The transformative impact of human rights conventions on Turkish law

Human rights are inalienable and inalienable rights that all human beings have solely by virtue of being human. After the devastating effects of the Second World War, it was realised that the protection of human rights was the essential element of ensuring international peace and states became parties to multilateral human rights conventions in order to achieve this goal. Especially with the human rights conventions drafted within the United Nations, the development of human rights, which have been fought for in history, has accelerated all over the world. This development was followed by the rise of regional systems such as Europe. Binding conventions also gave life to both UN supervisory mechanisms and regional courts such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Thus, international human rights law, which has become a functioning system, has had a transformative impact on domestic laws. The extent of this transformative impact varies between states. In Turkey, the steps taken for the protection of human rights intensified during Turkey's candidacy for the European Union. Critical reports of protection mechanisms established by human rights conventions at the international level, reports of protection mechanisms established for the protection of human rights at the regional level and court decisions were taken into consideration, and thus, changes and transformations were experienced both in the normative field and in legal policy in our domestic law. In addition to Turkey's accession to human rights conventions, Turkey's acceptance of the individual application jurisdiction of a regional human rights court such as the ECtHR has also been a factor of accelerating this process of change and transformation. This thesis firstly approaches the transformative impact of human rights conventions from a historical perspective and then analyses the transformations created by human rights conventions in the context of Turkish law.