Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the G20 summit in Hamburg, July 2017. Matt Cardy/Press Association. All rights reserved.For a long time the Republic of Turkey has been associated with violations of human rights. Despite Turkey being a signatory to the fundamental conventions on human rights it has been unable to demonstrate stability as regards safeguarding these rights.
In the human rights sphere Turkey made progress with reforms that began with the European Union (EU) accession process that started in 1999, and advanced further with radical changes to the constitution in 2004 made with the participation of deputies from the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The harmonisation laws introduced as an extension of this process and of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) brought in at least developments on the normative level. However, these normative changes were not sufficiently reciprocated in practice and were not sufficiently internalised by public mechanisms, in particular the security forces.
The fact that in this period certain steps, albeit formal, were taken for a resolution of the Kurdish question raised hopes for peace in some circles. In this context great significance was attached to the constitutional amendments made in 2010, but the changes were unable to make a contribution to the resolution of age-old problems.
