Human Rights and Minority Rights

The objective of the study is to find the major reasons behind emerging social crimes and their effects on modern society. There is a Sociological Perspective which cannot be identified as the legal rationale because there are several loopholes prevailing in the existing law. There is always a sociological rationale behind commission of a social crime because it is due to certain reasons such as social status, peer group pressure, discrimination outrage, family abandonment, economic freedom etc.To prevent such violent social crimes there should be social upliftment, social equality and social justice with economic freedom. When the society gives equal rights and opportunities to every citizen from every social group of the society the changes in the social crime statistics can be observed. The Doctrine of Legitimate Expectation and Doctrine of Proportion can be found from any legal Study on social aspect of crime scenario to discover the unfounded reasons of social crimes in the country.

This book was not intended to divide Iraqi society into majorities and minorities, but to warn of an impending disaster that would herald the beginning of the end for Iraq. Such an end, I believe, would be the end of Iraq as a concept, as a civilizational, religious, cultural and pluralistic heritage that changed the face of the ancient world; the end of modern Iraq, which started in the 1920s with communities living together like brothers. Simply, it would be the end of Iraqi patriotism as derived from all Iraqis’ pride in their rich Mesopotamian heritage.

Citizenship in Turkey is one of the major instruments of nation-building.
The legal framework that Turkish citizenship rests on is universal and equal. The
non-Muslim minorities – the Armenians, the Greeks and the Jews – however are
granted special group rights in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Despite the protection
of minorities and their rights in the treaty, the non-Muslim minorities, from
time to time, had been superceded by the universal norms of citizenship in Turkey.
This study discusses the history of the Jewish minority with a focus on the development
of citizenship in Turkey. The history of the Jews as a minority group and
as citizens is illustrated by way of a chronological methodology encompassing a
broad range of events, laws, ideas and movements spanning Early Republican
Period up to present-day Turkey. In line with the conventional classification utilized
by many studies of Turkish politics, the historical projection developed on the
citizenship and minority status of Jews in Turkey is categorized into three periods:
the Early Republican Period (1923–1945), the Multi-Party Democracy Period
(1945–1980) and the Post-1980 Period covering more recent developments.

Outline Thesis: Religious minorities are living under constant threat in Pakistan that is increasing and becoming a serious human rights issue as a result of rising religious extremism, enforcement and promulgation of discriminatory laws and policies, a biased public school curriculum, the growing role of madrassas and continuing religious caste-based discrimination. The issue needs urgent attention to resolve it through multiple actions, including reform in laws and policies, an impartial curriculum, ban on untouchability and increased social awareness within society for equality and justice.

The task to reshape governments in the countries confronted with the Arab Spring prompts the question whether there are necessary conditions to realize a stable society that simultaneously seeks to eliminate the elements that have led to the uprisings. Acknowledging some constitutional rights seems indispensable in such a process. I argue that such a state of affairs is indeed the case, at least now that the ‘old’ justifications to differentiate between people do not suffice anymore. That is not to say that the countries involved will have identical laws in each respect, but merely that a common basis has to be realized, manifested in political and legal equality, so this given does not derogate from the fact that each country’s specific legislation needs to be shaped in the light of its own history. Such a basis has no ‘moral’ character, but is simply a necessary condition to prevent sedition.

This paper surveys the issue of language in the context of human and minority rights. Research focus is on the language rights. The main objective of the paper is to examine the nature, substance and the function of the language rights. Also I am trying to find answer whether  language rights are  part of human or/and minority rights? To achieve this goal I am analysing the research question from the normative perspective of political science and tradition of liberal thought as well as from the practical perspective of the international law dealing with the protection of human and minority rights. The mixed normative and practical approach, with the special focus on the function of the language in the modern nation-states and post-nation states is contributary to the research objective. Althought there is not universally accepted definition of the language rights and the theory is still evolving, there is a general agreement that the language rights include: the right on free language use, right to perserve the language identity, right to be educated in the mothers language and the right to use the language in the communication with the public institutions. Currently language rights cant be equated with the human rights. Minority language rights can be seen as the initial mechanism for accomodation of language diversity in the societies. The holders of the language rights are the individuals, but these rights have collective dimension. The language has the value and serves the instrumental and symbolic function for the individual, group and state. In this article I argue that the language rights belong not only to the majority but also to the minorities within state. Garanted language rights should be promotion-oriented and should have official-language regimes. The substance of the language rights should be then the fair and justice acommodation of the language diversity. There is a need of the development of the international standard of language rights which will be context based.

The HDP (The People's Democracy Party) concluded from the Gezi Park protests in the summer of 2013 that the opposition is disconnected and thus formed a new umbrella group to cover the dissent. It claims to be a new party on the left addressing the issues and concerns raised during these mass protests. Drawing on the failure of the opposition, mainly the Kemalist CHP, the HDP sought to capture the public discontent and turned this into votes in the parliamentary elections. The leftist HDP reached out to the electorate by mobilizing the dissidents against the AKP at the ballot box. I argue that the HDP gained votes from two crucial blocks: Kurds who used to vote for the AKP in past elections and secular Alevis who are adamant about weakening the AKP. The election results suggest that a decisive majority of voters don't want to see a presidential system replace the parliamentary one. The HDP won anti-Erdogan votes and passed the 10% threshold, the highest in the world. The HDP's list is a veritable rainbow coalition, boasting the highest proportion of women in any party, Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Syriacs, Alevis, Yazidis, leftists, and Turkey's first openly gay candidate. In this working paper, I ask whether the HDP can perform the role of a blocker to the AKP in the hung parliament.

