Mona Lisa in veil

While the French painter Ferdinand Victor Eugne Delacroix painted his famous piece "La LibertŽ guidant le peuple" (Liberty leading the People) in 1830 to commemorate the July Revolution, he was said to be inspired by the revolution. However, a Fric beret the woman in painting is wearing symbolizes the 1789 revolution. Therefore, it is possible to think a connection between the two revolutions. Main figure in the painting is a healthy, strong and bare-foot half-naked woman. Posture of the woman symbolizes the determination to win a struggle, the fight for freedom and the revolt for liberty. Entire painting is set up around the woman.

According to the French minister, Delacroix didn’t arbitrarily select a woman as the symbol of freedom. Women are the first victims of a society in crisis and are the leading actresses of the society.

Why does the Education Ministry remove this painting symbolizing liberty from text books? Is it because the ministry thinks to teach children rebel against the authority for freedom is dangerous? Or is it because to expose a woman’s breast is dangerous? Had the woman in the painting been in veil, could it have been kept in textbooks? Or should she be a man instead?

Cultural relativism
These questions take us to cultural relativism. It can be described as the principle that individual rights and freedoms should be understood in terms of own culture. To agree with this view means to deny universality of individual rights and freedoms as well as legal and ethical standards. Something regarded as the violation of human rights in a country then may not be it in another country.

For instance, you may say, "Brute force is part of our tradition. So the brute force by the police is not a violation of human rights," or, "Family virtue is above everything in our customs. To kill women in order to protect family virtue is not against human rights," or, "Our traditional culture does not allow looking at a naked human body. For this reason, painters shouldn’t paint a naked human being, sculptures and paintings of naked men or women should be eliminated. This is not violation of freedom of expression,"

Seeing individual rights and freedoms, moral values completely relative to culture and tradition contradicts with fundamental principles of human rights. Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings. Therefore, human rights do not vary depending on which society one lives in. Every individual should have equal rights with others. Everyone is entitled to have a life in dignity. One cannot be more man or woman in a society and be less man or woman in another. So it is impossible not to agree with the French minister’s answer that freedom of expression must be protected against cultural relativism.

Universality of human rights is closely relevant to democracy. Tying up human rights with cultural and tradition values gives legitimacy to the regime, therefore to measures taken to squelch the opponents of the regime.

The problem with removing the Delacroix painting from textbooks is that cultural relativism’s being a threat to freedom of thought, laic education being replaced by religious conservative education and dismissing laic pro-Enlightenment thought from schools gradually as well as raising generations who cannot see Delacroix’s painting or generations who see Mona Lisa in veil. That is the problem.


Rıza Türmen is a former judge of the European Court of Human Rights, or ECHR, and a columnist for the daily Milliyet, in which this piece appeared yesterday. It was translated into English by the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review’s staff