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Abstract
While the perspective of ‘liberalism of fear’ assumes that human rights limit the despotic power of the state, this paper argues that human rights reforms promoted in the context of institution- and capacity-building programmes have had significant power effects by enhancing the disciplinary capacities of the Turkish state and blunting the transformative potential of rights claiming. The reforms increased state surveillance by rechanneling criminal justice processes towards producing evidence (such as telecommunications data, DNA collection, etc) rather than testimonies. Instead of limiting state power, these reforms enhanced the disciplinary mechanisms of social control. They depoliticised the problem of torture by constructing it as an occupational accident (as opposed to a state crime) that happens because of lack of police officer know-how or resources for the investigation of crime. Finally, reforms revamped the way police investigated crimes, rather than launching campaigns against torture and dismissing past wrongdoers in the police. The paper concludes that the neoliberal emphasis on the technicalisation of political problems has limited the democratic potential of human rights reforms.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Louiza Odysseos and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this article. The usual disclaimer applies.
Notes
1. Neier, Taking Liberties, xxxiv (emphasis added).
2. Li, The Will to Improve, 2.
3. Ferguson and Lohmann, “The Anti-politics Machine,” 176.
4. Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
5. Souter, “Emancipation and Domination.”
6. Coleman, “The Making of Docile Dissent”; Odysseos, “Human Rights, Liberal Ontogenesis”; and Sokhi-Bulley, “Governing (through) Rights.”
7. Dean, Critical and Effective Histories, 17.
8. Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 154.
9. Çayır points out that human rights training programmes for civil servants were too short, had pedagogical drawbacks and often did not deliver the necessary skills to deal with real-life situations. See Çayır, “Tensions and Dilemmas.”
10. “Preliminary Note,” para 9.
11. European Commission, Regular Report, 2004, 34.
12. European Commission, Turkey Progress Report, 15.
13. Committee Against Torture, “Concluding Observations,” para 7.
14. The Turkish government was fined by the European Court of Human Rights for these allegations, while the police department defended the appointment. See Göktaş, “AİHM’den Türkiye’ye.”
15. For instance, see Hale, “Human Rights and Turkey’s EU Accession Process.”
16. For a Foucauldian perspective on the EU’s international government of states, see Merlingen, “Governmentality,” 362.
17. On contractualism, see Walters and Haahr, Governing Europe, 121–122. For an evaluation of the partnership aspect, see Bürgin, “Strategic Learning, Limited Europeanization.”
18. Kirişci, “Managing Irregular Migration in Turkey.”
19. Sallan Gül, Songül, “The Role of the State.”
20. Souter, “Emancipation and Domination.”
21. Arat, “Human Rights Ideology,” 919.
22. Weiss, Global Governance and the UN, 313.
23. ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect, 91.
24. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 315. For a historical example of international concern for internal order, see Liang, The Rise of Modern Police.
25. Hindess, “Citizenship and Empire,” 254.
26. Hindess, “Neo-liberal Citizenship,” 139.
27. See Duffield, “Getting Savages to Fight Barbarians”; and Escobar, “Displacement, Development, and Modernity.”
28. Brown, “‘The Most We Can Hope For...’,” 460.
29. Delegation of European Commission to Turkey, “Strengthening the Police Forensic Capacity,” 29.
30. On the notion of assemblages, see Latour, Reassembling the Social.
31. Cole, Suspect Identities.
32. Delegation of European Commission to Turkey, “Strengthening the Police Forensic Capacity,” 3.
33. Ibid., 12.
34. Kılıçgedik Budancir and Budancir, “Faili Meçhuller İçin DNA Bankası.” In an interesting twist the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TİHV) launched its own DNA database project to establish the identities of disappeared persons. This counter-expertise could possibly pave the way to deeper investigation of ‘state crimes’, suggesting the reversibility of DNA-typing technology.
35. In a well-known case a judge approved the wiretapping of his own mobile phone line, indicating that some judges do not read the request for authorisation but simply approve them.
36. See Letsch, “Turkish Police.”
37. Rose, Powers of Freedom, 33.
38. Bigo, “Security and Immigration.”
39. Topak, “Governing Turkey’s Information Society.”
40. For instance, the Minister of Justice apologised when a tortured activist died in prison. See Tait, “Turkish Minister Apologises.”
41. European Commission, Regular Report, 1998, 15.
42. European Commission, Turkey 2013 Progress Report, 50. Note that the UN Human Rights Committee considered police violence against protestors a violation of the prohibition against torture and ill-treatment. For one case, see Jelley, “Excessive Use of Force.”
43. For such a conceptualization, see Öktem, “Return of the Turkish ‘State of Exception’.”
44. Nowak, “On the Prevention of Torture,” 249.
45. Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Report on the International Convention, 3.
46. The CPT was founded in 1989 and made only seven Public Statements in its history.
47. CPT, “CPT Standards,” 15.
48. Hindess, “Citizenship and Empire,” 248.
49. For a critique of the notion of consensus, see Rancière, Dissensus, 54.
50. Weiss et al., The United Nations.
51. Delegation of European Commission to Turkey, “Strengthening the Accountability,” 12.
52. This attitude contradicts a UNDP study which found that accountability mechanisms were ‘deficient’. See Goldsmith and Cerrah, United Nations Development Programme, 4.
53. General JHA Expert Mission to Turkey, quoted in Delegation of European Commission to Turkey, “Strengthening the Accountability,” 14.
54. Delegation of European Commission to Turkey, “Strengthening the Accountability,” 4.
55. Ibid.
56. Delegation of European Commission to Turkey, “Improvement of Statement Taking.”
57. “Preliminary Note,” para 9.
58. UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Working Group, paras 28, 32, 59.
59. Li, “Practices of Assemblage,” 270.
60. Erdal, “Cezasızlık.”
61. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 222. Even scholars who seek to ‘reveal the radical and emancipatory characteristics’ of human rights concede that all ideologies may become conservative as they are implemented. See Arat, “Human Rights Ideology,” 906, 909.
62. Golder, “Foucault’s Critical (yet Ambivalent) Affirmation.”
63. Ibid., 290.
64. Sokhi-Bulley, “Governing (through) Rights.”
65. Foucault, “Governmentality,” 93.