Cavidan Soykan
Cavidan Soykan completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Essex. She has a background in political science and law as well. For her doctoral studies, she conducted a legal ethnography on the Turkish asylum system based on the experiences of asylum applicants from different backgrounds living in transit in Turkey. She worked at the currently closed down Human Rights Centre of the Faculty of Political Science of Ankara University for 12 years. She taught human rights at the undergraduate and human rights methods at the graduate level. She worked for an independent research company as a country-context expert for a UNICEF Turkey project on Syrian refugee children. She also completed a gender equality monitoring report on women refugees in Turkey with a colleague from Sabancı University for an EU funded project. She acted as a consultant for Dissensus Research's qualitative study on racism and refugees in Turkey in collaboration with Humboldt University in Berlin in February 2021.
From November, 2020 to December 2021 she was a virtual visiting fellow of IMIS at Osnabrück University.
Dr. Soykan is now a honorary fellow at the School of Political, Social and Global Studies of Keele University in the UK.
Her main research interests are feminist politics of forced migration, sociology of rights, sociology of law and critical disability studies.
From November, 2020 to December 2021 she was a virtual visiting fellow of IMIS at Osnabrück University.
Dr. Soykan is now a honorary fellow at the School of Political, Social and Global Studies of Keele University in the UK.
Her main research interests are feminist politics of forced migration, sociology of rights, sociology of law and critical disability studies.
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Tüm Sayının PDFsi için link: https://www.sosyaldemokratdergi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/127128129.pdf
sözleşmeye taraftır. Bu yüzden diğer BM sözleşmelerine bakarak pek çok hak çıkarmak ve o sözleşmelerin denetim mekanizmalarını bu ihlallere karşı kullanmak mümkündür.
Bu sözleşmeler ve onların denetim mekanizmalarıyla göçmen hakları ihlalleri konusunda atılabilecek çok fazla hukuki adım vardır. Örneğin, 2020 Şubat’ında Edirne-Meriç sınırında olanları hatırlarsak, Türkiye batı sınırlarını açtığını ilan etti ve binlerce göçmen ve mülteci Yunanistan-Türkiye kara sınırına yığıldı. Sonuçta iki kişi vuruldu, bir Suriyeli kadın kayboldu. Covid-19 pandemisi nedeniyle son bulan süreç boyunca başta yaşam hakkı ve işkence olmak üzere pek çok insan hakkı ihlali yaşandı.
Tüm Sayının PDFsi için link: https://www.sosyaldemokratdergi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/127128129.pdf
sözleşmeye taraftır. Bu yüzden diğer BM sözleşmelerine bakarak pek çok hak çıkarmak ve o sözleşmelerin denetim mekanizmalarını bu ihlallere karşı kullanmak mümkündür.
Bu sözleşmeler ve onların denetim mekanizmalarıyla göçmen hakları ihlalleri konusunda atılabilecek çok fazla hukuki adım vardır. Örneğin, 2020 Şubat’ında Edirne-Meriç sınırında olanları hatırlarsak, Türkiye batı sınırlarını açtığını ilan etti ve binlerce göçmen ve mülteci Yunanistan-Türkiye kara sınırına yığıldı. Sonuçta iki kişi vuruldu, bir Suriyeli kadın kayboldu. Covid-19 pandemisi nedeniyle son bulan süreç boyunca başta yaşam hakkı ve işkence olmak üzere pek çok insan hakkı ihlali yaşandı.
Considering that the Balkan Route has also become not a unidirectional journey towards Europe, but a "circuit" (Stojić Mitrović & Vilenica 2019) where people are "caught in mobility" (Hess 2011), we claim that Turkey is also a part of this circular movement by the cooperation with Bulgaria and Greece that involve "illegal returns," pushbacks, detention, and undercover border operations. The new form of governance of the country, i.e., the Presidency since 2017 allows Turkey to easily navigate between different roles: either as a transit country that lets people move on or a country that quasi-blocks the route according to its own national interests in return for a political incentive/advancement. In this regard, we will look at the socio-economic and political – hostility and hatred towards refugees – factors that have an impact on people's decision- making processes before they take this route from Turkey.
