Introduction

Abstract

An investigation into Turkey’s many human rights issues, which might illuminate an understanding of their emergence and potential resolution, has never been approached sociologically from an explicitly ‘human rights’ perspective. Even prominent works of contemporary sociology, such as Michael Mann’s The Dark Side of Democracy or Stanley Cohen’s States of Denial, go little further than offering local accounts of the Armenian Genocide in an era when sociologists have become increasingly concerned with theories of globalisation. Elsewhere in the discipline, the ‘sociology of human rights’, which offers a broader point of theoretical departure, has only recently started to see consistent, though still rather fragmented, development. This book begins by identifying the source of this fragmentation and, through an associated development of contemporary theory, attempts a new ‘global’ account of human rights violation in Turkey.