From 'Infamy' to 'Capacity Building'? The Shifting of Anti-Torture Strategies and the Problem of Torture in Turkey

This dissertation aims to refine our understanding of anti-torture policies, by exploring globally circulating programs, strategies and policies deployed against torture and their configuration in Turkey. It argues that, since the end of the WW2, three distinct anti-torture strategies emerged. In the mid-1990s, anti-torture practices in Turkey shifted from a strategy based on naming and shaming towards a strategy based on prevention of abuses through improving the capacity of the police department.;Through a historical study of the problematization of torture it is claimed that while the legal abolition of torture has been the main formula developed in the Enlightenment period against the "infamy" of religious establishment, modern states went beyond this by adopting procedures of inquiry as the primary response to incidents of torture from the 19th century on. The study also identifies three distinct anti-torture strategies (constitutional, accusatory and preventive) in the post-WW2 era that are differentiated according to the way torture is conceptualized, the repertoire of tasks and the actors prioritized. While the constitutional strategy relied on legal professionals to maintain a moral consensus, the accusatory strategy relied on shaming and naming tactics and the preventive strategy conceptualized torture as a problem of bureaucratic capacity, seeking ways to enhance state capabilities.;By using the strategies as analytics, the study then focuses on the Turkish context. The study argues that the constitutional strategy has not been potent in Turkey, and the accusatory strategy has been neutralized by the state to a certain extent. By focusing on the shifting ways in which torture has been conceptualized in official circles, it is found that from the mid-1990s on, torture has been understood by the state actors less as a problem of personal cruelty and more as a problem of technical incapacity of the police. This shift paved the way for the state actors to adopt a preventive strategy to combat torture and the participation of the police in this strategy. It is also found that this shift has been facilitated by dynamics of police/military relations and augmented by the European Union twinning projects to improve state capacity in Turkey.