Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and as such is protected in international human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 19), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Articles 19 and 20), and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Article 10). Freedom of expression cannot be fully realized without the freedom of press. Freedom of press also allows news media to play a crucial role in liberal democracies, by providing citizens with wide-ranging news, information, and ideas, and by creating opportunities for different views and interests to...

The definition of the concepts of minority and minority rights in Turkey has been based on a peace treaty that was signed in Lausanne on 24 July 1923, between the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes on oneside, and Turkey on the other. Following the Turkish nationalists’ victory in the War of Independence against Greece, backed by England (which had occupied the country after the First World War), this treaty replaced the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August 1920, which had been imposed upon the Ottoman Empire after the war, and...

In the Ottoman Empire the Greeks comprised the Rum millet. As a community, they were quite prosperous, residing in the major cities of İstanbul (Constantinople) and İzmir (Smyrna). With the succession of the Ottoman Empire by the Modern Turkish state the condition of the once thriving Rum Orthodox minority deteriorated drastically, and its numbers began to dwindle.¹ From close to 111,000 residents in 1923, the minority has been reduced to barely 2,000–3,000 members at present. The fact that the rights of the minority have been spelled out and safeguarded by an international treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, makes the...

Since its establishment, the Republic of Turkey has had a problematic relationship with its Kurdish population, an ethnic and linguistic group primarily living in eastern Anatolia. The conflict between Turks and Kurds over the control of the region predates the Republic, stretching back to the Ottoman Empire. At times, especially during the 1980s and 1990s, the strife between the Turkish state and the Kurds has proved particularly violent and costly for the parties and the entire country. The capture of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partia Karkaren Kürdistan, PKK), in February 1999, stopped violent encounters for...

The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkmma Partisi, AKP), led by a splinter fraction of the Islamic-oriented Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP), emerged with a sweeping victory from the parliamentary elections held on 3 November 2002. The AKP government committed formidably to the goal of full membership in the European Union, and displayed political will to enact constitutional and legal reforms in order to harmonize the Turkish legal system with the Copenhagen criteria, stipulating a well-established human rights regime.

This development is just one striking example of the drastic changes the Turkish political scene has been going through since...

Freedom of association and workers’ rights in Turkey, like all other freedoms and rights, have been affected by the country’s volatile politics, as well as its structural economic constraints. Tensions and contradictions have been paramount: between the need to promote social and economic rights, workers rights and freedom of association, on the one hand, and the desire to pursue rapid economic growth, on the other.

This chapter examines the development of workers’ associational rights with an emphasis on the current legal and economic environment. Although workers in Turkey gained substantial legal rights after 1960, these rights have been subject to...

This chapter explores the major issues concerning the right to education in Turkey. The right to education is articulated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an individual right of every person regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, nationality, or any other status. Increasingly considered as a precondition for the exercise of other human rights, the statement about right to education takes place in Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and in Articles 13 and 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Under Article 13, states parties agree...

Despite its rapid industrialization during the last fifty years, Turkey has been mainly an agricultural society. Thus, concerns over environmental pollution and conservation were addressed not until the 1970s, when the negative environmental impact of industrialization, urbanization, and overcrowding in some cities became striking.

This chapter reviews the development of public awareness about environmental issues and discusses the legal and administrative measures taken by the state to prevent environmental deterioration. The main argument holds that although the state and public awareness of environmental problems have been increasing, framing of these problems as a human rights issue is very new and...

The term “internally displaced persons” has gained wide usage since it was first coined in the early 1970s, and is currently defined as follows: “Persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border” (Global IDP Survey 1998).

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are the largest “at-risk” population in...

Turkey is not known to be a country of immigration, let alone a country of asylum, but it has a long record of receiving immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees (Kirişçi 1991, 1996a).¹ It has received considerable number of asylum seekers from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territories, the Soviet bloc during the Cold War and from neighboring countries since the end of the Cold War.

Turkey was also among the drafters as well as original signatories of the principal international legal instrument on refugees, the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. However, it is one of the few...

In Turkey, the state has been one of the most powerful actors affecting women’s rights. The position of the state, however, has been volatile and appears to be self-contradictory. On the one hand, the state has taken a parafeminist stance and opened up new opportunities for women through legislative and administrative reforms. On the other hand, it has supported the traditional role of women within the family, pursued pro-natalist policies, and maintained women’s dependency on men.

Until recently, it was largely accepted that the state initiated and carried out reforms that granted women some rights, while there were no political...

After years of work by various governmental and nongovernmental organizations, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979 as an international bill of rights for women. CEDAW defines discrimination against women as “any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or...

Turkish domestic human rights organizations (HROs) have played a major role in developing a human rights discourse by using human rights as an interpretive framework to criticize, resist, and reform domestic political, social, and economic arrangements. This chapter contends that since 1986, domestic Turkish HROs have been major actors in the development of a domestically grown human rights perspective in Turkish politics. They have introduced framing issues as human rights issues and paved the way in fostering a culture of minimum guarantees and protections that any individual ought to enjoy within the Turkish political community.

For the purposes of this...

The second half of the twentieth century was characterized by the proliferation of human rights conventions, covenants, and standards. However, serious human rights violations still continue. A glaring gap still exists between “texts and contexts” (Yeban 1995). One of the reasons for this is the fact that human rights as an ethical tradition have limited channels for becoming embedded in a community, in contrast, for instance, to religiously grounded ethical traditions (Osler and Starkey 1994). Studies demonstrate that almost sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations, people knew very little about human...

Turkey has been part of the United Nations-led global human rights regime since its beginnings, and joined the European one by ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1954. Turkey’s involvement in these two regimes has been shaped by factors both exogenous and endogenous to Turkish politics. The exogenous factors involve the very nature of these respective regimes, and the endogenous ones stem from Turkey’s 200 year-old aspiration for westernization (i.e., Europeanization).

It is largely accepted that the United Nations system in general has not been particularly efficacious, especially in the field of human rights. This...

Of the many international influences on human rights in Turkey, none are more important than the rules and norms that make up the European human rights regime. The regime is founded on the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (from here on, the Convention), which entered into law in 1953. Enforcement is provided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which opened its doors in 1959. Turkey ratified the Convention in 1954. But it was not until 1989, when Ankara accepted the binding jurisdiction of the ECHR, did Turkey become a full participant in...

The chapters in this volume are primarily concerned with disentangling human rights practices in Turkey and assessing their prospects. Examining a range of human rights issues over time, however, enables us to derive some generalizable conclusions. Thus, the cumulative findings of the chapters can be discussed both for the case of Turkey and in terms of their broader theoretical relevance and implications.

Despite their critical assessment of the practice of human rights in Turkey, all chapters in the volume, with the exception of the one on the right to education, conclude on an optimistic note, typically with a reference to...