The article analyzes poems written by Mehmet Karahüseyinov (1945-1990) in the context of socio-political phenomena in Bulgaria of the 19980s and 1990s. In Karahüseyinov’s poetry, echoes are found of both the “Revival Process” and the “Big Excursion”, as well as of the fall of communism in Bulgaria as a point in history. Autobiographical perspective is of equal importance in the poems: in 1985, in the wake of the last stage of the “Revival Process”, the poet attempted self-immolation. This liminal experience, set in a wider context of what it means to be a representative of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria in the late socialist period, permeates all of Karahüseyinov’s poetry at the time. The article’s methodological axis is a genealogical approach as formulated by Michel Foucault, who, informed by Nietzsche’s thought, wrote of an image of the body utterly marked by history. The body is thus an area which – also in the non-figurative, material dimension – enters the gears of history and where history leaves its marks, and the scarred bodily area becomes a map of a personal and entangled genealogy.

With the 2004 and subsequent enlargements of the European Union numerous national minorities have become EU Citizens which called for a redefinition of the role of the EU towards minorities. Ten years after the largest single enlargement there are still non-exploited opportunities in EU Law in this regard. Article 19 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) provides for a prohibition of discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin.1 It does not contain a direct prohibition of discrimination and it is not directly effective, but it enables the EU to adopt measures to combat discrimination on the listed grounds within the scope of the policies and powers otherwise granted by the Treaties.2 The mentioned Article
(and its precedent) served as a basis for directives, action programmes and a number of “European years.”3 However, it was not used for adoption of a specific, minority oriented directive, partly due to the fact that it still remains ambiguous whether “race and ethnic origin” in Article 19 TFEU gives competences to the EU-legislator to adopt legal acts governing the rights and situation of national minorities/persons belonging to national minorities.

This article examines the implications of both individual and collective dimensions of the right to self-identify and reappraises the key challenges to its realisation. The article argues that the status of the right to self-identify as a fundamental right remains unclear, over a quarter of a century after its inclusion in the CSCE/OSCE Copenhagen Document in 1990. The article starts by revisiting some of the 'justice-oriented' arguments made in the early 1990s about the need for group-differentiated rights in order to highlight the importance of the right to self-identify as an integral part of the European minority rights framework. It then proceeds to argue that the case for giving greater prominence to this right is strengthened if the challenge of cosmopolitanism is also considered. The second part of the article is focused more specifically on the challenges to the realisation of the right, particularly the collective dimension. It argues that this can be attributed to the continued deference to States in relation to the scope of application of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and that there needs to be a greater focus on the internalisation of the right at the domestic level.

EU ENLARGEMENT CONDITIONS AND MINORITY PROTECTION:
A REFLECTION ON TURKEY’S NON-MUSLIM MINORITIES
This article aims to review the EU’s urge on Turkey to fulfil the Copenhagen criteria, hence the condition of ‘respect for and protection of minorities’ in the case of non-Muslim minorities. In light of the documents released by the EU institutions - such as the Commission regular reports, the Council decisions and the Accession Partnership with Turkey, and the oral and written questions discussed in the European Parliament, - the article tries to outline and analyze how the EU develops a stance vis-à-vis Turkey’s treatment towards its non-Muslim minorities. The article utilizes the result of a research on the essential documents released by the EU.

This is a call for applications for a Research Associate (PhD project) at the Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany, in the context of the research project "Between Minority Protection and Securitization: Romani Minority Formation in Modern European History" (2018-2021), which is part of the Collaborative Research Center "Dynamics of Security: Forms of Securitization in Historical Perspective", funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the period 2014-2021.

Türk Hukukunda Azınlıklar ve Milliyetçilik kitabı, Türkiye’de farklılıkların yönetilmesinde hukuk sistemi ve yargının rolüne odaklanırken, bir yandan da devlet politikalarının yasamaya ve yargı kararlarına nasıl dahil edildiğini incelemektedir. Azınlıklar ve farklılıkların yönetimi konusunu hukuki ve tarihi bir perspektiften inceleyen bu kitap, ülkedeki farklı etnik, dilsel, dini toplulukların yeterince korunmaması ile talep ve ihtiyaçlarına yer açılmamasının en önemli sebebinin devletin kurucu felsefesi olan Türk Milliyetçiliği ve bunun ülkedeki sosyal, politik ve hukuki yapı üzerindeki derin nüfuzundan kaynaklandığını ortaya koymaktadır. Yüksek yargı kararlarıyla ete kemiğe bürünen ve meşrulaştırılan bu milliyetçiliğin, ulus, vatandaşlık, azınlık kavramları ve politikaları üzerindeki etkisinin boyutlarını mercek altına almaktadır. Devletin sivil milliyetçilik iddiasını sorgularken, ülkedeki mevcut siyasi ve hukuk düzeninin uluslararası hukukun insan hakları ve azınlık hakları alanında ulaştığı seviyenin ne kadar gerisinde kaldığını gözler önüne sermektedir. Son yıllardaki hukuki ve siyasi gelişmelere ışık tutan bu çalışma, bu alanda önemli bir yer bularak büyük bir boşluğu dolduracaktır.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4fhl97pr2zjp81g/Turk%20Hukukunda%20Azinliklar%20ve%20Milliyetcilik-basilmis%20scan.pdf?dl=0

