Professor of Political Science and Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs, Turan Kayaoglu, recently published an interesting article titled "National Human Rights insitions and the Appropriation of Human Rights: The Case of Turkey's Human Rights and Equality Institution" alongside Devran Gülel. The article examines Turkey's establishment of the National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) or Human Rights and Equality Institutions of Turkey (HREIT).
The paper situates the HREIT case within a larger literature on National Human Rights institutions (NHRIs), which have emerged as critical instruments in the global human rights system. While previous studies have mostly focused on measuring the performance of NHRIs, Kayaouglu highlights the necessity to investigate cases where NHRIS is useless or involved in compromising human rights. He claims that, like in Turkey, NHRIs might be used by populist, right-wing administrations to appropriate human rights.
The full article can be found here.