The use of force in foreign territories has been contained in the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, with the authorisation of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, in ‘cases deemed legitimate by international law’ and where required by international treaties to which Turkey is a party. Yet Turkey's extraterritorial use of force against armed non-state actors lead to the most important question of identifying the circumstances under which the Turkish authorities have long justified military intervention in foreign territories. This article aims to assess whether Turkey's use of force and alleged extraterritorial self-defence contravenes international law. In order to address how Turkey interprets the right to use armed force and the right of self-defence, and to bring clarity to the state's approach to international law on the use of force (jus ad bellum), the article explores Turkey's practice based on the assessment of the Turkish military intervention in Syria, in line with both bilateral security or defence treaties to which Turkey is a party and the use of force in self-defence. The aim is to determine whether Turkey's justifications are compatible with the jus ad bellum criteria.

Military artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technology might still be in the relatively fledgling stages but the debate on how to regulate its use is already in full swing. Much of the discussion revolves around autonomous weapons systems (AWS) and the ‘responsibility gap’ they would ostensibly produce. This contribution argues that while some military AI technologies may indeed cause a range of conceptual hurdles in the realm of individual responsibility, they do not raise any unique issues under the law of state responsibility. The following analysis considers the latter regime and maps out crucial junctions in applying it to potential violations of the cornerstone of international humanitarian law (IHL) – the principle of distinction – resulting from the use of AI-enabled military technologies. It reveals that any challenges in ascribing responsibility in cases involving AWS would not be caused by the incorporation of AI, but stem from pre-existing systemic shortcomings of IHL and the unclear reverberations of mistakes thereunder. The article reiterates that state responsibility for the effects of AWS deployment is always retained through the commander's ultimate responsibility to authorise weapon deployment in accordance with IHL. It is proposed, however, that should the so-called fully autonomous weapon systems – that is, machine learning-based lethal systems that are capable of changing their own rules of operation beyond a predetermined framework – ever be fielded, it might be fairer to attribute their conduct to the fielding state, by conceptualising them as state agents, and treat them akin to state organs.

This article focuses on the application of autonomous weapons (AWs) in defensive systems and, consequently, assesses the conditions of the legality of employing such weapons from the perspective of the right to self-defence. How far may humans exert control over AWs? Are there any legal constraints in using AWs for the purpose of self-defence? How does their use fit into the traditional criteria of self-defence? The article claims that there are no legal grounds to exclude AWs in advance from being employed to exercise the right to self-defence. In general, the legality of their use depends on how they were pre-programmed by humans and whether they were activated under proper circumstances. The article is divided into three parts. The first discusses how human control over AWs affects the legality of their use. Secondly, the article analyses the criteria of necessity and proportionality during the exercise of the right to self-defence in the context of the employment of AWs. Finally, the use of AWs for anticipatory, pre-emptive or preventive self-defence is investigated.

Both international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) make extensive references to humanity. Yet the role attributed to humanity differs between the two. Humanity is seen in IHRL as the source of the rights, whereas in IHL it is interpreted as a moral obligation to avoid harm. This article challenges this perspective. Relying upon contemporary interpretations of IHL, it will be argued that, in a moral sense, IHL matches up closely with IHRL. Crucial here is that humanity, rather than reflect a utilitarian perspective to avoid harm, is worded in stronger terms. To reflect this accurately, it is argued that IHL is best seen as a reflection of TM Scanlon's contractualism as opposed to utilitarian reasoning. Relying upon the similarities in moral reasoning visible in both bodies of law, the article argues that this should also be reflected when it comes to redress for violations. In a concrete sense, the argument here is that this also presents a moral requirement to recognise individual claims within IHL. To give legal effect to this moral demand, it is suggested that IHRL might play a role in bridging the gap between the moral and legal considerations in IHL.

Some have proposed the development of technologies that improve our moral behaviour – moral enhancement – in order to address global risks such as pandemics, global warming and nuclear war. I will argue that this technology could be weaponised to manipulate the moral dispositions of enemy combatants. Despite being morally controversial, weaponised moral enhancement would be neither clearly prohibited nor easily prohibitable by international war law. Unlike previous psychochemical weapons, it would be relatively physically harmless. I argue that when combatants are liable to lethal aggression to achieve an aim of war, they are also liable to weaponised moral enhancement to achieve that same aim. Weaponised moral enhancement will loosen just war requirements in both traditional and revisionist normative just war theories. It will particularly affect revisionist theories’ jus ad bellum requirements for humanitarian and preventive wars. For instance, weaponised moral enhancement could be more proportional and efficacious than lethal aggression to effect institutional changes in preventive and humanitarian wars. I will conclude that, despite evading international war laws and loosening normative just war requirements, the intuition that weaponised moral enhancement would gravely harm combatants can be defended by arguing that it would severely disturb personal identity, which could potentially ground future prohibitions.

