Suchergebnisse

With its contextualized analysis of the European Court of Human Rights' (ECtHR) engagement in Turkey's Kurdish conflict since the early 1990s, Limits of Supranational Justice makes a much-needed contribution to scholarships on supranational courts and legal mobilization. Based on a socio-legal account of the efforts of Kurdish lawyers in mobilizing the ECtHR on behalf of abducted, executed, tortured and displaced civilians under emergency rule, and a doctrinal legal analysis of the ECtHR's jurisprudence in these cases, this book powerfully demonstrates the Strasbourg court's failure to end gross violations in the Kurdish region. It brings together legal, political, sociological and historical narratives, and highlights the factors enabling the perpetuation of state violence and political repression against the Kurds. The effectiveness of supranational courts can best be assessed in hard cases such as Turkey, and this book demonstrates the need for a reappraisal of current academic and jurisprudential approaches to authoritarian regimes.

Abstract
International courts face growing contestations to their authority. Scholars have conceptualized the forms and grounds of such resistance as well as the response of international courts. Much empirical research has focused on regional courts with human rights mandates. Yet, in focusing on overt resistance, not differentiating between authoritarian and democratic regimes, and depicting courts at the receiving end of resistance, scholarship does not account for discrete forms of resistance tolerated and enabled by courts. In addition, studies on the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) base their analyses exclusively on judgments, which constitute a mere 9 per cent of this Court's jurisprudence. This methodological bias, combined with a time frame limited to the post-2010s when the ECtHR has faced public contestations to its authority, have led to inaccurate and incomplete conclusions regarding the Strasbourg Court's response to backlash and illiberalism. This article calls for a goal-orientated conceptualization of resistance and a methodology that analyses the ECtHR's non-judgment jurisprudence in its entirety to reach accurate conclusions on its response to authoritarianism. Based on an in-depth and contextual analysis of the ECtHR-Turkey case, the article puts forth empirically grounded insights on authoritarian resistance and judicial complicity. It argues that authoritarian regimes seek to lessen international courts' oversight of their policies, not to undermine the authority of these courts as such, and that international courts are not always resilient vis-à-vis authoritarian resistance but can also be complicit with it. The forms of authoritarian resistance and judicial response depend on the institutional set-up of the human rights regime in question as well as the ways in which international courts exercise their review powers. The two phenomena influence and reinforce each other, resulting in the simultaneous or consecutive occurrence of various forms of authoritarian resistance and judicial response depending on the particular political context in which they interact.

Turkey's president Erdogan allows Kurdish villages to be razed and ousts opposition members of Parliament, while the EU turns a blind eye, compromising its core values.

The central research question this report addresses is whether and if so to what extent the ECHR and the ECtHR case law served to enhance the protection in Turkey of human rights in general and minority rights in particular. In doing so, the critical role the EU accession process has played in this regard by exerting external political pressure on the Turkish Government will be evaluated as a major positive variable. The report assesses the nature of claims raised by minorities and minority rights advocates. It seeks to offer an initial analysis of the efforts by authorities to implement the ECtHR case law through general and individual measures

Notwithstanding the ongoing negotiations between the PKK and the government, the crux of Turkey's Kurdish issue remains the structural inequalities against the Kurds, which are deeply rooted in an anti-democratic politico-legal regime. Certainly, Turkey has come a long way in acknowledging the Kurdish issue and taking steps to address the Kurds' demands for equality and the rule of law. Once banned from speaking their language, Kurds can now use it to attain a university education. The Kurdish region is no longer governed by a state of emergency, nor are Kurdish civilians disappearing under detention. There is no doubt that the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union have played an indispensable role in this transition. However, European institutions' engagement in the Kurdish issue has not always been coherent, while their impact on Turkey's policies has been limited, and at times negative, particularly in the post-9/11 context. Their uncritical oversight has facilitated Turkey's reluctance to undertake structural reforms to bring an end to the selective prosecution of Kurdish politicians, the criminalisation of non-violent advocacy of enhanced rights for the Kurds, the armament of civilians in the Kurdish region and the impunity of state officials who commit human rights violations. Recent developments in Turkey have shown, once again, that a genuine democratic transition will only be possible with the coherent, continuous and critical engagement of European institutions in the Kurdish issue. (SWP Research Paper)

