Cenap Cakmak

The decision, made at the end of the process by which an ad hoc committee and six preparatory committee meetings had been held, to convene a multilateral conference to discuss the issue of creating an International Criminal Court (ICC) with a permanent seat and inherent power to address the most egregious crimes was surely a huge success. Yet, at the outset of the conference, a number of unresolved issues still caused a great deal of skepticism over the prospect of the court as envisioned by the civil society actors.

One important and striking strength of the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) is that it contained no provision referring to reservations, exceptions, or derogations. Many international treaties codified in the field of human rights recognize states’ rights to derogate from certain provisions. Even if there is no general clause of derogation or exception, nearly all international treaties and conventions include reservations that are annexed or attached to them by the signing or ratifying states.

The United Nations has failed to effectively address the international crimes committed  in the Former Yugoslavia during the civil war that broke out in early 1990s. The UN had a difficult test when it failed to both take effective measures to prevent the clashes and prosecute the perpetrators of the war crimes committed in the combat zone. The UN, which has remained passive and inactive during the conflict, paid particular attention to considering political balances rather than the pursuit of justice. To this end, it adopted a reluctant approach towards the International  Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) set up to prosecute the war criminals in Former Yugoslavia. The success stories of this tribunal may be attributable to the indespensable role played by the non-state actors which remained committed to the collection of war crimes evidence from combat sites. Civil society actors also took an aggressive stance during the hearings before the Tribunal, which issued pathbreaking  rulings that gave a new direction to international criminal law.

It could be argued that the failures to create an international judicial body that would be empowered to prosecute war criminals over the course of the nineteenth century, which witnessed the outstanding impacts of the Industrial Revolution on arms technology, significantly contributed to the outbreak of World War I. Although it is not possible to prove that point with certainty, it is clear that power politics and the struggle between nations over sharing the world’s economic and strategic assets were the major reasons for the war. The fact that the warring parties largely ignored the sanctity of human life led to a deadly war.

At the beginning of the conference, the International Committee of the Red Cross urged the delegations in Rome to adopt a statute that would not provide a jurisdictional regime based on state consent; otherwise, the president of the committee warned, the Geneva Conventions would have been seriously weakened. However, it soon became clear that the governments were not willing to give up on state consent so easily. The United States in particular appeared very eager on this matter from the very beginning. In addition to state consent, the United States also favored a regime that would rely on the extensive functioning of the UN Security Council.

Initial attempts to create a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) in the 1990s were made by the International Law Commission (ILC). However, the ILC’s concrete efforts and subsequent proposals were weakened by the UN General Assembly, which, rather than calling for a multilateral diplomatic conference, decided to establish an ad hoc committee that would be charged with studying the issue further. This was especially shocking and disappointing for a select group of NGOs that had been following the deliberations concerning creating an ICC.

An objective of this study is to shed light on how states, as parts of an international community, behave under certain circumstances, and how the interaction between them affects political outcomes on the international stage. This investigation makes particular reference to the case of the Arab Spring, a wave of uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that in some parts culminated in regime change and political transformation. Keeping this particular objective in mind, this book focuses on how, for instance, intergovernmental organizations, major powers and regional actors responded to the Arab Spring.

This chapter begins with an overview of contemporary counterterrorism (CT) policies in Germany. The general focus in CT has been on domestic elements up to 2001; but Germany has shifted its attention from domestic level to global terrorism since the September 11, 2001 (the infamous 9/11 attacks). The primary reason for Germany’s eagerness to wage a war against Islamist fundamentalism is the belief that there were many Islamist extremists in situation in and across Germany and they were believed to be enjoying the liberal environment and extensive rights and freedoms, which facilitated al-Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11. A discussion is made of the change in the direction of CT policies in Germany and the current outlook in the field of CT more generally. The chapter moves forward by presenting an analysis of Germany’s activism in its fight against global terrorism. Unlike the country’s Cold War and post–Cold War period stance, Germany adopted an ambitious position to address growing threats posed by terrorism beyond the domestic and regional levels. In the period since the 2000s, Germany has demonstrated unprecedented activism in the domain of CT. This activism involves at least five main strategies: (1) identifying and prosecuting terrorists; (2) dealing with social, economic, and cultural causes of terrorism; (3) assisting other countries facing a danger of collapse and failure; (4) reliance on the EU for multilateral legitimization; and (5) addressing radicalization and extremism processes in fight of terrorism. Addressing these strategies also requires taking into consideration the way Muslim communities in Germany are affected by growing CT measures. Germany is known for broad constitutional and legal rights recognized for both citizens and foreigners, and for its subscription to human rights mechanisms. However, unlike the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), Muslims in Germany have expressed feelings of alienation despite having been able to exercise their rights. Muslim communities who failed to integrate within German society and feel part of the German social and political life, despite recognition of their rights and freedoms, were further alienated by the shifted attention to Islamist extremism and concrete measures to deal with so-called Islamist terrorism. Germany’s response to global terrorism and to the root causes of terrorism in domestic level includes some cliche and predictable strategies that suggest a flawed CT strategy. It is observed that this strategy failed to consider the sensitivities of Muslim peoples in Germany. The situation has become quite delicate with a growing number of German people expressing the view that tolerance towards Muslims, via recognition of their rights under German laws, contributed to the increased activities of Muslim radicals; on the other hand, reliance on CT measures that could offend Muslims would not properly address the problem.