Using Turkey as a case study, we aim to show if and how feminist activism and its strategies to keep the Convention alive have had an impact on legal
practice. Women’s persistence to uphold the rights and values gained by the Convention has challenged the traditional treaty arrangements by enforcing a law that the State has withdrawn from. Feminists’ denial of the withdrawal creates new possibilities and new pathways of engagement with international law. A campaign called ‘The Istanbul Convention Keeps Us Alive’ initiated in 2019 by feminist organisations had a huge impact despite the pandemic restrictions and impediments. Since Turkey’s withdrawal from the Convention on 20 March 2021, social resistance formed new national and transnational alliances that aim for the annulment of this withdrawal. We will interview the representatives of established and newly-founded alliances; ‘We Will Stop Femicide Platform’ and ‘Women’s Platform for Equality’ that brought 300 women and LGBTI+ organisations together in 2020.
Since the 2016 failed coup attempt, Turkey’s asylum system has turned into an expulsion regime. The Syrian and the non-Syrian refugee populations in Turkey have been faced with the risk of legal or illegal removal from the Turkish territory based on (domestic or foreign) political interests of the ruling party, AKP. Turkey is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention as well as numerous UN Human Rights Treaties that ban refoulement. The banana case is not a one time only incident regarding the removal of Syrians. For instance, in 2019 more than 300,000 people were sent back to Syria under false pretences that the country was safe. That was the time for local elections in which AKP lost its long-term hegemony for Istanbul, the biggest city in Turkey. In this presentation, I will argue that due to the political and economic instability in the country, refugees are now used as an instrument and forced to leave for Syria by the AKP regime in order not to lose its twenty year long power in a possible snap election.
would be the best solution to provide basic social and economic rights to Syrians. This type of protection should guarantee the right to work and basic education for Syrian youth as well.
Cavidan Soykan, devletler tarafından yaratılan uluslararası göç politikalarının sunduğu “belirsizlik” ortamının, yine devletlerin lehine, ucuz iş gücü, muğlak statüler ve gelir eşitsizliği olarak geri döndüğünü anlatacak ve pandeminin tüm dünyada, göçmenlerin ekonomik, sosyal ve kültürel üretimlerinin sömürüsünü daha da kolaylaştırdığından bahsedecek. Tuba İnal Çekiç, dayanışmacı bir araya gelme pratiklerini, alternatif güzergahlar oluşturma olasılıklarını ve belirsiz koşullarla mücadele yöntemlerini, risk altındaki akademisyenleri desteklemek üzere yola çıkmış bir inisiyatif olan Off-University deneyimi üstünden aktaracak. Malaz Usta ise, kendi sinema pratiği üzerinden göçmenlerin deneyimini ele alan bir konuşma gerçekleştirecek. Türkiye’de yaşayan bir göçmen olarak, toplumun genelindeki göçmenleri ötekileştirme yönelimini ve nedenleri ve medyanın, bu dışlayıcı algının kurulmasındaki rolü üstüne sorular soracak.
Webinar Katılımcıları:
Moderatör: Simge Fıstıkoğlu
Zeynep Başarankut Kan - Birleşmiş Milletler Nüfus Fonu (UNFPA) Türkiye Temsilci Yardımcısı
Dr. Cavidan Soykan - Osnabrück Üniversitesi IMIS Misafir Araştırmacı
Av. Şahin Antakyalıoğlu - ÇAÇAv Genel Koordinatörü, ECPAT Derneği Genel Başkanı
Simay Sönmezateş - Erkekler ve Oğlan Çocukları Projesi, Proje Koordinatörü
M. Bahri Telli - Genç Mülteciler Destekleme Programı, Program Yöneticisi
The tendency towards policy-oriented research on refugees and migrants may connect to the short-term migration management goals of states and, in general methodological nationalism in social science. A critical stand rather should take social transformation as an interaction between global, national, regional, and local levels, while investigating the human agency of refugees and the way this agency interacts with macro-social structures.
