"Turkey, EU and the International Criminal Court
Cenap Cakmak
Turkey has made substantial improvements in the field of human rights over the last decade. Especially, during the current administration that took the Office after a striking victory in the elections in November 2002, very important reforms were introduced. The progress Turkey has made in the field of human rights was so astonishing that the country is rarely mentioned as serious violator of human rights in reliable human rights reports released by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and State Department of the United States. Although those reports still refer to some human rights violations in Turkey, it seems that they, too, acknowledge that those violations are not systematic, very small in number and not very serious when compared to such serious violations as torture. Particularly, the abolishment of death penalty and the constitutional amendments that recognize the superiority of international human rights norms in case those norms and domestic legal rules are in conflict are very important steps that will change the Turkish state�s fame as a human rights violator. "
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