Başak Çalı
Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law and Co-director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School and a member of the Law Faculty of Koç University in Istanbul, where she directs the Centre for Global Public Law. Following a BA International Relations at Ankara University, she moved to the UK to study for an MA in International Peacekeeping and a PhD in International Law at the University of Essex. She started her academic career in London at University College London in 2002, moved to Istanbul in 2013 and to Berlin in 2016. She is a fellow of the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex, a permanent visiting professor at I-Courts, Copenhagen and a visiting professor at Pluri Courts, Oslo. She is one of the founding members of the European Implementation Network (EIN) and chairs the EIN since 2016. She was Secretary General of the European Society of International Law between 2014-2018. Başak's current research and practice focuses on comparative international human rights law, with a particular focus on the European Court of Human Rights. Her most recent book is Migration and the European Convention on Human Rights (OUP 2021, co-edited with Iulia Motoc and Ledi Bianku). She is equally interested in human rights law interpretation and the impact and effects of human rights law beyond the law and courts. Follow Başak on Twitter @calibasak.
Başak Çalı was profiled for ATLAS by Alexa Koenig, JD, PhD, Executive Director of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions) and a lecturer at Berkeley Law. Learn more about Alexa’s work and find the link to her own ATLAS profile at the end. Follow Alexa on Twitter @KAlexaKoenig and read her own ATLAS profile here.
==========
What pulled you towards international law as a career? And what were the first steps you took towards getting there?
My interest in international law started when I was an undergraduate student, studying international relations. I was then very much a romantic about international law. I thought studying and ultimately being part of the law of international relations was such an important and exciting endeavor. You may think of this as an initially naive attraction to international law based on the idea that international law must be better than power politics. My initial interest in international law was, therefore, an interest in the promise of international law in international relations.
After my undergraduate degree in Ankara, I did my postgraduate studies at the University of Essex in the UK focusing on international law of peacekeeping and international law of armed conflict. From there, I became more and more familiar with and increasingly interested in international human rights law as a branch of international law, with an emphasis on the development of human rights law by the European Court of Human Rights, in particular in the context of non-international armed conflicts. My interest in the European Court of Human Rights case law was very much prompted by studying under my professors Kevin Boyle and Françoise Hampson, who in that period litigated some of the ground- breaking cases before the Strasbourg Court. Following this exposure, studying, writing on and advising on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights has been a constant theme of my academic career. An example of the latter has been recent involvement in the Grand Chamber proceedings in the case of Demirtaş v. Turkey (No 2), where the Court found that the ongoing detention of the former leader of the second largest opposition in Turkey was in violation of freedom of expression safeguards, did not meet the requirement of ‘proscribed by law’, and pursued ulterior political purposes.
My academic interests in domestic human rights and comparative human rights law came later. So overall, my intellectual journey started with a crush on public international law, then branched out first to international human rights law, and then to constitutional law and fundamental rights. I now see all these fields as closely inter-related and interactional in my current research and practice.
To be honest, I did not have a clear plan about where I wanted to get to. My academic journey so far has taken me from Ankara to Colchester, from Colchester to UCL in London, from London to Koç University in Istanbul, and from Istanbul to the Hertie School and the Centre for Fundamental Rights in Berlin. Instead, I always have had a very clear sense about where my intellectual interests lie. I knew that I wanted to engage in the theory as well as the practice of international law and international human rights law, and to understand the limits, challenges and interactions of both not only as a legal, but also as a social and political practice. I also think that my keen interest to remain a generalist of international law and international human rights law and interactions between law, politics and normative theories have ultimately shaped most of my career development. I seem to not appreciate a tree without understanding the forest.
What would you say have been some of the high points of your career as you went on this journey from international law to domestic human rights?
In general, I do not see my career as marked by high points. Instead, I see as being a path with many soft peaks, lots of wonderful gentle points. Sometimes a peak can be as subtle as receiving a card from a former student, where they tell you how they're getting on, and how one conversation I had with them mattered, or influenced them. That subtle type of a highpoint can carry me for weeks, and keep a smile on my face. Similar is receiving a comment or feedback from a valued mentor, or a colleague about a piece of writing or a human rights case I worked on. Those are the kinds of things that really matter to me. So, it has not really been about peaks, but about many precious moments, very human moments, that I value, treasure, seek to cultivate and carry with me.
One initiative that I've been involved in very closely, which I would like to highlight, however, is the establishment of the European Implementation Network (EIN) -- an NGO that I co-founded with many amazing colleagues. EIN advocates for the effective implementation of human rights judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. I'm really, really proud of that journey of identifying a massive problem through academic research in conversation with practitioners, and then responding to that problem in practice by way of setting up a successful human rights organisation. I'm very proud of the work of the European Implementation Network as one of its founders and its chair.
May you describe what the European Implementation Network does, what it was designed to accomplish, and what you see as high points from that process?