Studies on refugees and migrants focus on understanding human experiences. Understanding these experiences requires an analysis of both the state and non-state actors' responses to forced migration that aim at alleviating human suffering and defending the rights of refugees. Acknowledging this fact brings the responsibility of undertaking research that aims to empower the agency of migrants and refugees. Only a theoretically informed bottom-up approach can empower refugees and migrants as agents.
This input was prepared by the Association for the Fight against Hypophosphatasia Disease to be submitted to the Higher Commissioner’s Office regarding its call on the situation of persons living rare diseases and their families and carers in Turkey.
Introduction
A. Common Problems of Patients,
Their Families and Carers
I. Problems related to the Late and/or
Wrong Diagnosis
II. After the Diagnosis
III. The Treatment
Stage
IV. Disability Issue
V. Key Human Rights Challenges
B. Structural Problems Related to the
Health System/Ministry
implementation of the 1951 Refugee Convention due to Turkey’s geographical limitation, international standards and norms that ensure gender equality and combat gender discrimination must apply to refugee women and girls and in some respects to LGBTI+ refugees in Turkey. Secondly, another objective of the report is to develop indicators specific to Turkey that are needed for monitoring this field according to the present legislation and the adopted public policies by civil society organizations. This will first facilitate the monitoring job of civil society organizations
in Turkey and strengthen their institutional capacity while ensuring equal access to rights by refugee women and girls; combating discrimination and ensuring gender equality for them. In addition, stronger advocacy work by civil society organizations will create opportunities for intervening to public policies regarding refugee women and girls and the cooperation with public agencies and institutions in the field.
The most fundamental argument of this work is as follows: Where asylum
legislation remains insufficient in protecting women and girls, in eliminating discrimination and in preventing sexual and gender-based violence, international human rights law must be immediately introduced and implemented.
ve mekanda hayat kurabilmelerinin ne derece ve nasıl mümkün olduğunu incelemeyi hedeflemektedir.
the number of people fleeing persecution. Some of these migratory flows headed to Europe
through illegal means such as smugglers and illegal border crossings. This made
the distinction between irregular migrants and asylum seekers blurry. As European
states formulated solutions for the problem of unwanted flows, the international protection
provided to asylum seekers was loosened for the sake of national security. In fact,
the short history of migration in the European context shows that asylum was never seen
as a problem as long as it was consistent with national interests. When the European
Union member states initiated a policy towards common immigration and asylum standards
for Europe, control tools and prevention mechanisms were prioritized against the
refugee protection. Due to abolishing the internal borders and having common external
borders for Europe, attention was directed to neighbouring countries and their asylum
and immigration practices. This paper will focus on the development of common immigration
and asylum policy for the EU and its effects on third countries with a special
emphasis on Turkey."
BVMN is hosting a webinar to explain precisely what this will look like in reality by looking at examples from Member States where they already exist.
Speakers and topics:
🔵Hope Barker- Overview of the Pact
🔵Eleonora Celoria from ASGI- Italy and Border procedures
🔵Marta Gorczynska from Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights- Poland and Instrumentalisation
🔵Minos Mouzourakis from Refugee Support Aegean- Greece and Screening procedures
🔵Dr Cavidan Soykan- Safe Third Countries in the APR, the EU-Turkey Agreement
Almost a year ago, tens of thousands of people started leaving Afghanistan in fear of the Taliban offensive. Their number increased after the Taliban insurgency took over Kabul on August 15th. Only a few thousands could be evacuated. As most international organizations left the country, Afghans were left to face an increasingly dire and unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis. Many found shelter in Pakistan and Iran. However, the two countries enforced ever-stricter border policies and even pushed refugees back to Afghanistan.
