An Altenative to Legal Transplants: Cultural Translation as a Less Imperialistic Law-Making Method. The Case of Turkey and the LGB Rights Concept.

Abstract

Through Judith Butler’s concept of ‘cultural translation’, this dissertation seeks to provide a less imperialistic law-making mechanism as it relates to the lesbian, gay and bisexual rights concept (hereinafter ‘the LGB rights concept’) in Turkey, which currently relies heavily on legal transplantation. In search of a new law-making method, this thesis first deconstructs ‘legal transplantation’ as that which creates various asymmetrical relations that amount to consolidating Western imperialism. Critical legal scholars have shown great interest in revealing the imperialistic consequences of the law-maker West and the law-taker non-West. This thesis aims to add another dimension to these discussions by placing ‘imitation’, as advanced by Judith Butler, at the heart of its analyses. It scrutinises legal transplantation through the various imitations/repetitions it embodies and explores the role of imitation in law-making as law-taking. It does so by evaluating legal change by means of legal transplantation through the example of the Turkish experience with the LGB rights concept, and uses Judith Butler’s understanding of imitation/repetition, as advanced in her gender performativity concept, to achieve this evaluation This thesis attempts to expand our understanding of law-making as law-taking by unveiling their performative force, which humanises the subject in a way that is similar to the processes of gendering it. In doing so, this thesis aims to transfer the analyses that postulate the gendered body as performative to the rubric of human rights law, and argues that humanisation of the body through granting rights is performative as well. Though the occasion arises for subversion from these various imitations, it introduces a new law-making method, cultural translation, transforming the realm of limited possibilities for human rights into the realm of the possible.