The Paradox of Rights-Claiming: The Case of Mazlumder in Turkey

Abstract

This paper investigates the dynamics of making group rights claims using individual human rights discourse in the Turkish public sphere. Group claims that invoke universalist discourses are paradoxical. While some groups demand group rights, they frame these demands in terms of universal human rights claims. This paper highlights this paradox by looking at the dynamics of making group rights claims using individual human rights discourse with an empirical case study from Turkey. The study looks at the case of Mazlumder which is an Islamist human rights association in Turkey. The paper uses the qualitative case study method based on in-depth interviews with members of the group. Three themes that highlight the paradox emerge from the research: the emphasis on the rights-based discourse, their anti-state rhetoric and their interpretation of democracy.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Roudy Hildreth, my doctoral advisor, for valuable feedback and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^[1] Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two concepts of liberty’, in Michael Sandel (ed.), Liberalism and its Critics, New York University Press, New York, 1984.

^[2] Wendy Brown, ‘Suffering rights as paradoxes’, Constellations, 7(2), 2000, pp. 208–229.

^[3] Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995; Iris Marion Young, ‘Polity and group difference: a critique of the ideal of universal citizenship’, Ethics, 99(2), 1989, pp. 250–274.

^[4] Amelie Barras, ‘A rights-based discourse to contest the boundaries of state secularism? The case of the headscarf bans in France and Turkey’, Democratization, 16(6), 2009, pp. 1237–1260.

^[5] Marc W. Steinberg, Fighting Words: Working Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth Century England, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1999.

^[6] Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, ‘Changing parameters of citizenship and claims-making: organized Islam in European public spheres’ [Special issue: Recasting citizenship], Theory and Society, 26(4), 1997, p. 511.

^[7] Ibid., p. 518.

^[8] Polyethnic rights are rights granted to immigrants by the host country.

^[9] John S. Dryzek, ‘Deliberative democracy in divided societies: alternatives to agonism and analgesia’, Political Theory, 33(2), 2005, pp. 218–242.

^[10] Ibid., p. 219.

^[11] Ibid., p. 225.

^[12] Faruk Birtek, ‘From affiliation to affinity: citizenship in the transition from empire to the nation-state identities’, in Seyla Benhabib, Ian Shapiro and Danilo Petranović (eds), Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007.

^[13] Ergun Ozbudun, ‘Turkey—plural society and monolithic state’, in Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan (eds), Democracy, Islam and Secularism in Turkey, Columbia University Press, New York, 2012, p. 61.

^[14] Birtek, op. cit.; Feyzi Baban, ‘The public sphere and the question of identity in Turkey’, in Fuat Keyman (ed.), Remaking Turkey, Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 2007; Bora Kanra, Democracy and Dialogue in Turkey: Deliberating in Divided Societies, Ashgate, Farnham, 2009; Rasim Ozgur Donmez and Pinar Enneli (eds), Societal Peace and Ideal Citizenship for Turkey, Lexington Books, London, 2011.

^[15] For further discussion on Western modernity, please see Rasim Ozgur Donmez, ‘Beyond state-led nationalism: ideal citizenship for Turkey’, in Rasim Ozgur Donmez and Pinar Enneli (eds), Societal Peace and Ideal Citizenship for Turkey, Lexington Books, London, 2011.

^[16] Sena Karasipahi, Muslims in Modern Turkey: Kemalism, Modernism and the Revolt of the Islamic Intellectuals, I. B. Tauris, London, 2009, p. 77.

^[17] Barras, op. cit.

^[18] Baban, op. cit.

^[19] Ibid.

^[20] Birtek, op. cit.

^[21] Ozbudun, op. cit., p. 61.

^[22] Donmez and Enneli, op. cit., p. 5.

^[23] Baban, op. cit.

^[24] Ozbudun, op. cit.

^[25] Ayla Gol, ‘The identity of Turkey: Muslim and secular’, Third World Quarterly, 30(4), 2009, pp. 795–811.

^[26] Yildiz Atasoy, ‘Two imaginaries of citizenship in Turkey: the republican and “ethical” models’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 24, 2011, p. 120.

^[27] Ibid.

^[28] Engin Isin and Patricia K. Wood, Citizenship and Identity, Sage, London, 1999.

^[29] Murat Akan, ‘Contextualizing multiculturalism’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 38(2), 2003, pp. 57–75.

^[30] Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat (ed.), Human Rights in Turkey, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2007.

^[31] Barras, op. cit.

^[32] Berlin, op. cit.

^[33] Isin and Wood, op. cit., p. 32.

^[34] Ibid., p. 19.

^[35] Ibid., p. 20.

