Avrupa İnsan Hakları Sözleşmesi ve Türkiye

This article comprehensively examines, as at its date of publication, the structure of the European Convention on Human Rights, the evolution of its supervisory mechanism, and the system's significant effects on the Turkish legal order.

Principal Themes

• The structure and reform of the Convention: the article introduces the Convention's mission of protecting fundamental rights and freedoms and the supervisory mechanism established for that purpose. The most important development highlighted is the reform effected by Protocol No. 11, in force since 1998: the old two-tier structure of Commission and Court was abolished, and in its place a single, permanently sitting European Court of Human Rights was established, to which applications are made directly — a change that accelerated and simplified the proceedings.
• Its place in Turkish domestic law: ratified by Türkiye, the Convention has become part of domestic law. Under Article 90 of the Constitution, in the event of conflict between statutes and international treaties concerning fundamental rights and freedoms, the treaty provisions prevail — a rule that gives the Convention a superior position in domestic law.
• Individual application and Türkiye's reservations: Türkiye's recognition, in 1987, of the right of individual application to the Court was an important step. The article draws attention, however, to the limitations attached to that recognition: that applications should cover only events subsequent to the date of recognition, that they should be confined to the rights contained in the Constitution, and geographical exceptions such as Cyprus.
• Conclusion and practical effects: the article closes by emphasising the Convention's importance for human-rights standards in Türkiye notwithstanding all deficiencies. The author points to the system's indispensability with the observation that leaving it "would be like breaking the thermometer that shows the fever instead of curing the patient". In practice, the Turkish high courts — the Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Court — have begun to reflect Convention principles directly in their decisions (the accused's right to a free interpreter, the presumption of innocence, and the like), demonstrating the Convention's concrete and positive effects on Turkish legal practice.