The modern notion of “Human Rights” is reflected in the UDHR (1948), the two UN Covenants (1966), and in scores of UN instruments on Human Rights. These documents conceptualize human rights as universal in the sense that they transcend national boundaries or ideologies. Many scholars and nations have contested the claim of universality of human rights and asserted that they are not a Western discovery as human rights values and traditions have been part of their cultures/civilizations and politico-legal systems for centuries. In fact, Human Rights are the product of historical, cultural and socio-political experiences of a given society. These societies have formulated and conceptualized their notion of rights to suit their particular socio-cultural and political settings. Hence, cultural specificity has to be taken into cognizance while formulating and implementing human rights standards. There cannot be uniform human rights standards or a single interpretation of a meaning of a right. There can be different meanings attributed to a right even within a single tradition. This is a challenge posed by those who believe in cultural relativism as against universalism. Besides being culturally specific, the concept of rights, it is argued, also includes dynamism that lends its meaning and interpretations to constant evolution and change. An understanding of non-Western perspectives helps us to appreciate the limitations in the prevailing international human rights protection system and the difficulties experienced by the Non-western states in implementing human rights norms. Besides discussing the non-Western perspectives of human rights in Chinese, Indian (Hindu-Buddhist), African and Islamic traditions, the paper argues that what should be universal is the idea or the concern for human rights in general and not a particular model of human rights.

Considerata la contiguità geografica-territoriale tra l'Afghanistan e le repubbliche ex sovietiche dell'Asia Centrale, i legami etnico-linguistici, storici, culturali e religiosi esistenti, un loro pieno coinvolgimento nel
processo di stabilizzazione e pacificazione dell'Afghanistan – soprattutto per quanto concerne le tre repubbliche direttamente confinanti di Uzbekistan, Tagikistan e Turkmenistan – potrebbe rappresentare un opzione di indubbia rilevanza geopolitica, considerando anche come la permanente condizione di instabilità
afghana alimenti pericolose minacce per la sicurezza delle repubbliche centroasiatiche.
Allo stesso tempo, tuttavia, pur essendo trascorsi venti anni dal raggiungimento dell'indipendenza nazionale, l'Asia Centrale post sovietica si caratterizza per una lenta implementazione dei processi di
democratizzazione, di sviluppo della società civile, della tutela dei diritti umani, del pieno e libero godimento dei diritti civili e politici per le popolazioni coinvolte. In realtà, nonostante questa tendenza sia
riscontrabile nell'intera regione, occorre evidenziare delle importanti differenze tra le nazioni: se da un lato Uzbekistan e Turkmenistan si connotano per una gestione del potere fortemente autoritaria – nelle quali il ruolo della società civile è marginale e circoscritto – il Kirghizistan si contraddistingue invece per un sostanziale multipartitismo e per la vivacità della società civile, il Kazakistan ha presieduto l'OSCE nel corso del 2010 (nonostante alcune riserve in materia di multipartitismo) mentre il multipartitismo che si è
affermato in Tagikistan ha determinato la condizione particolare di integrare all'interno dell'architettura politica statale il Partito della Rinascita Islamica. Le conseguenze connesse alla non piena implementazione di un processo di democratizzazione sono alla base di situazioni potenzialmente esplosive e di una latente conflittualità sociale, come la rivolta di Andijan nel 2005 in Uzbekistan e gli scontri nel distretto kirghiso di Osh tra Uzbechi e Kirghisi nel giugno 2010 (superficialmente qualificati come scontri etnici, ma legati
invece a problemi di rappresentanza politica e di godimento di diritti civili e politici per la minoranza uzbeca).
Obiettivo di questa ricerca sarà quella di valutare quali benefici e secondo quali modalità le repubbliche centroasiatiche possano essere coinvolte nel processo di ricostruzione democratica e sociale
dell'Afghanistan e quali effetti potrebbe produrre una condizione di pacificazione e stabilizzazione sull'intero arco regionale. In particolare, sarà analizzato se e con quali modalità le società civili di questi paesi
possano favorire processi di pace duraturi. La vicinanza storica, religiosa e culturale potrebbero infatti facilitare il diretto coinvolgimento di realtà non governative dell'Asia Centrale per favorire
l'implementazione di diritti umani, civili e politici, oltre allo sviluppo di una stessa società civile autoctona in Afghanistan.