'Radical' shift in Turkey's judiciary

Looking at such basic principles as property rights, freedom of association, and prohibitions against torture, the program brought European legal experts to Turkey to train a core group of 225 judges and prosecutors who are now in charge of instructing their colleagues.

The program is one of several initiated over the past year that have attempted to familiarize Turkish judges, prosecutors, and policemen with international human rights standards.

Many experts say these programs reflect a change in how the Turkish state is starting to view international laws and standards.

"Turkish judicial circles had always kept a sort of nationalistic approach to international human rights law, but there is a change," says Turgut Tarhanli, director of the Human Rights Law Research Center at Istanbul Bilgi University, which has taken some 60 judges and prosecutors to legal seminars in Sweden and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

"They are now starting to look at cases through a human rights lens," he says. "There are still problems, but a real change has started."

Turkey's human rights record, eroded for years by charges of torture, police brutality, and questionable legal proceedings has been shaped by the country's turbulent recent history.

A 1980 military coup led to a new constitution that enshrined state order over individual rights. During the bloody fight in the 80s and 90s against the militants of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Turkey's courts were often used as a weapon in that battle.

"In criminal law cases or civil law cases, mainly during the era of struggling against the PKK, the national interests of the state were a priority over the rights of the individual," says Mr. Tarhanli.

But Turkey's hopes of joining the EU, as well as pressure from the US and the country's own civil society organizations, have changed the legal landscape.

"At the state level there was no way [Turkey] could go on with the old regulations," says Mrs. Gural, whose organization began training jurists and policemen on international human-trafficking laws this year.

Human rights activists point out that structural problems still remain, with cases of torture and freedom of expression violations still reported in the country. An EU report last year found that parts of the judiciary still do not always act "in an impartial and consistent manner."

Tarhanli says "black holes" still exist in Turkish daily judicial work. Training programs in human rights law are a start, but he says a critical test is for the country's judges and prosecutors to take what they have learned and apply it in the cases that come before them.

"The most important thing is to what extent can judges and prosecutors use these international instruments of law in their daily work?" he says. "To what extent can they use the knowledge they got in this training?"

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