Do Afghans still have a path to safety? What is the situation of those who left the country and where can they find shelter?
We invite you to participate in discussing these matters in an online roundtable with experts from Afghanistan, Turkey, and the UK, who have first-hand insights into the situation of Afghan refugees.
If you are a journalist and interested in taking part, you can email us at: [email protected] until Wednesday, July 27th 2022.
Yaşanmış deneyimlere dayalı tanımlarla beslenen Omuz Sözlüğü, Omuz dayanışmasını yaratan koşulları tanımlamaya niyetlenmiş bir kelime dağarcığı. “Omuz Konuşuyor”, sadece kültür sanat alanı değil ama farklı alanlardan kişileri bir araya getirip, sözlüğün peşine düştüğü kavramları birlikte tartışmayı ve boyutlandırmayı hedefleyen bir konuşmalar dizisi. Omuz Sözlüğü var olan sorunlar çevresinde bir söylem üretme niyetini taşıyor ve biriken kelime dağarcığının bir mücadele aracı olarak işlev görebileceğine dair bir umut taşıyor.
Cavidan Soykan, devletler tarafından yaratılan uluslararası göç politikalarının sunduğu “belirsizlik” ortamının, yine devletlerin lehine, ucuz iş gücü, muğlak statüler ve gelir eşitsizliği olarak geri döndüğünü anlatacak ve pandeminin tüm dünyada, göçmenlerin ekonomik, sosyal ve kültürel üretimlerinin sömürüsünü daha da kolaylaştırdığından bahsedecek. Tuba İnal Çekiç, dayanışmacı bir araya gelme pratiklerini, alternatif güzergahlar oluşturma olasılıklarını ve belirsiz koşullarla mücadele yöntemlerini, risk altındaki akademisyenleri desteklemek üzere yola çıkmış bir inisiyatif olan Off-University deneyimi üstünden aktaracak. Malaz Usta ise, kendi sinema pratiği üzerinden göçmenlerin deneyimini ele alan bir konuşma gerçekleştirecek. Türkiye’de yaşayan bir göçmen olarak, toplumun genelindeki göçmenleri ötekileştirme yönelimini ve nedenleri ve medyanın, bu dışlayıcı algının kurulmasındaki rolü üstüne sorular soracak. Konuşmanın moderatörlüğünü Yelta Köm yapacak.
Halbuki ‘göçün otonomisi’ yaklaşımı, göçmenin failliğini, hareketin göçmen tarafından kullanılan bir kaynak olarak kabul edilmesini önerir. Göç, sosyal gücün sınırlandırmasının ve dağıtımının istikrarını bozucu ve hatta yıkıcı bir kapasiteye sahip, potansiyel olarak yaratıcı sosyal bir harekettir (Walters 2008). Hareketin sınır kontrolleri ile düzenlenmesi ise, vatandaşlığın dile getirilişinde ve kimin vatandaş olup olamayacağında kilit bir rol oynar. Göçün otonomisi yaklaşımı hareketi merkeze alır. Göçmenler bulundukları yerdeki varlıkları ile, bu ister şehir olsun, isterse de küresel bir mekan, hak talebinde bulunarak aslında vatandaş olarak eylemde bulunurlar. Analizimizin merkezine sınırı, ulus devleti, ve kontrollerini değil de, hareketi koymak göçmen failliğini ve bu failliğin politik yanını bize gösterir. Onları adaletsizlik ve eşitsizliğe karşı kolektif bir mücadelede bulunan politik özneler olarak görmemizi sağlar.
