ICTJ Activity

The prospect of full EU membership remains a tentative and distant goal for Turkey-at least a decade away-but in the meantime the incentive provided by this prospect has led to a series of reforms within Turkey. This reform is being pushed from outside forces (primarily the EU accession process) while also supported internally by a growing human rights movement. The EU process provides the opportunity for a gradual opening of Turkish political and civil society, thereby increasing the potential for greater trust in state institutions, increased respect for diversity and human rights, greater freedom of speech, and a civilian controlled democracy.

ICTJ Senior Associate Lisa Magarrell and Program Associate Virginie Ladisch led an initial assessment of transitional justice progress and needs in August 2006. Several civil society organizations expressed an interest in learning more about the methodologies of TJ and case studies in which they were applied. In response to these requests for greater information, the Center translated key documents into Turkish and invited a few individuals to participate in the Transitional Justice Essentials Course hosted by ICTJ Brussels.

The ICTJ's work in Turkey aims to contribute to the reform process and gradual opening of Turkish society by providing support through technical expertise, capacity building, and measured advocacy in targeted areas of transitional justice. The Center seeks to achieve this by creating a network and a strong partnership base for an ongoing exchange of ideas and approaches to dealing with the past, and for pushing public debate among the various actors in Turkey. To that end, several staff members have taken part in conferences both within Turkey and abroad on issues related to dealing with the past. The Center's Executive Vice-President, Paul Van Zyl, spoke at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) 2006 conference on Internal Displacement in Turkey and Abroad: International Principles, Experiences and Policy Proposals. In February 2007, ICTJ founder and former co-chair of the South African TRC, Alex Boraine, presented the South African case at one of the first conferences to talk about addressing the past: From the Burden of the Past to Societal Peace and Democracy: International Conference on Coming to Terms with the Past, organized by the Heinrich Boll Foundation. Later that year, as part of the Human Rights Activism Seminar, Mark Freeman, ICTJ Director of International Affairs, was a guest lecturer at Bilgi University's Human Rights Center.

In March 2008, in partnership with Bilgi University and the Heinrich Boll Foundation, the ICTJ held a three-day seminar on the key issues, mechanisms, and lessons of transitional justice. Alex Boraine, Virginie Ladisch, and ICTJ Europe Director Dick Oosting presented and led discussions on the main theories of transitional justice. Targeting key civil society leaders, this seminar aimed to create a forum in which participants could discuss the practical relevance of transitional justice in the Turkish context and begin strategizing about possible approaches to adopt in their own work.

Background

Mustafa Kemal Pasha (or Atatürk: Father of the Turks) established the Turkish Republic in 1923. The new nation was built on the principles of Kemalism, which include secularism, republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, and reformism. Secularism was taken to the extreme, to mean not just separation of religion and state but the actual removal of religion from public life and the establishment of complete state control over religious institutions.

From 1923 until his death in 1938 Atatürk passed a number of reforms with the goal of cutting Turkish society off from its Ottoman and Middle Eastern Islamic tradition and re-orienting it to the West. Reforms included the prohibition of the fez and veil, adoption of the Western clock, numbers, weight system, last names, and most drastic of all, the substitution of the Latin alphabet for the Arabic script. Thus, under Atatürk's guidance, Turkey discarded much of its past and recreated a new image oriented towards the west. In this new state, the Ottoman past and the contested 1914 Armenian genocide in particular, were not integrated into the national psyche; modernization, heroism, and forward looking progress were the focus.

Following the introduction of the multiparty system in 1950, the political scene was interrupted three times by military coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980. The last decades of the 20th century brought increasing demands for recognition among Kurds in the Southeastern region leading to a conflict between the Turkish armed forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). A lack of political dialogue between Turkish officials and the Kurdish minority blocked any major steps towards the resolution of the issue. However, the 2002 Copenhagen decision to potentially open EU accession talks in 2004 provided a strong push for Turkey to begin making the necessary reforms to its legal system and human rights protections. Turkey undertook reforms with impressive speed, rewriting the entire penal code, for example, in less than two years, but the implementation of those reforms has been incomplete.

In 2005 a combination of factors, including Europe's enlargement fatigue and a neo-nationalist backlash in Turkey, slowed the momentum for reform generated by the EU accession process. The parliamentary and presidential elections in July and August 2007 confirming the conservative and pro-EU Justice and Development party (AKP) in power marked a turning point for Turkey. The election results represented a vote of confidence not only for the AKP and its reform agenda, but also a renewed commitment to the EU accession process. The current AKP majority in parliament may revitalize the reform agenda and help the EU process get back on track in 2008, thus allowing for growing civil society initiatives demanding change in the realm of human rights.

(Updated March 2008)