Yesterday, on May 22, Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman printed a story detailing the efforts of the IEC, which is trying to promote an ecological agenda during the debates surrounding a new national constitution.
Noting that the constitution is currently under review, Turkey's Green Party spokesperson Ümit Şahin -- one of 40 people involved in the IEC -- said, "As Turkey has been talking about making a new constitution, which is supposed to value the individual, then we should be talking about an ecological approach to it."
Şahin went on to name Ecuador and Bolivia as the group's role models. Ecuador was the first country in the world to grant rights to Mother Earth. According to a blog by Andrew Revkin published on the New York Times in September 2008, Ecuador's Constitutional Assembly worked with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvanian group providing legal assistance to governments and community groups trying to mesh human affairs and the environment. Together, they wrote the provisions in Ecuador's Constitution that redefined people's legal relationship with nature in the country.
More recently, Bolivia forwarded a piece of legislation called la Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra (the Law of Mother Earth), intended to encourage a radical shift in conservation attitudes and actions, to enforce new control measures on industry, and to reduce environmental destruction.
The IEC is hoping to build on these key precedents to pressure politicians after the June 12 general election in Turkey. After the elections, the new Parliament is expected to make a new constitution, which will provide an opportunity for the IEC to present a case for an ecological model.
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