When a State Gets Into the Houses of Its Citizens

When a state gets into the houses of citizens by Orhan Kemal Cengiz

Will Turkey enact a law allowing police to raid houses in which female and male students live together? I do not think so. Turkey cannot create these kinds of laws without changing the very foundations of the Turkish legal system and Turkey's international legal obligations.

Private life is under the protection of the Constitution; Turkey is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and so many others, all of which oblige Turkey to protect its citizens against state interference in private and family life. Therefore, without amending the Constitution and without annulling all the conventions to which Turkey is a party, you cannot introduce the legal provisions Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has spoken about. However, this does not mean that Erdoğan's remarks will have no consequences in the daily lives of Turkish citizens. Some “eager citizens” who wish to protect “moral values” in their buildings against those who maintain “indecent” lives have already taken action. The Radikal daily, for example, reported that in Üsküdar, following Erdoğan's statement, a warning sign was put up in the entrance of the building urging tenants to inform the police about women and men who live together in that building. And we read in this news report how a female university student who lives in that building was terrified when she read this warning. She happens to be the only single person in this building and it was clear that this message was just put there to intimidate her. I am sure we will hear many similar stories soon. The governor of Adana told journalists that “Erdoğan's words are instructions for us.” We can conclude from his statement that some “eager” governors and police officers will all be part of a harassment campaign against university students who live with members of the opposite sex together in the same apartment. Well, I had thought that the government and Prime Minister Erdoğan had drawn lessons from the Gezi protests and would change their direction, would interfere less in people's life, would stop playing the role of the father figure. I was mistaken. Erdoğan cannot put aside his patriarchal role -- his desire to create an “ideal citizen.” He cannot help imposing his moral and religious values on others. More here