Our scholars 2020 – Murat Deniz

What is your legal background, your current occupation and country of work?
I work as a lawyer in Gaziantep, Turkey. At the same time, I am writing my master thesis.

How do you use European law in your work?
European Union law intensively influences and transforms Turkish law. My academic thesis is about the developments in the European Union law and their effects on Turkish law. In my thesis, I also examine workers' rights in European law. For this reason, I follow European law very closely. The legal training I received at ERA will be very useful for my studies and work.
There is a huge impact of European law on Turkish law: influenced by the ambition to become a member of the European Union, the Turkish law must keep pace with the continuously changing European law. Beyond that, many Turkish laws were adopted from countries such as Germany, Switzerland or Italy. Therefore, Turkish lawyers closely and constantly monitor European law (and especially the above-mentioned national laws) in terms of changes. For this reason, sometimes it is necessary to examine the sources of European law to understand the purpose of the Turkish law. In the reasoned explanation of many Turkish laws, reference is made to the sources of European law.
The institutions of Turkish law closely follow the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in the field of human rights. This is because, these case laws are binding in Turkish law. I apply quite a number of applications to the European Court of Human Rights and the Turkish Constitutional Court. For this reason, I have to follow closely the case law of this court.
In addition to all of this, I also have clients who are immigrants from all over Europe. I need to know and apply the European law because of their marital status, working life, immigration procedures and property.

What was your motivation to apply for a scholarship?
There are many people emigrating from Turkey to many European countries. These people are generally workers. European labour law is important for their rights and obligations.
For this reason, legal topics - such as data protection and employee surveillance, equality and discrimination, information and consultation rights, are also important in terms of Turkish law. These issues have been recently regulated in Turkish law. As I have already some practical experience as a practitioner in the Turkish labour law, I would like to extend my expertise as a practitioner in European law in the future and also to expand my network with European colleagues in the same field.
Unfortunately, the direct networking and exchange happened only virtually because of Covid-19. Nevertheless, I personally benefited from the Annual Conference even as a webinar.

How did you benefit from the scholarship?
The content of the conference was designed for practitioners and I find it very interesting to work with the case law. I am confident that the knowledge I gained during this training on EU labour law will be very useful both for my academic work and legal practice.