Sweeping changes needed to combat widespread discrimination

Those who were perceived as threats were leftists, Islamists, Kurds and liberals. The education system, military system and recently the media have reinforced this discriminatory approach. Non-Muslims have been added to this list as the remnants of a rejected history,” Ayhan Aktar, a renowned professor of sociology, said in an explanation of the origins of discrimination in Turkey. He added that the prejudiced approach of state ideology was different from discrimination in society and should not be confused with the prejudgments or stereotypes a group or individuals hold regarding a certain group.

    “But to fight against both is the job of the system of law,” Aktar told Sunday’s Zaman. He said he did not feel discriminated against since he had never applied for any position in which he sensed his political views would be an issue. Unlike Aktar, many individuals or groups in Turkey do feel they are discriminated against based on their ethnic origin, belief, sect, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, age and political view, regardless of their social status in society.

    This week Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan revealed that his wife, Emine, had been denied entry to the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine (GATA) because she was wearing a headscarf.

    Erdoğan also added that he had had other bitter experiences in the past, but declined to talk about them publicly. “I have kept the refusal to grant my wife entrance into GATA a secret from the press for three years. I do not want tension in my country. We have experienced many other things, as well. If I were to talk about everything we have experienced, my country would not be able to bear the burden. I might mention them when I give up politics,” he remarked. In the same speech he also talked about a Roma mother who had told him that when her son started school, the other parents changed their children’s classroom.

    “I think there are only a few people in this society who never discriminate. A large part of society feels that they are discriminated against at some point in their life. To feel this way is the problem and the biggest shame of our democracy,” underlined Sezgin Tanrıkulu from the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TİHV).

    Tanrıkulu said he has felt discrimination many times in his life but the most significant occasion was in 1984 when he was asked about his ethnic origin while he was taking part in an oral examination to become an academic at a law faculty.

He says he was recently accused of being a discriminator as the chairman of the Diyarbakır Bar Association. They had published a Kurdish agenda and a prosecutor claimed that this move created difficulty for clients whose mother tongue was not Kurdish in applying to the bar association.

According to sociologist Mesut Yeğen, one of the sources of discrimination in Turkey lies in perceiving demands for equality as demands for privilege.

“People who are different from the dominant culture are not seeking privileges, they are after equality, but the current system is based on the suppression of differences. Secondly, Turkey has recognized some of the rights of non-Muslims, but only because it was forced to do so. The new demands for equality are also perceived as impositions,” Yeğen said. Although he has sometimes felt discriminated against, he thinks it is not appropriate to mention his personal case when a large part of society -- women, women with headscarves, Alevis, Kurds and many other groups are facing real prejudice.

He also stated that in Turkish culture inequality is generally considered normal because of the prevalence of patriarchy and the country’s Islamic heritage. However, the Turkish legal system does not counterbalance this situation.

Comprehensive legislation needed

Lawyer Özlem Altıparmak from Amnesty International Turkey argues that Article 122 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) regulates discrimination but the scope of the article is narrow.

Article 122 indicates that “anyone who practices discrimination on the grounds of language, race, color, gender, disability, political opinion, philosophical belief, religion, sect or similar reasons  and considers preventing the sale or transfer of personal property or real estate or the performance or enjoyment of a service or who makes the employment of a person contingent; withholds foodstuffs or refuses to provide a service supplied to the public; [or] prevents a person from carrying out ordinary economic activity shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of six months to one year or a judicial fine.”

But Altıparmak underlined that this article does not explicitly include sexual orientation or age but only says “other reasons” and it is highly debatable what the “other reasons” might be. She also underlined that when it comes to implementation, public prosecutors are not very enthusiastic about enforcing this article.

According to Altıparmak, many laws also mention concepts that contradict Turkish culture or general moral behavior.

“Such definitions can be the source of the discrimination,” Altıparmak said. She has felt discrimination when looking for work because most employers don’t hire people over the age of 30 or they inquire about her personal life and whether she plans to have any children in the future, something which employers frown upon.

Altıparmak indicated that the international regulations about discrimination are very comprehensive and many countries design their regulations on the issue in detail, while in Turkey, the issue is limited to one article. There are international regulations on discrimination such as Protocol 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Turkey is not bound.

She said Turkey signed this protocol in 2001 but has failed to ratify it. Turkey also has formal reservations about Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits all kinds of discrimination.

“Turkey needs to detail regulations and laws on discrimination,” Altıparmak said.

Öztürk Türkdoğan, chairperson of the Human Rights Association (İHD), thinks that the Constitution itself is one of the main sources of discrimination. He recalled that the headscarf ban was the decision of the Constitutional Court and said the fight against discrimination needs to be supported by the Constitution.

He also talked about the government’s plans to establish an institution to combat discrimination, but according to Türkdoğan, as long as the Constitution remains as it is, such a body will not be effective.

The government declared that within the framework of the democratization initiative launched to solve the decades-old Kurdish question, it would establish four institutions to improve human rights, one of which would be to fight against discrimination. The decisions and the reports of the institution will be binding but the draft bill for the institution has not yet been prepared.

“Well, maybe it will not be enough to combat discrimination but at least it will increase public awareness of the issue because it is very widespread and people are sometimes not aware that they are being discriminated against,” said Türkdoğan, who was discriminated against in his first years at school because he did not know Turkish. He added that his name and surname deepened this discrimination.

Self-propagation of discrimination

According to psychiatrist Selçuk Candansayar, there are two deep-rooted aspects to discrimination in Turkey, the first of which is not being aware of it.

“For example, for a position for which there is a male and a female candidate on equal terms, the man is chosen simply because he is male. If the woman is not aware of it, such discrimination is more harmful because if you are aware you might look for ways to deal with it,” explained Candansayar, who was denied the right to a dormitory when he was a student at a medical faculty due to his political views.

Secondly, he added that in a society, if there is a strong belief that discrimination is widely implemented, individuals who are not discriminated against might think that they are the victims of discrimination. Such a situation reproduces discrimination because those who think they are being discriminated against start to discriminate against others. The victims become the offenders and the circle continues. The only way to deal with it apart from through the law is through transparency,” Candansayar said.