examines freedom of expression trials in Turkish courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to discuss how ‘democratic rule of law’ can operate in both fast and slow ways, and how the rule of law enables forms of governance that restrict freedom of speech and critical-democratic expression. In May 2004, as part of European Union (EU) accession process, Turkey accepted the priority of international agreements over the domestic law regarding fundamental rights and freedoms. As a member of European Council and a candidate to the EU, Turkey promised to implement ECHR rulings. However, several events have led Turkish authorities to increasingly restrict fundamental rights and freedoms, and to bypass the ECHR. The Gezi protests in 2013, the end of the peace process with Kurdish rebels in 2015, and the failed military coup attempt in July 2016 have all led to lengthy legal procedures that ultimately undermine Turkey’s adherence to the ECHR. Indeed, authorities have used allegations of terrorist propaganda and related criminal charges to target dissident politicians, journalists, academics, civil society activists, and social media users. In the meantime, the ECHR has largely eschewed using its legitimate and binding legal authority. It has avoided judging these cases as systematic rights violations, and instead it prefers to wait for the exhaustion of all available domestic appeal procedures for each individual case. In the few cases where the ECHR ruled against the arrest decisions, the local legal authorities avoided implementing these rulings immediately and hastened the pace of the prosecution to deliver final verdicts—all requiring further appeals at the ECHR. In doing so, the local legal authorities have bypassed and rendered the ECHR ineffective. This ineffectiveness facilitates a de facto exclusion of Turkey from European liberal democratic jurisdiction. Equally important, I argue, it positions Turkey alongside the rest of the Middle East as a region for imperial interventions to contain refugees and keep them away from Europe. This paper will ultimately show the ways in which liberal democratic institutions not only fail in protecting democratic means of expression, but they also facilitate the very restriction of fundamental rights and freedoms. I also discuss the temporality of law as a new analytic to examine authoritarian politics.