^[36] Jacob T. Levy, ‘Classifying cultural rights’, in Will Kymlicka and Ian Shapiro (eds), Nomos XXXIX: Ethnicity and Group Rights, New York University Press, New York, 1997.

^[37] Kymlicka, op. cit., p. 26.

^[38] Ibid., p. 27.

^[39] Ibid., p. 30.

^[40] Ibid., p. 31.

^[41] Brown, op. cit., p. 239.

^[42] Ibid., p. 232.

^[43] Young, op. cit., p. 251.

^[44] Ibid.

^[45] Ayse Kadioglu, ‘Civil society, Islam and democracy in Turkey: a study of three Islamic non-governmental organizations’, The Muslim World, 95(1), 2005, pp. 23–41.

^[46]  < www.mazlumder.org> (accessed 15 June 2013).

^[47] Ibid.

^[48] Ibid.

^[49] Alliance of the Virtuous is a 7th-century pact established by various Meccans, including the prophet Mohammed, which draws attention to respecting the principles of justice, and collectively intervening in conflicts to establish justice. This pact holds significance in Islamic ethics.

^[50] I used both the organization's website and the interviews I conducted in 2011 with members of Mazlumder to collect the main issues of interest for the organization.

^[51]  < www.istanbul.mazlumder.org> (accessed 4 June 2013).

^[52] ‘İslami Kurulu¸lardan “E¸cinselliğe” Ortak Tepki’, 23 March 2010,  < http://www.ozgurder.org/news_detail.php?id = 1354> (accessed 10 March 2012).

^[53] Barras, op. cit.

^[54] Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow, Interpretive Research Design: Concepts and Processes, Routledge, New York, 2012, p. 46.

^[55] Steinar Kvale and Svend Brinkmann, InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing, Sage, Los Angeles, 2009, p. 17.

^[56] This points us to an interpretive methodology which orients towards multiple, inter-subjective truths about the social world (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, op. cit., p. 4). Qualitative research uses an inductive logic of inquiry from the particular to the universal which means observation of instances may lead to general laws (p. 27). Interpretive research uses a third logic of inquiry called abduction. Abductive logic of inquiry starts with a puzzle or tension and aims to find possible explanations for it. In abductive inquiry, ‘the researcher's thinking is led in an inferential process from the surprise toward its possible explanations’ (p. 28). Thus, the researcher tries to come up with interpretation that makes sense of this puzzle. The paradox of Mazlumder's individual appeal to group rights fits this type of abductive inquiry. Unlike the inductive reasoning, abduction starts with a puzzle and continues with a search for possible, context-specific explanations—not general laws (p. 28). Interpretivists understand human beings not as objects but as agents who actively and collectively construct their social worlds, societies, cultures. At the same time, these contexts ‘frame agents’ possibility for thought, discourse and action' (p. 46). This idea fits well with my discussion of the constraints of the liberal state and how it shapes actors' actions. Furthermore, how political actors construct their world and give meaning to different concepts have political consequences. Questions posed by Wedeen such as ‘what terms like democracy and religion mean to political actors who invoke or consume them, and how these perceptions might affect political outcomes’ is especially fitting to this study (see Edward Schatz, Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009).

^[57] Kvale and Brinkmann, op. cit., p. 222.

^[58] Ibid., p. 222.

^[59] On 28 February 1997, the military forced the Islamic coalition government to resign. What followed was a witch-hunt to imprison and punish people and organizations which supported that Islamic government. During this period, Mazlumder's offices were raided by the police.

^[60] Brown, op. cit.

^[61] Barras, op. cit.

^[62] 28 Subat is a 1997 military memorandum which ended up imprisoning many Islamic journalists, thinkers and scholars. Also, see Turkey Human Rights Report 2011, < http://www.mazlumder.org/webimage/turkiye_raporu_24tem%281%29.pdf> (accessed 20 June 2014); and < http://istanbul.mazlumder.org/main/faaliyetler/basin-aciklamalari/1/av-kaya-kartal-turkiyede-350yi-askin-mahpus-islami-icerikli-davalar-sebebiyle-cezaevlerinde/11094> (accessed 20 June 2014).

^[63]  < http://www.nasname.com/a/mazlumderden-anlamli-dava> (accessed 6 January 2013).

^[64] Barras, op. cit.

^[65] Kemalism is a set of ideas and norms that are attributed to the founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. For a detailed description of this ideology, see Sukru Hanioglu, Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2012.

^[66] Robert Dahl, On Democracy, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 38 and 85.

Additional information

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Bihter Tomen

Bihter Tomen is a final year doctoral candidate at Southern Illinois University. She completed her BA at York University in Toronto and her MA at University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. She was born and raised in Istanbul.