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A “Human Rights” of our own? Chinese and Turkish Encounters with a Western Concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Çağdaş Üngör
Çağdaş Üngör*
Affiliation:
Marmara University Faculty of Political Science, Turkey
*
Çağdaş Üngör, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Marmara University Faculty of Political Science, Anadolu Hisari-Beykoz, Istanbul 34820, Turkey. Email: cagdas.ungor@marmara.edu.tr
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Abstract

This article aims to compare the Turkish and Chinese reception of the “human rights” term, which enjoyed wide currency across the globe after the end of the Cold War. During the 1990s, as the global human rights discourse was embraced by dissidents in Turkey and China, the state elites remained skeptical of this concept, which was often perceived as a tool of Western imperialism. Unlike nationalists, Muslim and Confucianist conservatives saw some merit in the term “human rights” and discussed ways to appropriate it in their local contexts. In China and Turkey, “human rights” was often instrumental in promoting collective identities during the 1990s. Although the term's original emphasis on the individual somewhat disappeared in these countries, its embrace by various groups demonstrates that “human rights” discourse resonates with non-Western audiences.

Keywords

ChinaTurkeyhuman rightsdiscourse
Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 64 , Issue 3-4: Contesting Method and Theory between Europe and Asia: Asian Studies in Turkey , November 2017 , pp. 36 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2022

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