Project Summary
Grantee	: Social Rights and Research Association
Purpose	: Ensuring that persons with disabilities can enjoy fully their rights, without being exposed to discrimination
Location	: Turkey
Grant Amount	: 183.342 TL
Project Partner	: Bilgi University
Period	: 8 July 2013 – 7 July 2014
Status	: Completed
Project Year	: 2013

Background

It is not sufficiently monitored to what extent the legislation on disability rights is implemented in Turkey and how much persons with disabilities can benefit from their rights. Therefore, the complaints and suggestions cannot properly be justified and problems remained unsolved.

Project Goals

• In Turkey:
  • A “Monitoring Group for Disability Rights” will be established consisting of minimum 15 NGOs.
  • Detection, research and monitoring will be conducted. (Especially screening of legislation in comparison with UN Convention, applications for receiving information, online notification system, media analysis, etc).
  • A comprehensive report will be prepared as a result of the monitoring and evaluation.
  • Lobbying activities (written applications, meetings, etc) will be carried out and national / international reports will be prepared.

Project Results

• A “Monitoring Group for Disability Rights” was established consisting of 20 NGOs working with diverse disability groups and the group decided to collect data on 4 areas: education, health, work life and accessibility.
• Data was collected under following fronts:
• More than 3,000 official applications
• No less than 200,000 media screening
• Screening of 68 compulsory education textbooks
• Screening of national and international legislation with support from human rights specialists and lawyers
• All data has been analyzed and a report was published on comparison with legal framework and its implementation of disability rights in Turkey.
• Through face to face meetings, parliamentary questioning and international reporting the current situation of disability rights have been reported to the national and international authorities.

Testimonials

"People with disabilities commonly face discrimination in their daily lives. Discrimination happens when you can’t move on your street’s sidewalk like the rest of the people, can’t get into a public transportation even if you try, can’t continue your education. With the Monitoring Group for Disability Rights project we try to underline that services provided for people with disabilities are not privileges but their rights."

Project Coordinator

"In almost all of the texts and images in school book people with disabilities portrait as people who can’t go out the street by themselves, can’t cross the street, can’t work. And the reason of this is presented as the disability itself. The findings of the research consolidate the perception of people with disabilities as second class citizens."

Project Partner