gunduz-aktan-kitap-soyledikleri-ve-yazdiklari
gunduz-aktan-kitap-soyledikleri-ve-yazdiklari
gunduz-aktan-kitap-soyledikleri-ve-yazdiklari
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SÖYLEDİKLERİ VE YAZDIKLARI<br />
by the successi<strong>ve</strong> oil shocks brought about the collapse of the postwar<br />
socio-economic model together with it the European<br />
democratic left which having lost its original “raison d'être” either<br />
turned into liberal or assumed one of the three new vocations,<br />
namely pacifists, ecologists or human rights defenders.<br />
In the last role, for reasons not yet known to us, they identified<br />
themsel<strong>ve</strong>s mainly with the minorities and to a lesser extent with<br />
leftist ideological groups in other countries, especially in<br />
de<strong>ve</strong>loping ones, defending their minority rights as if fighting for<br />
their own survival. It is interesting to note that most of them<br />
avoided identifying themsel<strong>ve</strong>s with migrant workers who<br />
happened to be their immediate neighbours while minorities whose<br />
rights were defended happened to li<strong>ve</strong> in con<strong>ve</strong>niently far away<br />
lands.<br />
By identifying the European ultra-right with countries which<br />
were allegedly persecuting their ethnic or ideological minorities<br />
they tried to contain the growth of the former and fought for the<br />
respect of minority rights in the latter with an equal zeal.<br />
I stress, I don't claim that all NGO's and individual human<br />
rights defenders are motivated by the mental mechanism I ha<strong>ve</strong><br />
just described. Especially the young generation should be<br />
unaffected by these moti<strong>ve</strong>s unless they ha<strong>ve</strong> culturally inherited<br />
them. This analysis is inevitably a generalization.<br />
But, if it is correct with a reasonable margin of error, some<br />
conclusions can be drawn:<br />
Firstly, the activities of human rights groups focus in a lopesided<br />
manner on ideological and ethnic minority rights neglecting<br />
somehow other rights enunciated in the Uni<strong>ve</strong>rsal Declaration<br />
including the promotion of democracy and democratic institutions.<br />
Secondly, these activities are totally indifferent to the territorial<br />
integrity of the states, and to peace and stability in inter-state<br />
relations because these concerns ha<strong>ve</strong> nothing to do with the<br />
parameters within which their own internal mechanism and dri<strong>ve</strong><br />
operate.<br />
Thirdly, countries accused of minority rights violations having<br />
been identified with the European ultra-right cannot escape being<br />
Gündüz Aktan<br />
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