Yes, I would love to do that.
Those of us who work at the intersection of legal practice and academia take human rights litigation very seriously and for good reason. Human rights litigation has led to securing many important human rights judgments. But human rights lawyers have traditionally paid relatively little attention to what happens to a successful judgment after its delivery. Human rights lawyers often move from one case to the next and do not have the resources, or the time, to follow up on or advocate for the effective implementation of the judgments they secure.
This is a significant problem across human rights courts as well as commissions and UN treaty bodies -- the non-implementation or the under-implementation of human rights judgments or views. The European human rights system is often seen as an effective regional system, but its violation judgments also face systemic non-implementation, under-implementation or delayed-implementation problems. The European Implementation Network was founded to fill this gap, by aiming to focus attention on the importance of advocacy for the implementation of human rights judgments. It aims to support the capacity development of human rights lawyers and NGOs to effectively advocate for this domestically and at the level of the Council of Europe.
Let’s shift to some of the challenges you've had and how you have tackled them--either personal challenges or professional challenges, or a combination of both.
I was a very hard-working student throughout my studies back in Turkey. I was one of those students who, you know, listened to all the teachers, took extensive notes, followed all the instructions, and received very good grades. This helped me significantly in succeeding in exams and securing scholarships for further study and to finance my studies abroad. I am a first generation academic and I was the first in my family to study outside Turkey and scholarships were essential for me to pursue further academic studies.
But an important challenge in my professional life has been handling failure in academia. When I received my first very low mark as a non-native English speaker who had never written an essay in English on my first postgraduate essay, I remember thinking that this was definitely the end of the world. After the initial shock, I, however, understood that one needs to acknowledge and work on knowledge and skill gaps. This has subsequently led to me to develop a keen interest in research methods. Later on, I also found article rejections very difficult to handle. So, I think, one of the biggest challenges for me has been to learn how to respond to failure, especially academic failure. One of the things I have learned from my experiences so far has been not to personalize such failures, find meaningful and preferably humorous ways to learn from them and discuss these openly with supportive mentors and friends. So, do try to turn your failures into positive energy. I am still working on this.
What advice do you have for those who are embarking on a career in public international law/domestic human rights?
I recently find myself giving one piece of advice often. That is that one should not simply speak of interest, but more importantly seek to show interest in the work that is required by a certain career path or an issue one seeks to work on or research. I get many emails from students who tell me they are interested in embarking on a career in international law or in international human rights law. But not everyone is really able to show, really show, that interest. I think it's very important to focus on how we don't just tell, but show. In this respect, I find writing--in particular the academic blogging form--to be a great way of showing one’s interest in a field of study. Unlike other professions, we are a bunch that need to spend a disproportionate amount of time reading, be it cases, other primary material, or commentary for our academic and professional development, so I find writing for that community to be a great way of showing an interest in it and becoming a part of it.
There is no doubt that luck plays an important role in developing one’s career. I consider myself having had enormous luck by starting my research career at the University of Essex surrounded by amazing, but also very generous and supportive role models who opened up many collaborative opportunities for me. I learned a great deal through observing and interacting with them. Look for supportive and collaborative research environments and communities if you consider embarking on a doctorate. In addition, being curious, hard-working, reliable and always willing to learn more across the full spectrum of international law and international human rights law I think helped me greatly. Mind you though, I did not have the caring responsibilities that I have now then, and I also saw research more as a vocation. I read intensely and widely during my doctorate and in the early stages of my career, including during weekends. Libraries are fun and free, especially when you do not have much money. I understand that this may not be the best advice you if you already have caring responsibilities or have to work in other jobs to support yourself at the beginning of a research career. In that case, work on how to be more creative and efficient in using your time and the time of others. This is something I had to learn as my caring and institutional responsibilities increased and leisurely weekend outings in a library is no longer. Finally, work in academia never ends and institutional environments are not always supportive of work-life-care balance, so I also find it very important to try to consciously practice self-care and also support others to do so.
Başak Çalı was profiled for ATLAS by Alexa Koenig, JD, PhD, Executive Director of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions) and a lecturer at Berkeley Law. She co-founded the Investigations Lab, which trains students and professionals to use social media and other online content to strengthen human rights advocacy and accountability. Alexa is a member of AAAS’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, co-chair of the Technology Advisory Board for the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor, co-chair of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Law Committee, and on the coordinating committee for the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations. Her latest book is Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Documentation, Advocacy and Accountability (OUP 2020, co-edited with Sam Dubberley and Daragh Murray). Alexa has been honored with several awards for her work, including the United Nations Association-SF’s Global Human Rights Award, the Mark Bingham Award for Excellence, and honored as a 2020 Woman Inspiring Change by Harvard Law School. Twitter: @KAlexaKoenig FB: https://www.facebook.com/kalexakm/ Atlas Profile: Alexa Koenig