Online katılım için kayıt formu: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeTcTbClHUrFy0f1Li0e-2i7VZFD8_QDXgA2cF7a9gnxws02Q/viewform
For registration:
https://nyu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEvf-yqqTkpGNMGesBHktbNxdiJKgnAjSVc
Webster University Geneva's MENA Center for Peace and Development is pleased to announce that it is organizing a panel discussion with the participation of several experts on the important and timely topic. The panel will bring together perspectives on research regarding academic freedom, voices from scholars at risk, and activists who bridge academia with civil society through journalism and research. At the core of the discussion will be the dual obligation of universities and civil society to advance a global charter for academic freedom. The event will also aim to promote the explicit protection of academic freedom in international human rights treaty law.
This seminar series will cover a broad range of key issues related to contemporary Turkey and guest lecturers are experts in areas which are crucial to an understanding of the features of Turkey’s current transformation. These areas include the rise in authoritarianism and one-man regime, the replacement of secularism by religious institutionalisation and content, the refugee issue, urban transformation, to name a few. Each lecturer, including the organiser of the series, Dr. Bediz Yılmaz, is a scholar who has been dismissed from her/his position at a university in Turkey following the purge of Academics for Peace, a group of scholars who signed a petition that demanded the government to bring the violence towards Kurdish cities to an end.
Türkiye'de SMA hastalığı ile bilinirlilik kazanan nadir hastalıklar nedir önce ona bakalım. Görülme sıklığı nüfusun geneline göre çok az olan, hastayı güçten düşüren, ilerleyici ve sıklıkla kişinin hayatını tehdit eden kronik hastalıklar olarak tanımlamak mümkün.
Nadir hastalıkların 72% si genetik kaynaklı ve çocuklukta başlıyor. Ama benim tanım gibi otoimmün kaynaklı olanları ve nadir görülen kanser türleri de bu tanım içerisinde sayılıyor.
The adoption of this law was part and parcel of the EU membership for Turkey. With the expectation of having a full membership, Turkey fulfilled this requirement in the area of migration and asylum. However, Turkey’s membership process did not go smooth and the negotiations were suspended due to the Cyprus issue. For the EU side opposition to Turkey’s membership is still in place towards the end of 2022. The EU-Turkey Statement of 2016 that involved six billion Euros in return of stopping 'irregular' migration to Europe was also the role the EU wanted Turkey to play in the field.
After the failed coup attempt of 2016 and the changes in the Constitution in 2017, the President Erdogan has nearly gained the full control of the state. Turkey will have general and presidential elections next spring. The political opposition has started the election campaign and it is on the same page with AKP regarding only one issue: the fight against so-called irregular migration. There is no political debate on the current return and deportation policy of the Ministry of Interior. There is no pull factor by the EU regarding the membership, yet the Turkish state exactly follows the expected and the wanted policy of the member states and EU institutions.
Turkey is breaching its 1951 Convention obligations by returning newly arriving Afghans by charter flights on a daily basis and, forcedly deporting Syrian refugees to Syria. At the beginning of the Pandemic, it was like a political game between Turkey, Greece and the EU (Frontex) that the three of which would breach international human rights law. There were financial and political incentives for the AKP to stop or not to stop the migrants’ crossings to Greece in 2019-2020. At present the EU and Turkey politically drifted apart except the mutually beneficial, but at the same, the most controversial issue of 'irregular migration'.
The theme of the proposed International Research Collaborative (IRC) is the study of a particularly Global South phenomenon of scholars interloping between academia, praxis and activism. Although academia and praxis are often assumed to be operating in functional silos, in Global South, these spaces are structured in ways that necessitate innovation; thereby causing the scholar to ally with social movements or invest their energies towards the production of counterhegemonic knowledge and events which may not always be done through the traditional route of the academy. Research purely through the scholar-academic model loses sight of other sites of knowledge-production and interventions in the Global South. These scholars make strategic use of the law and provide important links between national and global institutional spaces and political processes that ultimately help advance movements or produce knowledge that is untethered from the imperial or authoritarian structures under which they operate. The role of such lawyers as agents, researchers and practitioners in the global South, therefore, ought to be understood against a complex backdrop of historical factors, professionalization and means of knowledge production. The proposed IRC presents an opportunity to bridge the hemispheric divide in understanding the phenomenon of the prevalence of these scholars and the field in which they operate across various geographical, sociopolitical and temporal contexts.