The world’s failure to introduce satisfying remedies to prevent future atrocities such as those committed during World War I could surely be considered one of the leading contributors to the deaths, enormous in amount and horrifying in type that occurred during World War II. It could be argued that if some effective measure had been taken in the immediate aftermath of World War I, there would have been no appalling massacres such as the Holocaust as late as the 1940s, when the world was much more civilized in many respects but equally ignorant of large-scale crimes committed against the human race.

Like many other regional and global actors, the USA was caught unprepared by the Arab Spring, a series of popular protests in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that culminated in the overthrow of the long-standing authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and also led to some major changes in others (Goodwin, 2011, pp. 452–456). Whereas political change and transformation in the region have been favored and occasionally zealously supported by US administrations, an Arab Spring-like popular movement had long been ruled out because the political environment appeared to lack the necessary dynamics and political ground. This assumption, often presented as a bias and a stereotype, was justified by referring to the alleged absence of popular demands for democracy and of an organized political opposition (Tessler, 2002). In other words, the assumption suggested that even though, by way of speculation, they were displeased with their repressive regimes, the people in the region never had the necessary mechanisms and instruments to convey their demands to the political domain. The Arab Spring that started in Tunisia when a street vendor committed self-immolation in protest of the dire economic conditions at least partially proved this assumption wrong (Babacan, Hasṃlak, & Hira, 2011).

One of the most debated issues concerning the International Criminal Court (ICC) is that whether it constitutes a major threat to the international system that is based on the principle of national sovereignty. Relevant to this is also that whether the Court will be able to succeed to implement its mandate, given that states would strongly seek to retain their sovereign authority. Therefore, as one observer puts it clearly, “perhaps the central issue facing the ICC is its effect on sovereignty.”

It has been a fashion among students of international relations and international law, as well as strategists, analysts, and pundits of all types, to refer to the end of the Cold War as a significant historical turning point, the beginning of an abrupt and remarkable transformation in world politics, and a clear departure from the previous international political and economic order. Numerous terms were coined in the context of adequately explaining this new tendency.

The discussions at Rome Conference revolved around three major issues and aspects that were relevant to the future court. The first was the issue of trigger mechanism and the court’s jurisdiction, which was closely related to the fairness and effectiveness of the future court in that if the states or the UN Security Council had been given determinative roles in submitting cases before the Court, it would have been an “alibi” court. Most issues that were relevant to the issue of jurisdiction had already been resolved even before the inauguration of the conference.

The codification of international treaties pertinent to such areas as human rights, environmental problems, poverty, and women’s rights are quite appropriate for a better and larger involvement of civil activist groups. The contribution of NGOs, social movement organizations, religious groups, etc., might sometimes be substantial in the cases where the aforementioned issues are discussed, as those issues are very sensitive, and directly related to human beings; thus draw significant attention and a growing interest from the peoples of the world.

Self-determination still remains a vague and controversial term in both international legal scholarship and the political science literature. Attributed either a fairly negative or positive connotation, the concept, for this reason, suffers from analytical inadequacy in the academic discussions. Proponents, from either a moralistic or legalistic perspective, often tend to view it as an absolute and inherent right that particularly ethnic minorities can and should exercise. Opponents, on the other hand, are of the opinion that the notion, in fact, refers to a very ambiguous legal and political framework that it cannot serve as a basis for any nationalist or ethnic aspirations for full or partial independence, autonomy, or further recognition as a separate entity within a certain political sphere of authority. These two extreme approaches have so far been raised in both popular and academic debates in the case of the political rights of the Kurds, including the right to self-determina...

The United Nations (UN) is the centerpiece of global governance and represents an advanced institutional form of international cooperation. In addition, it is an extension of the willingness of independent states to form an international society, serving as a major source of norm-making and norm implementation. A complex system of interstate interactions in terms of institutional structure, as well as a collection of intergovernmental organizations, the UN is tasked to play different roles in international politics. Its powers and missions are also extremely diverse, both in terms of scope and in terms of their binding effect upon members of international society.