This article tackles the question of the legality of section 5B of the Civil Wrongs (Liability of the State) Law, which precludes the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip, members of terrorist organisations and their agents from obtaining compensation for injuries suffered as a result of the negligent conduct of Israeli security forces. The question is examined through the lens of Israel's tort law, comparative law, the law of occupation, and international human rights law.

A special focus is given to the amendments made in the said section and its interpretation by Israeli courts, while addressing the state's tort liability towards nationals of enemy states and members of terrorist organisations. In order to emphasise the legal difficulties arising from the Law and the need for its re-examination, the 2018 protests near the Israel-Gaza border are used as a case study. The article concludes by offering to revoke the legal identification as enemy state nationals of Gaza's residents for the purposes of applying state liability in tort. In addition, it recommends the adoption of an individual examination mechanism in relation to members of terrorist organisations. These suggestions are expected to better fulfil the purposes underlying the state's tort liability exemptions, while increasing Israel's compliance with its legal obligations.

Traditionally, international human rights adjudication relied on the paradigm of extraterritoriality on the rare occasions when it was confronted with cross-border cases. This paradigm recognises only limited circumstances in which states bear extraterritorial human rights obligations. However, with globalisation, transboundary human rights cases have multiplied. This emerging litigation increasingly reveals that the paradigm of extraterritoriality is no longer fit to address global crises. Extraterritoriality demands effective control over a territory, or authority and control over a person, for a state to exercise jurisdiction outside its territory. Thus, several cases of cross-border human rights abuses are inevitably barred on jurisdictional grounds. This is particularly true for obligations of a global character, which are, by their very nature, completely unrelated to the control that states exercise over territories or people. It is therefore necessary to look beyond extraterritoriality. This article analyses the competing paradigms of universality and transnationality as they have been adopted by domestic courts. It argues that international human rights adjudication should reconceptualise extraterritoriality against the background of universality and transnationality to address global crises.

This article aims to show how reform of the law on terrorism not only has the power to create new criminal procedures, it can also create a distinct, parallel field operating alongside general criminal law. This parallel configuration presents certain unique features and processes which merit their own typology – namely, anti-terrorism criminal law (ATCL). First, the article discusses how states have responded to terrorism through reform of four key arenas: military law, immigration law, administrative law and criminal law. Comparison is then drawn between the United States and Israel in their respective approaches, showing that Israel has executed far more sweeping and significant reforms over the last four decades, mainly in criminal procedure. Examples are given to illustrate how Israel's evolving anti-terrorism legislation – and specifically, the new Counter-Terrorism Law of 2016 – changed the criminal procedural landscape to such a degree that it constituted the new field of ATCL. I contend that this move was anti-liberal in its definition and targeting of terror suspects, and in its pursuit of emergency aims and intelligence gathering rather than liberal criminal law objectives. Further, I show that liberal theory struggles to explain the integrated change model that Israel has implemented in its counter-terrorism reforms, and that the theoretical framings of Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault may explain it more effectively.

In 1989, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, in the Anwar Hossain Chowdhury case, first embraced implicit unamendability or interpretative unamendability of the Constitution – that is, the basic structure doctrine. Since then, the basic structure or the basic feature doctrine has been recognised as the theoretical premise underpinning judicial review of constitutional amendments in Bangladesh. In 2011, the Parliament adopted Article 7B of the Constitution, which introduced explicit or codified unamendability of a substantial number of provisions of the Constitution. This article argues that with the adoption of Article 7B, the basic structure doctrine has lost its relevance as the most important normative tool for determining the validity of future constitutional amendments, and this was confirmed in the Asaduzzaman case, in which the parliamentary mechanism for the removal of Supreme Court judges was held unconstitutional on the basis of Article 7B of the Constitution. It is also argued that the reasoning provided in the majority opinion of the Asaduzzaman case is not entirely flawless.

In January 2021 the Human Rights Committee determined that Italy and Malta had both failed to protect the right to life of more than 200 migrants who perished in a shipwreck in 2013. The Committee tackled for the first time the question of extraterritorial application of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to persons in distress at sea. While finding the decision against Malta to be inadmissible, the Committee engaged in a significant analysis of the concept of jurisdiction in both decisions. This article analyses how the decisions interpret the concept of ‘jurisdiction’ and juxtaposes this analysis against the approaches taken in other international legal regimes. The article then theorises on the impact of these two decisions in helping to crystallise a new ‘right to be rescued at sea’.