You are cordially invited to the seminar organised by Bilkent University Faculty of Law.
“The Origins of Parental Rights in International Human Rights Law”
Dr. Betül Durmuş
17 June 2026, Wednesday – 13:30
Art Gallery, Main Campus Library
The seminar will be held in English.
International human rights law has experienced a shift from protecting the privacy of the parent-child relationship to improving its quality. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989) has played a central role in this shift by establishing the principles of child-rearing and the limitations of parental rights. Its monitoring body, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, repeatedly asks states to promote ‘positive’, ‘good’ and ‘child-centred’ forms of parenting. The CRC, however, is not the first human rights treaty recognising parental rights. These rights were recognised in earlier human rights instruments either as part of the right to education or as part of the freedom of religion. Dr. Durmuş aims to provide a comprehensive and theoretically informed account of the origins of parental rights in international human rights law. Drawing insights from the parallel discussions on “parental control rights” in moral and political philosophy, she traces different conceptions of these rights in the drafting histories of international human rights instruments. While the broader trajectory of parental rights indicates a shift, the drafting histories also show that there were both conceptual continuities and contradictions between the CRC and the earlier instruments.
Betül Durmuş received her undergraduate law degree, with a minor in political science, from Bilkent University (2013), and an LLM degree in public law from Koç University (2016). Between 2018 and 2022, she was a teaching and research assistant in public international law and international human rights law at Koç University Law School. At Koç University, she contributed to research projects on the individual application case-law of Turkish Constitutional Court, the effects of international human rights law on other branches of public international law and the impact of UN human rights treaties in Türkiye. Betül Durmuş completed her doctoral studies at Koç University in 2022, with her thesis entitled ‘International Human Rights Law and the Child’s Upbringing: Reconciling Children’s Rights, Parental Control Rights and State Interests.’ Between 2023 and 2026, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights in Berlin for the project ‘Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence? The Contribution of United Nations Treaty Body Case Law to the Development of International Human Rights Law.’ Since 2023, she serves as an associate editor for the UN human rights treaty bodies module of Oxford Reports on International Law.
Betül Durmuş specialises in human rights law with a particular focus on judicial interpretation of human rights and their normative foundations, UN human rights law and comparative international human rights law. Her co-authored book ‘Leading Cases in UN Human Rights Law’ is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. She has also published with leading journals and prominent online platforms, such as Human Rights Law Review, German Law Journal, and EJIL:Talk!. She was also invited by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to deliver seminars in 2025.