Kemalism, the Judiciary, and Human Rights Diffusion: The ECHR in Turkey

Abstract

Turkey’s gradual descent into authoritarianism and the dismal human rights record that has come with it are rightly understood to highlight the illiberal politics of president Erdogan and his ruling AK-Parti. Yet, repression and denial of human rights claims have a long tradition in Turkey which precedes the current crisis by many decades. With a focus on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), this paper examines the period between the ratification of the ECHR by Turkey in 1954 and the mid-2000s. Drawing on the “spiral model” of human rights diffusion (Risse/Ropp/Sikkink 1999), the paper traces the Convention’s contested diffusion into Turkish law, evident in the extensive case law of the European Court of Human Rights against Turkey as well as the strong resistance it encountered from the Turkish judiciary. It then proceeds to argue that this resistance was an expression of a Kemalist outlook, then prevalent among the judiciary and the wider state elite. This argument is supported by an analysis of key ideological features of Kemalism and their expressions in the case law of various Turkish courts. This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that Kemalism essentially functioned as a “blocking factor”, precluding full implementation of Human Rights norms and potentially closing a brief window of opportunity for full democratisation and human rights reform at the turn of the century.