Promoting Identities, Human Rights, and Democracy within Cycles of Politics: The Case of Turkey.

Human rights are closely linked to democracy and justice, but they are usually endorsed selectively. The paper explores the use of identities in claiming rights by the public, the state response to such claims in different political climates and the effects of selectivity on the prospect of human rights and democracy. It employs a historical approach and examines the discourse and practices of human rights in Turkey since the 1920s at the intersection of domestic and international politics. Contending that Turkish political system has been a volatile one, which fluctuated between identity and class politics as a response to the changing international politics and domestic forces, it attempts to identify the factors that brought certain rights to the forefront, which in return reinforced or hindered the advancement of democracy. Treating Turkey as a case study, the paper seeks an answer to a broad theoretical question: Which type of politics - identity or class politics - is more conducive to the advancement of human rights and stability of democracies? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]