First of all, I want to clear one thing. An Airbus when flown manually is like any other aircraft. It is not autopilot oriented. Only when the extremities of the aircraft envelope is hit do the protections activate. And these protections help the pilot in many situations. I would not go into the details, as it is beyond the scope of the question. But if you are interested you can go to this link: 

https://www.quora.com/Do-you-believe-that-Airbuss-philosophy-of-prioritizing-the-autopilot-over-the-pilot-and-not-permitting-the-latter-to-stress-the-aircraft-in-critical-situations-jeopardizes-safety-Would-you-prefer-a-Boeing-or-Airbus/answer/Anas-Maaz-1

So, can the Airbus protections be turned off? Simple answer is, **Yes.** If required it can be manually turned off and the aircraft control laws degraded from **normal law** to **alternate law.**

The easiest way to do it is to turn of two ADR (Air data reference) computers. There are three of them in Airbus aircraft. Once two are off, the flight control computers no longer have enough data from various sensors (pitot tubes, static ports, AOA sensors etc) to validate the information they receive. So, they will simply downgrade the control laws. Once the two ADRs are off all protections are lost except the load factor protection, which goes out only when the aircraft downgrades further into the direct law (in A320, direct law is activated as soon as gear is down in alternate law). We do this, when we practice stall and upset recoveries in the simulator. The instructor turns off the two ADRs and the fun begins.

[![enter image description here][1]][1]

*The red boxes mark the three ADR control switches. You can turn two of them off to downgrade to alternate law. The mistake you can do here is turning off them using the knobs. Because if you do that the IR data will also go out. Keep in mind we want to get rid of air data not inertial data. Generally, ADR 2 and ADR 3 are switched off.* Source:https://www.flickriver.com/photos/medau/4890404665/

The switching off ADRs cannot be found in the aircraft FCOM or the FCTM. Nevertheless, it is little secret all Airbus pilots are aware of. When I did my type rating on the aircraft, I learnt it when our instructor shut them off to practice stalls. Airbus however, mentioned the procedure in the Airbus initial type training course guide. There was a time though when Airbus had the procedure as a temporary OEB (Operational engineering bulleting) after a Lufthansa A321 suffered a spurious high angle of attack protection activation due to two faulty AOA sensors. The pilots were only able to control the aircraft by forcing it into alternate law by switching off ADR 2 and ADR 3 which was already rejected by the computers. The OEB Airbus released, numbered OEB 48, was there in the aircraft QRH until they got new angle of attack sensor modifications. 

Here is a link to the BFU report: 

https://www.bfu-web.de/EN/Publications/Interim_Reports/IR2014/I1_Report_14_6X014_A321_Pamplona.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

[![enter image description here][2]][2]

*The OEB 48.* Source: https://flightacademy.info/oeb-48-abnormal-v-alpha-prot

The aircraft can also go into alternate law automatically if it detects erroneous data. For example, if two of the three ADRs give conflicting data, the computers can again no longer validate the data and simply force the aircraft into alternate law.

Then there is an abnormal attitude law. This law activates if the aircraft gets into a position where computers can no longer keep it in the envelope. Keep in mind that even though the aircraft is protected, in very tight situations things can go beyond the protections. In this case also the protections are turned off and alternate law activated which allows pilot to maneuver out of the situation. The abnormal attitude law activates if any of the following conditions are met:

 - Bank angle above 125 °
 - Pitch attitude above 50 ° nose up or below 30 ° nose down
 - Speed below 60 to 90 kt (depending on the aircraft pitch attitude), or above 440 kt
 - Mach above 0.91
 - Angle of attack above 30 ° to 40 °, or below -10 °




  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/STiy2.jpg
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/VKtJ7.png