Truth, Justice, and Commemoration Initiatives in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onur Bakiner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
European Court ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Past Wrongs

This chapter analyzes laws and policies that seek to reveal, publicize, and officially acknowledge facts about human rights violations, procure retributive justice through criminal trials, and attain restorative justice through compensation for victims in Turkey. In addition, it discusses efforts of victims’ groups, human rights associations, opposition political parties, and other concerned civil society groups to generate awareness around those violations. It addresses two main questions: Why has the Turkish state unveiled truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives, i.e., policies and gestures to acknowledge and redress past wrongs? Why have these efforts, mostly initiated in the 2000s and early 2010s, failed? The chapter argues that the combination of civil society activism, memory initiatives by opposition parties, especially the Kurdish political movement, diaspora pressures, and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings necessitated government efforts to address past wrongs. In some ways, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) government’s (2002–present) narrative of modern Turkish history facilitated these initiatives, as it sought to solidify its support among minority constituencies and liberal intellectuals by marketing itself as the voice of the “democratic majority” and as an agent of change in a country where the state routinely committed, denied, and justified human rights violations. Yet, the AKP government’s instrumentalism and selective reconstruction of the national past also explain why these truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives failed to satisfy the victims, the broader human rights community, and independent observers. In a political landscape marked by shifting opportunities, threats, and alliances, the AKP government found it politically convenient to sacrifice those initiatives after 2011. The consolidation of AKP rule and the accompanying institutional decline of democracy that started around the same time pushed them further into irrelevance.

The Admissibility of Confessions and Real Evidence Obtained in Violation of Human Rights in Criminal Trials in European Countries: Analysing the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-355
Author(s):  
Jamil Ddamulira Mujuzi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
The State ◽  
European Countries ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
European Court ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
The Right

The right to a fair trial is guaranteed under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In an effort to protect this right, the European Court of Human Rights has, inter alia, set criteria to determine whether or not the admission of a confession in domestic courts violated the right to a fair trial. This jurisprudence also shows that the Court has established two broad guidelines that govern the admissibility of confessions obtained through human rights violations. The first guideline is that confessions obtained in violation of absolute rights and in particular in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights must be excluded, because their admission will always render the trial unfair. The second guideline is that a confession obtained in violation of a non-absolute right may be admitted without violating the right to a fair trial if the State had a compelling reason or reasons to restrict the right in question. The Court has also dealt with the issue of the admissibility of real evidence obtained through human rights violations. The purpose of this article is to highlight the Court’s jurisprudence.

Is Turkey coming to terms with its past? Politics of memory and majoritarian conservatism

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 691-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onur Bakiner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Shared Memory ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
State Control ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Popular Appeal ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Past Wrongs

There is unprecedented domestic and international interest in Turkey's political past, accompanied by a societal demand for truth and justice in addressing past human rights violations. This article poses the question: Is Turkey coming to terms with its past? Drawing upon the literature on nationalism, identity, and collective memory, I argue that the Turkish state has recently taken steps to acknowledge and redress some of the past human rights violations. However, these limited and strategic acts of acknowledgment fall short of initiating a more comprehensive process of addressing past wrongs. The emergence of the Justice and Development Party as a dominant political force brings along the possibility that the discarded Kemalist memory framework will be replaced by what I callmajoritarian conservatism, a new government-sanctioned shared memory that promotes uncritical and conservative-nationalist interpretations of the past that have popular appeal, while enforcing silence on critical historiographies that challenge this hegemonic memory and identity project. Nonetheless, majoritarian conservatism will probably fail to assert state control over memory and history, even under a dominant government, as unofficial memory initiatives unsettle the hegemonic appropriation of the past.

scholarly journals La transición española ante los sistemas universal y europeo de protección de los derechos humanos

2017 ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Jorge Rodríguez Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Derechos Humanos ◽  
European Court ◽  
The United Nations

<p>Over the past few years, but especially on the last lustrum, the United Nations has shown a deep concern about the situation of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco’s regime victims. Therefore the United Nations has recommend to Spain a series of legislative and institutional modifications in order to achieve a better protection of the rights to truth, justice, reparation and guarantees in order to avoid any future repetition of this sort of human rights violations. In this regard, victims and civil society organizations have sued eight times before the European Court of Human Rights the protection of these rights. Nonetheless, the Court has considered in every case that has no jurisdiction to pronounce about this matter.</p><p><strong>Received</strong>: 31 March 2015<br /><strong>Accepted</strong>: 15 October 2015<br /><strong>Published online</strong>: 11 December 2017</p>

scholarly journals Religion and Education in Romania: Social Mobilization and the “Shadow” of the European Court of Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (S1) ◽  
pp. S79-S102
Author(s):  
Mihai Popa ◽  
Liviu Andreescu
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Social Mobilization ◽  
European Court

