ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an account of the positive legal progress in the sphere of basic rights and freedoms, which has been introduced in the past decade within the context of EU Turkey relations. The sphere of human rights denotes a wide area, therefore the scope of the chapter has been limited to the rights and freedoms that have been restricted for the sake of state security and that have been subject to the resolutions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), most of which have condemned Turkey. The process was to broaden the scope of civil and political rights as appropriate for a democratic society and to reorganize civil military relations consistent with the principle of the rule of law. The increasing actions of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) since 2004, together with the continuing trends towards the restriction of human rights and national security concerns in the West, however, have affected Turkey in a negative way.
