From the Bosphorus: Straight - Justice at home, justice abroad

Domestically, there are many areas in which Turkey should bring its law and justice system into the 21st century. But few issues deserve more attention than the continuing practice of adult trials for stone-throwing children.

Internationally, the list of needed reforms is similarly long, but the recent on-again-off-again visit by Sudan’s indicted leader casts light once more on a critical issue: Turkey’s failure (along with that of the United States and Israel) to recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, or ICC.

Unlike many areas where excuses for delay may win the day, there is none in either of these cases. Yesterday, we reported on a proposal by Cüneyt Yüksel, a deputy for the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, who is pushing for an amendment to Turkey’s anti-terror laws that would raise the age of criminal culpability from 15 to 18.

“Our aim should be handing children bread and books instead of sticks and stones,” Yüksel, an experienced international lawyer, told our reporter Göksel Bozkurt.

A second matter is Turkish accession to the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that created the ICC. Signing it would make Turkey a member country. That Turkey is not a member, and the fact that it almost allowed a visit this week by Sudan’s Omar Hassan al-Bashir to the just-concluded Organization of the Islamic Conference, is of deep concern.

Al-Bashir has been indicted for direct complicity in the deaths of 500,000 civilians in Sudan’s oil-rich Darfur region. That Turkey’s prime minister, rejecting the conclusion of scores of international investigations and eyewitness accounts, could announce that his own personal Darfur visit exonerated al-Bashir is simply a theater of the absurd. That Turkey has repeatedly embraced this international pariah is a subject on which we have already spoken. Our view is that al-Bashir should be arrested and tried.

Our larger concern, however, is the prevention of future al-Bashirs. The ICC is a good, if limited, tool. The proposal put forth by Turkey, one supported by the Netherlands, is a good one: The ICC’s jurisdiction should include the crime of terrorism. That the international community currently lacks a consensus definition of terrorism is a principal dilemma in the combat of this global scourge.

It is right that the ICC lead the effort to develop international norms on what constitutes terror. It is right that the ICC expand its brief to this important area. And it is right that Turkey sign the Rome Statute and come in from the cold to join this important organization.

The AKP’s Yüksel offers important leadership to Turkey on the matter of juvenile crime. Turkey has the chance to redeem itself in its stance toward the ICC to date by helping lead to make this court a truly effective instrument for a better world.