This report is an attempt to understand the legal, political and economic constraints on media freedom and independence in Turkey through a historical lens for a critical analysis of the state-media relations. It analyzes and explains the actors and processes of media policy making in Turkey; the substance and implementation of such policies; the legal framework governing media content; the ownership structure of the media; the working conditions of journalists; self-regulation for ethical issues and self-censorship; and the emerging social efforts to combat discrimination and hate speech in the media

AbstractSince it took effect, the EU‐Turkey refugee agreement has been the subject of intense debate. While critics argue that it was politically short‐sighted, others point out that quick action was necessary to avert both a humanitarian crisis in Greece and the collapse of the Schengen system due to the unwillingness of EU member states to share responsibility. Since the agreement took effect, the most serious problems lay in the implementation process, which has revealed a troubling tendency among EU leaders to disregard the fundamental human rights abuses in Turkey. In the southeast, for example, the Turkish government is waging a full‐blown war against its Kurdish population, while a failed coup d'état in July 2016 put the country under a state of emergency that has led to even greater repression and growing reports of violations of asylum law. Ultimately, this agreement may fail, but it will remain necessary for the EU to cooperate with Turkey in order to control migration and work towards developing a comprehensive migration policy. Drawing on lessons from the agreement, this paper shall consider ways forward for future EU migration agreements with third countries.

Research on media independence and freedom of press in any country, particularly in Turkey, requires more than an analysis of the regulatory framework. It is the political and ideological factors that lie behind the anti-democratic and repressive laws, rather than the content and implementation of these laws that can explain why and under which circumstances an independent and free media fails to emerge in a given country. This report is an attempt to understand the legal, political and economic constraints on media freedom and independence in Turkey through a historical lens

The word most frequently uttered by Greece and Turkey with regard to their Muslim1 and non-Muslim minorities, respectively, is most probably 'reciprocity.' For more than half a century, in both countries, virtually all administrations,irrespective of their political leanings and ideological base, resorted to the good old 'reciprocity argument' to legitimize their laws, policies, and practices restricting the minority rights of Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Both states have for decades justified their policies on the basis of a theory that argues that Article 45 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne provided the legal basis for reciprocity. Deliberately distorting a crystal-clear provision, which simply confers parallel obligations on Greece and Turkey for the protection of the Muslim and non-Muslim minorities, respectively, both states have for decades held their own citizens hostage, pitting them against each other in the name of defeating the other in foreign policy. Disregarding the objections of international lawyers and institutions that the reciprocity principle does not apply to human rights treaties and that states cannot condition the protection of the fundamental rights of their citizens on the policies of other states, both Greece and Turkey have successfully manipulated their national public opinion into believing in the legitimacy of treating minorities as lesser citizens. This report analyzes the implications of reciprocity policies on the day-to-day lives of Muslim and non-Muslim minorities in Greece and Turkey, specifically their impact on the community foundations2 belonging to these minorities. With a specific focus on the property and self-management issues of Muslim and non-Muslim community foundations in Greece and Turkey, the report situates the issue in its historical context and trace the evolution of the 'community foundation issue' from Lausanne to the present day. Drawing similarities and differences between the laws, policies, and practices of Greek and Turkish states vis-à-vis their minority foundations, the report critically assesses the progress made to this day as well as identify the outstanding issues.

On 29 September 2006, the Van Governorship in Turkey disclosed the "Van Province Action Plan for Service Delivery to Internally Displaced Persons" (the Van Action Plan or the Plan). Prepared with the technical support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and owned by the governorship, the Action Plan outlines the basic principles on which future services for internally displaced persons (IDPs) during their integration, resettlement or return processes will be based. Van was selected as a pilot province for the development of a plan of action as part of the cooperation between the Government of Turkey and the UNDP on the issue of displacement. This cooperation was initiated in the wake of the 2002 mission by Francis Deng, then Representative of the United Nations Secretary General on Internally Displaced Persons (RSG) in Turkey. This report is an assessment of the Van Action Plan, in the spirit of RSG Kälin's call to the civil society. The report evaluates the effectiveness of the preparatory work undertaken by the UNDP and the governorship during the drafting of the Action Plan as well as the content and ongoing implementation of the Plan. It argues that The Action Plan does not address certain issues that pertain to national-level politics and policies concerning the Kurdish question, issues which have a direct bearing on the choices open to IDPs. Issues such as cessation of the armed conflict, abolishment of the provisional village guard system and the clearing of landmines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs), all of which would positively influence the safety of returns to original rural homes, are ignored in the Plan.