Opening Ceremony of the Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP), provided by the Council of Europe, has been held at our Faculty on the 9th November.
Delivering her speech at the ceremony, Eva Pastrana – the Head of HELP Unit of the Council of Europe, introduced HELP, and stated that the trainings provided are very practical since they are online and free of charge. Further, they are prepared by the best experts in Europe.
Following Pastrana’s speech, the Head of the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Justice, Dr. Hacı Ali Açıkgül firstly talked about the progress our country has made in the field of law and human rights. In the context of the Judicial Reform Strategy Document and the Human Rights Action Plan; he stated that the focus would be particularly related to raising awareness with regard to human rights and developing training on this topic. Accordingly, Açıkgül stated that they are working closely with the HELP unit and added Turkey has the highest number of HELP users among 47 member countries of the Council of Europe. As referred by Açıkgül, currently, there is work in progress under HELP for lawyers, judges and prosecutors and for the first time with the AYBU Law Faculty cooperation, these trainings were presented to law students.
Delivering a speech at the ceremony, our Faculty Dean, Prof. Dr. Hayri Bozgeyik, stated that the European Convention on Human Rights, its additional protocols and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) cover almost every area of law; therefore, knowing the ECHR law well and applying this law properly is of vital importance for the applications to the ECtHR. In this direction, although it is justified in terms of substantive law, he emphasized that an application that did not meet the procedural requirements would be unsuccessful and Bozgeyik further stated that the trainings given within the scope of HELP would have a significant impact in this field.
Then, Bozgeyik stated that a rich system of rights and justice has also existed in our civilization for centuries and that the understanding of “Let people live so that the State can live” prevails in our civilization. He further added that the principle of “Procedure/method comes first” in the Mecelle is a part of the right to a fair trial in Article 6 of the ECHR, which was written one and a half century ago. Bozgeyik stated that it would not be right to leave aside the Farewell Sermon of 632 or other good examples when dealing with human rights today and underlined the need that an academic should benefit from every source without discrimination. Finally, it would not be correct to say that “the predecessor” and “the successor” are fundamentally alien to each other; Bozgeyik, however, stated that the legal experience, which has been built for centuries in the field of law, is either ignored or not read. Therefore, he expressed that he found HELP's work considerably useful in understanding and teaching the positive human rights.
Following our Dean’s speech, one of our faculty members, Dr. Ebru Demir, and Deputy Head of the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Justice, Muhammet Taha Büyüktavşan, made their presentations. And the ceremony ended after the Q&A session.