Bilge Strateji, Cilt 1, Sayı 1, Güz 2009 54 Bilge Strateji, Cilt 1, Sayı 1, Güz 2009 RUSYA'NIN GÜNEY OSETYA POLİTİKASI, NEO-SELF DETERMİNASYON VE UCM'NİN ROLÜ South Ossetia Policy of Russia, Neo Self-Determination, and the Role of ICC Cenap ÇAKMAK1 Özet ...

Page 1. 69 Turkey's Constitutional Court occu-pies a central and controversial place in Turkish politics and in Turkey's legal system. Its role and functions have attracted different reactions and responses, both within Turkey and beyond. ...

In a recent book, WRMead refers to the four major schools of thought that have affected the foreign policy making process throughout American history. These schools, Mead argues, have constituted “the basic ways of looking at foreign policy” until now. 'Hamiltonians' seek a close alliance ...

This study extensively reviews the EU Law curriculum in Turkish higher education institutions and further draws conclusions on the state of this curriculum as compared to the general EU courses. Based on the findings and the conclusions, the authors then discuss the factors for the inertia to place greater emphasis upon teaching the EU Law with reference to how Europeanization has been understood and interpreted in Turkey. The findings suggest that the reforms have not been appropriately backed by the curriculum and that Turkey has acted in conformity with its own peripheral agenda rather than committing itself strongly to internalize the EU legislation and incorporate it in its entirety into its legal domain.

Sažetak Formation of the Coalition was not the culmination of a long-planned journey undertaken by the NGOs. Instead, it was an immediate response and initial reaction of civil society sector to the reluctance and indifference of states and intergovernmental organizations to the ...

This book offers a historical presentation of how international criminal law has evolved from a national setting to embodying a truly international outlook. As a growing part of international law this is an area that has attracted growing attention as a result of the mass atrocities and heinous crimes committed in different parts of the world. Çakmak pays particular attention to how the first permanent international criminal court was created and goes on to show how solutions developed to address international crimes have remained inadequate and failed to restore justice. Calling for a truly global approach as the only real solution to dealing with the most severe international crimes, this text will be of great interest to scholars of criminal justice, political science, and international relations.

This book offers a historical presentation of how international criminal law has evolved from a national setting to embodying a truly international outlook. As a growing part of international law this is an area that has attracted growing attention as a result of the mass atrocities and heinous crimes committed in different parts of the world. Çakmak pays particular attention to how the first permanent international criminal court was created and goes on to show how solutions developed to address international crimes have remained inadequate and failed to restore justice. Calling for a truly global approach as the only real solution to dealing with the most severe international crimes, this text will be of great interest to scholars of criminal justice, political science, and international relations.

This expansive four-volume encyclopedia presents a broad introduction to Islam that enables learning about the fundamental role of Islam in world history and promotes greater respect for cultural diversity.

One of the most popular and widespread religions in the world, Islam has attracted a great deal of attention in recent times, particularly in the Western world. With the ongoing tensions in the Middle East and a pervasive sense of hostility toward Arab Americans, there is ever increasing need to examine and understand Islam as a religion and historical force. Islam: A Worldwide Encyclopedia provides some 700 entries on Islam written by expert contributors that cover the religion from the birth of Islam to the present time. The set also includes 16 pages of color images per volume that serve to illustrate the diverse expressions of this important religious tradition.

Each entry begins with a basic introduction, followed by a general discussion of the subject and a conclusion. Each entry also features a further readings list for readers. In addition to supplying a comprehensive, authoritative overview of Islam, this work also specifically addresses many controversial related issues, including jihad, violence in Islam, polygamy, and apostasy.

Features
Comprises concise, jargon-free entries written by experts in their fields, providing readers with accurate viewpoints that cut through the bias and controversies regarding most Islamic concepts
Supplies an authoritative introduction of Islam to Western readers that addresses the subject from historical, geographical, conceptual, and personal perspectives
Provides students with a current bibliography
Features color inserts with 16 pages of compelling images from Islam around the world in each volume
"Where the encyclopedia really shines is its coverage of ethical and religious topics, like Adultery, Eternity, Inspiration, Medical ethics, and Modesty. Numerous entries focus on Islamic worship (e.g., Alms, Fasting, Ramadan) and much miscellanea (e.g., Westernization, Architecture, Burqa, Islamophobia, Extremism). Supplementing all this is a photo section in each volume, containing more than 20 full-color photos that are referenced throughout, as well as a thorough bibliography and lengthy index."—Booklist

"Libraries in the market for a current one or those collecting comprehensively will find it useful. Summing Up: Recommended. High school through undergraduate students; general readers."—Choice

"Scholarly contributors, traditional and progressive, provide substantial entries; ethics, doctrines, and individuals dominate. The article on feminism and the general 'Islam' entry, among others, are excellent."—Library Journal