The ifluence of the ILO conventions on national law and court decisions in the light of the amendments made in the article 90 of the Turkish constitutions

The notion of absolute, infinite and indivisible sovereignty that was closelyrelated to the idea of ?nation-state? mentioned in the constitutions until the mid 20thcentury. After the changes and developments in the economy and the field of humanrights sovereignty started to loose this status.The conventions, documents prepared by supranational institutions founded inaccordance with international agreements, the quality of those documents, thediscussions on the effect of these documents on the relation between national andinternational laws made these international conventions to be over national laws. Articlelike Article 90 of the Constitution is, so to speak, an obligation for every modernconstitution.The amendments made in the Article 90 of the Constitution with the Article 7 ofthe Law No 5170 on 7 May 2004 international laws and conventions raised into nationallaws as far as they are concerned with fundamental rights and freedoms: ?Internationalagreements duly put into effect carry the force of law?. In the case of a conflict betweeninternational agreements in the area of fundamental rights and freedoms duly put intoeffect and the domestic laws due to differences in provisions on the same matter, theprovisions of international agreements shall prevail. Even though after this amendmentsome problems related to judicial doctrine and procedures were solved we have to stressthat some other problems came out.It is certain that after this amendment the conventions of International LabourOrganisation (ILO) on fundamental rights and freedoms is going to affect our nationallaw. Besides subjective, negative interpretation there will be no need for furtherarrangement or changes in implementation of ILO conventions within the nationaljudicial procedures so far the convention is clear and distinct single incidents. But therewill be certainly some problems in the implementation of ILO conventions on thegrounds that the conventions are mainly on economic and social rights. At this point thejudges should make decisions relying on their opinions, but the tradition of Turkishjudiciary excluded giving the judges such an authority in the past. In order to makejudges able to act within this new framework all the lawyers, organs of judiciary, juristand all persons related to law should deal with and follow the decisions of internationalcourts taken in accordance with the international laws.Within this framework we firstly dealt with and tried to give a summary of thedefinition, history, and evolution of the notion sovereignty, development of the idea ofhuman rights, changes in and erosion of the notion sovereignty, the relation betweennational law and international law.Then we focussed on changes in the Article 90 of the 1982 Constitution thatregulates the relation between national law and international law.After this we examined ILO convention which is one of the ratified internationallaws, formation of ILO conventions, and the interpretations of Constitutional Court andHighest Administrative Court of ILO conventions.We also tried to expose how these conventions were interpreted by the courtbefore the amendment made in the Article 90 of the Constitution.Since constitutional amendment was restricted as ?international agreements dulyput into effect carry the force of law? we tried to deal with the possible future problemsand suggested some solutions.In the conclusion part of the thesis we focussed on the truth that as being thesource of international labour rights ILO conventions will affect our national law afterthe amendment in the Constitution and steps to be taken in order to make internationallabour standards to be a part of life in Turkey.Key Words: Sovereignty, International Law, National Law, Constitution Article 90,ILO, Silence of the Law