Başak Çalı and Esra Demir-Gürsel describe how Turkey in recent times has used familiar frames of human rights discourse to distinguish supposedly ‘authentic’ from ‘inauthentic’ rights holders. They argue that human rights are represented by the Turkish government as zero-sum games, with the rights of LGBTQI+ people being pitted against those of pious citizens, and the rights of families and public morals being invoked to justify withdrawing from legal instruments intended to regulate violence against women.
Farrah Ahmed in her essay argues that India under Modi has been using strategies of subterfuge and the language of constitutional rights to conceal authoritarian nationalist actions which, in the guise of protecting against religious persecution, are actually discriminating against Muslims and distorting the concept of secularism.
These essays form part of a larger symposium on the (Mis)Appropriation of Human Rights by the New Global Right.
