We founded ASULİS Discourse Dialogue Democracy Laboratory to conduct conceptual discussion, education, media, law and political studies and take the Media Watch On Hate Speech Project launched in 2009 a step further. Asulis combats discrimination and discriminartory discourse, aiming to become a leading, innovative and interdiciplinary structure and builds a space that serves for human rights, democratization, equality and pluralism.

We reflect on, study and produce methods to combat hate speech, the relationship between hate crime and hate speech, freedom of expression and hate speech, since 2009. ‘Empowering CSOs and Sparking Change for Tackling Discrimination and Promoting Diversity’, launched in 2019 with financial aid from the EU, aims to support and empower civil society actors who combat discrimination. We adapted ARTICLE 19’s ‘Hate Speech’ Explained: A Toolkit into Turkish and the Turkish concept within the Hrant Dink Foundation’s framework of values. ARTICLE 19 is an international human rights organization that carries out studies on freedom of speech and freedom of press, and contributes to the construction of a new, pluralist, inclusive and righst-based discourse against discriminatory speech and hate speech, since 1987.

This toolkit deals with two fundamental questions:

1. How to identify ‘hate speech’ that may need to be restricted and how to distinguish it from expressions protected by freedom of speech?
2. What positive policy measures can states and other actors take to combat ‘hate speech’?

The toolkit is structured around two main sections:

First, we remark that ‘hate speech’ is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of expressions and that lacks a single, general definition within the international human rights law. The toolkit provides a typology for different types of ‘hate speech’ to be evaluated and distinguished considering the obligations bestowed upon states as part of international human rights law (Section I).  

Second, the toolkit offers guidance on what policies states and non-state actors can develop to maximize opportunities to combat ‘hate speech’, while creating an environment that allows for freedom of speech and equality and addresses the underlying causes of ‘hate speech’ (Section II).

Click here to access the toolkit in Turkish.

This project is funded by the European Union.