Turkey/Brazil, Perspectives on Human Rights and Other Matters

On our first day in Ankara we visited an NGO that combats human rights violations in Turkey. They have worked in the past with the Kurdish population in southeastern Turkey, and are currently working with Syrian refugees. I was most struck by one remark made by one of the organizers: "We who work with human rights in Turkey are very pessimistic about the situation."

One of her colleagues confirmed this a bit later, adding, "We always see the empty half of the glass. And we try to make the government aware of the empty half of the glass."

I found this a direct contrast to the obligatory optimism of NGO workers in Rio de Janeiro. Even in the midst of recurring crises of favela violence, NGO workers tend to be careful to strike a note of hope and the possibility for improvement.

This conforms to wider cultural expectations. It is culturally unacceptable for cariocas to be pessimistic, or at least to sound pessimistic. Being unreasonably optimistic, in contrast, is not only acceptable, but is considered good manners. In Ankara, in contrast, being blithely optimistic would be culturally unacceptable, and perhaps even alienating.

To be sure, the contrasting rhetoric in part reflects reality. In differing ways, human rights violations may be common in both countries. Police brutality and illegal expropriation in Rio, arbitrary arrest and suppression of opinion in Turkey, for example. But for all its problems, democracy in Brazil is more consolidated. There is a framework for the defense of basic human rights, and strong societal pressure for enforcement of protections. As everywhere, these principles may be more honored in the breach than in the observance, but that is better than nothing. And it is better than things were when I first began to visit Brazil in the early 1990s, when many Brazilians still commonly dismissed protection from police violence, for example, as "rights for bandits."

In Turkey, in contrast, I don't think there is a commonly-accepted framework for defense of human rights. To begin, the letter of the law itself offers far fewer guarantees, permitting arrest for anything a police officer or other agent of the law might construe as offensive. The constitutional language outlawing any insult to the Turkish nation in practice grants wide latitude for coercion of the press, as well as arrests of opposition leaders and NGO workers.

And Turkey's geopolitical position presents challenges Brazil does not face. ISIS is active in southeastern Turkey and recruiting in western Turkey, and poses a direct threat to the rule of law. The influx of Syrian refugees places enormous strains on Turkish social services. And longstanding conflicts with domestic Kurdish and Armenian populations remain only partially soothed, by no means resolved. Brazil's greatest human rights challenges, such as police brutality and encroachment on indigenous lands, pose less of a risk of destabilization.

All this notwithstanding, the sharp contrast in rhetoric is more striking than the comparatively nuanced difference in reality. Brazilians (and cariocas in particular) may or may not see the glass as half empty, but they certainly can't admit they see it as half empty. The Turkish NGO workers we met today see that as their duty. This is at least as much a question of public presentation as of outlook. Frivolity may bubble over in the home (in some cases, it must) but the face one presents to the public is expected to be more severe. In Ankara, only foreigners walk down the street smiling glibly.