HUMAN RIGHT ARE DISCUSSED AT IZMIR UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS
Department of International Relations and European Union lecturer Asst. Prof. Devrim Sezer was the moderator of the panel the participants of which were Prof. Dr. Mithat Sancar from Ankara University, Prof. Dr. Fatmagül Berktay from İstanbul University, Assoc. Prof. Cem Deveci from Middle East Technical University, Asst. Prof. Dicle Koğacıoğlu from Sabancı University and Prof. Dr. Arus Yumul from Bilgi University.
Prof. Dr. Mithat Sancar participated in the panel with a paper on “From Authoritarian Modernism to Democratization: Conflicting Dinamics”. Sancar focused on the similarities in modernization experience in especially Germany, Russia and Turkey. He pointed out the political conditions of inversion of the modernization adventure that he calls “authoritarian modernization” into the process of democratization.
The speech of Prof. Dr. Fatmagül Berktay on social gender and women studies in Turkish political life was entitled “Why Human Rights of the Women?”. Berktay stated that the concept of “Universal human rights” was on an abstract human apprehension which was dateless and asexual, and emphasized that the discrimination that the women experience can be defeated by fighting for women rights.
Assoc. Prof. Cem Deveci examined the concept of security which came to the fore in public discussions in his paper entitled “Different Conceptualization of Security and Human Rights Norms”. He stated that since Thomas Hobbes, the concept of security meant the security of the individuals in political philosophy. Deveci said that the concepts like “government security” or “national security” were derivative and meaningless concepts and they also had a dark side since they implied that they could discard individual freedom and human rights norms in some cases.
Asst. Prof. Dicle Koğacıoğlu attended to the panel with a paper on how the phenomenon named “honor killing” in the public was perceived and examined by different institutions. She said that the “discourse” about honor killings largely suffered from ethnic discrimination. Koğacıoğlu underlined the fact that the argument that says honor killings were peculiar to specific regions and ethnic culture were directly said or implied in public discussions. Trying to get rid of the social and political burden of discriminations directed to women and violation of human rights by transferring them to a specific ethnic group or geographical region results in splicing two different discriminations and factionalizes.
The title of the paper of the last speaker of the panel Prof. Dr. Arus Yumul was “Citizen and Minority Rights”. Yumul argued that non-Muslim minorities in Turkey were never regarded as equal citizens. Yumul named the increasing interest in ethnic diversity and history, “local tastes” and the music and culinary culture of the minorities as “boutique multiculturalism” and said that the discrimination directed to minorities and the ones “factionalized” could be cleared only by historical, social and political showdown and confrontation.