Savaşı’ndan sonra kabul edilen uluslararası insan hakları hukukunun en temel belgesi
BM İnsan Hakları Evrensel Beyannamesi’ne 14. Madde ile giren iltica hakkı, ‘herkesin
zulüm karşısında başka memleketlere iltica etmek ve bu memleketler tarafından
mülteci muamelesi görmek hakkına haiz olduğunu’ söylemektedir. Burada tanımlanan şekli ile iltica aramak bir haktır ama bu hakkın tanınması ve mülteci statüsü verilmesi
ulus devletin egemenlik yetkisine bırakılmıştır.
Buna rağmen, uluslararası insan hakları hukukundaki sözleşmelerden doğan denetim
organları, vatandaş olmayanlar açısından –giriş, ikamet, haklara erişim, sınırdışı edilmeden korunma- gibi geniş bir alanda zamanla bağlayıcı olan kararlar, tematik yorumlar ve ilkeler geliştirmişlerdir. Bunlardan en önemlisi de kaynağını uluslararası hukukta mutlak bir yasak olan işkence yasağından alan geri göndermeme -non-refoulement- ilkesidir. 2010’lu yıllara geldiğimizde ise artık insan hakları hukukunun bireyleri koruma adına devlet egemenliğine karşı daha fazla istisna getirdiğine tanık oluyoruz. Uluslararası içtihattaki gelişmeler, devletin geri göndermeme ilkesine uymasını sağlamanın ötesine geçip, ona artık birtakım pozitif ödevler de yüklemeye doğru evrilmiştir. Bunlardan başta gelen kazanımlara örnek olarak, kadınlar ve kız çocuklarının ‘hassas grup’ tanımı içerisinde yer alması ve vatandaş olmayanlara koruma amaçlı mültecilik dışında hukuki statülerin tanınması verilebilir.
However, migrants rights NGOs now claim that the proposed changes to migration and asylum system are deviating from the best human rights standards protected by the UN system, the European Court of Human Rights and the Fundamental Rights Agency for people on the move, i.e. potential asylum seekers. The proposals to be voted at the end of 2023 mean two things: more detention and faster deportation. Under the new Asylum Procedure Regulation, individuals whose applications are rejected based on another new Regulation called the Screening Regulation, would be directly send to return facilities. This takes us to the Greek example of pre-removal detention centers. While the formal deportation and return rates are steadily declining since 2018, it becomes irrational to adopt such a policy development in which there will be more unauthorized/irregularised people within the EU (Schengen)zone or most probably in detention. In the Greek case, although the readmissions to Turkey has been suspended since 2020, thousands of people continue to be detained and become stuck on the Hot Spots based on the notion of inadmissible application related to the safe third country concept (BVMN, September 2023). On the other hand, Turkey cannot be considered a safe third country for returns and readmissions according to the numerous human rights reports, such as the latest by the Medico International (August 2023).
There is a huge discrepancy between the new policy that will be put into place by the New Pact in early 2024 and the current reality on the ground regarding returns and readmissions. Looking at the Turkey-Greece readmissions, the cases of Italy, Malta and the North African countries as well as Libya regarding readmissions and returns, it is impossible to explain this manoeuvre of the EU with respect to human rights and for better migration management. The rationale behind this policy shift can only be explained by the political interests of some of the member states and the rising authoritarianism within the EU itself and the right-wing politics of its institutions.
This paper will look at these latest developments and analyze the New Pact with regard to third countries those deemed 'safe' for returns by taking the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement/Agreement as an example. The paper argues that the new changes the Pact brings will cause more pushbacks at the external borders and more people stuck in detention that will make returns less possible.