A new tool for fight against environmental violations in Turkey, “Network Map of Relations of Legislation, Institutions and Concepts” (“Network Map”), has been created. Check out the new tool at www.cevredavalariharitasi.org/ !
Over 600 court cases given in favor of environmental fight were screened and 20 high court decisions representing the significant precedents in Turkish judiciary were reviewed in detail jointly by environmental and corruption activits. Map is a new reference tool to bring transparency in long standing environmental struggle. There are one main and four sub-maps based on legislation, institutions, merits for decisions and violation areas. The maps aim to make legal struggle visible and known by a wider community and provide assistance to the new legal fights.
According to the Network Map, the leading areas of violation are highlighted as industrial activities; mining; infrastructure, transportation and city; hydroelectric power plants and water management. The Map is planned to be a living tool and enriched with new decisions as they are entered into. When new decisions are included to the Network Map, it will be possible to see new concentrated areas of violations.
Among the chosen cases, the grounds for decisions are focused mostly on two concepts; public interest and right to environment. How public interest is interpreted as a ground for environmental law cases is indeed very crucial. Although some interpretation of public interest could itself lead to environmental violations, we chose cases in which public interest is interpreted in a broader sense referring to obligations and responsibilities of the state arising from international agreements. Thus, the responsibility and obligation of the state to provide healthy environment is emphasized and this is seen as public interest. We believe that this holistic approach is important in order to make visible the examples of public interest concept in terms of protection of right to life and right to environment.
In some cases the importance of right to information is emphasized as one of the preventive measurements for protection of right to life as a responsibility of the state. Besides these examples, all the chosen cases have important and helpful data for advocating our right to live in a healthy environment.
The biggest difficulty during preparation of the Network Map is that court cases are not open to public access. E. Oya Özarslan, Chair of Transparency International Turkey, commented that “The issue of free access to and dissemination of information, as part of our general transparency problem in the country, is once again underlined with this project”. In an answer given to our application on access to environmental law cases, Council of State says “they are working on a system which will make the cases available for public access”. Özarslan said “We hope this step for public access to court cases and open data will be completed soon. We will follow the process and in case this promise is not complied by, we will keep sending our demand to high courts regularly. Also the Network Map will be enriched with new cases as we reach new ones.”
All rewieved cases and examinations are available on the Network Map. Furthermore, a detailed report is being written and the project will be officially completed on 15th of June. Full report will be available on the project web site on the second half of the June.
Note to Editor:
Methodology of the Project: The main goals of the project are to contribute to and empower environmental law and fight against environmental violations, make legal tools visible in environmental struggle, support other work in environmental fight by supporting transparency and creating a new tool. Around 600 high court cases (council of state, court of appeal, constitutional court, European Court of Human Rights) were analyzed by two lawyers and two academicians who are experts in environmental law. 20 cases which are thought to be precedents for environmental fight were chosen and legislation, institutions, grounds for decision and violation areas were analyzed.
We targeted to create “Network Map of Relations of Legislation, Institutions and Concepts” with cases which could be guide for environmental cases. Broad scope of the decision to environmental law, having a good example for the field and creating a new point of view are some of the criteria applied in the process of choosing cases. To visit project web site: http://www.cevredavalariharitasi.org/