AbstractIn this article, we discuss the relation between the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and its jurisprudence and social mobilizations around the place of religion in the society. We focus on the struggles to define the intersection of religion and public education in Romania after the fall of communism. We show that secularist and counter-secularist civil society activists contending for the place of religion in public education in this country have made strategic use of the ECtHR and its case law, both in legal battles and in debates within the national public sphere. We argue that, since references to the ECtHR and its jurisprudence can be used in discursive battles as a form of symbolic “capital”, the strategies of mobilizing actors are at times more important than the strict doctrinal content of the ECtHR's judgments for understanding if and how the ECtHR's “shadow” is cast over religion-related mobilizations.

scholarly journals Interim measures as human rights protection instruments: to the problem statement

2021 ◽  
pp. 539-544
Author(s):  
Siuzanna Mnatsakanian
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
National Level ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
European Court ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
Great Practice ◽  
Interim Measures ◽  
Human Rights Violation

Conceptual approaches to defining the nature and the scope of interim measures implementation as an instrument of human rights protection at international and national level are analyzed. The widespread use of interim measures as international standard of urgent respond to alleged violations of human rights has not led to the implementation of the legal institute concerned at the national level. Accordingly, this analysis aimed at defining the grounds of interim measures as human rights protection instrument application to be used by the state as an immediate response to human rights violations and possible violations. European Court of Human Rights has a great practice of interim measures granting. Interim measures are granted by the Court only in clearly defined conditions, namely where there is a risk that serious violations of the Convention might occur. A high proportion of requests for interim measures are inappropriate and are therefore refused. Besides, interim measures are applied upon request of the applicant claiming about alleged violations of his or her human rights. At the national level interim measures should/may be granted upon request of the applicant or by the duty-bearer’s initiative to prevent possible human rights violations. The grounds of interim measures granting should also be defined – the best international practice should be used taking into account the Ukrainian context. Another core issue analyzed is defining duty-bearers – subjects enforced to grant interim to prevent abuse in the sphere concerned. It is obvious that court shall be the only authority to resolve the substantive case of alleged human rights violation. However, public and local authorities shall be enabled to grant interim measures to prevent the possible violations. With this, the scope and the sphere of its application at the national level shall be broader in comparison with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

Functions of compensation for human rights violation in international and national judicial decisions

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-101
Author(s):  
Dmitry Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
National Court ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
European Court ◽  
International Responsibility

When establishing human rights violations committed by the state, should it be violation of internationally protected rights or constitutional rights, the violator is obliged to compensate for the harm caused. In the meantime, neither international sources, nor national legal acts and case law answer the question whether the obligation to compensate is exhausted by the compensation awarded in accordance with a decision of an international judicial body or such a payment has punitive nature, and the state keeps the obligation to compensate the damage within the frameworks of national proceedings. Following the first part of opening remarks the second part of the article studies universal international law approach towards the state obligation to compensate for human rights violations, it reviews positions of the International Court of Justice, the model established in international customary law of international responsibility. The third part discusses the compensation mechanism of the European Court of Human Rights and a number of cases where the Russian Federation was the respondent state. The forth part considers national regulation of the Council of Europe states and case law thereof. The author argues that the established international case law in respect of awarding compensations for human rights violations is too restrictive – it does not take into account a complex nature of this phenomenon which includes both correction of the individual applicant situation (restitution of the pre-existed situation) and prevention of similar situations in the future. It is concluded that awarding the compensation by an international body primarily constitutes a measure of international responsibility whereas consideration by a national court is a more effective means of restitution of the applicants rights and that the national court shall not deny consideration of applicants claims due to the fact that they have already been awarded compensation by the international judicial body including the European Court of Human Rights.

scholarly journals State Capture through Corruption: Can Human Rights Help?

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 331-335
Author(s):  
Jimena Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Regional Systems ◽  
State Capture ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Negative Impacts

Until recently, the United Nations and regional systems of human rights protection had shown considerable reluctance to address human rights violations resulting from corruption. Instead, these actors would underline the negative impacts of corruption on human rights without identifying corruption itself as a violation of human rights. Since 2017, however, this has begun to shift. The UN, regional human rights institutions, and civil society have begun to devise concrete ways for human rights institutions and instruments to better contribute to the fight against corruption. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“the Court”), in particular, has taken preliminary steps to establish a legal link between corruption and human rights violations.

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