Human Rights in Turkey

Freedom House provides an assessment of the political freedoms in different countries, and Turkey received a 3.5 on their rating system. The rating was assessed on a scale of 1 to 7-with 1 indicating a high rating of freedom and 7 a low level of freedom. There are different occurrences of violations of political rights and civil liberties that lead to a rating of 3.5 for Turkey. Much of the violations of human rights are the direct result of the institutional organizations and can be remedied through changes to the institution.

The featured instances are attributed by Freedom House as the reasons as to why Turkey’s freedom rating was not perfect. During the 2011 parliamentary elections, 12 of the candidates were not permitted to run and eight were detained for trial. There is noted high levels of corruptions within the government and Turkey is ranked 54 out of 176 by Transparency International in 2012.

Freedom of the press or speech is not fully guaranteed by the Constitution under Article 28, and in 2006 an antiterrorism law permitted jail sentences for journalists. Many of media outlets hold strong ties to political parties that influence the reporting of the news. News presented in Kurdish can be temporarily shut down by the government. Filters have been placed on the internet, and within a short-time of the placement of the filter a man was incarcerated for insulting the Turkish president on Facebook.

The freedom of religion is another highly controversial subject matter, as the state strictly adheres to secularism. Turkey does have a population of Muslims and because of the adherences to secularism by the government, men can be discharged from the military for observance and women are not allowed to wear their head scarf...

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...be resolved by dispersing the power of the government branches, which is difficult. Power that is split amongst the branches will need the cooperation of multiple branches in order to be effective at enacting the force of government. Turkey has unicameral legislature and remedying corruption could be done by creating a bicameral legislature that could have two house of close to equal power reviewing each other. A bicameral legislature can better represent the plural society of Turkey, and better representation of the minorities may remedy the violence that often follows the protests.

The judicial branch could use more autonomy from the other branches by having the financial budget become an agreement between the judiciary and legislative branch. Judges could be elected by the citizens to better represent their beliefs, which could reflect in the reviewing of laws.