The Issue of Basic Rights and Freedoms in Turkey-EU Relations from the 1980s to 2013

This paper aims to give an account of the legal progress in the sphere of basic rights and fredooms, which have been introduced in the past decade within the context of EU-Turkey relations, and to draw attention to the problems still waiting to be resolved. The sphere of human rights denote a wide area, therefore the scope of this paper has been limited to the rights and fredooms restricted for the sake of the state security and that have been subject to the resolutions of ECtHR. In this context, the first part of the paper will explain how the basic rights and fredooms became a major issue in Turkey-EU relations. The second part will consider the continuing rights and fredooms problems of the country with reference to the resolutions of the ECtHR and within the context of “the requirements of a democratic society’’.