Autonomy : Theory and Practice
Keywords : Territorial Autonomy, Non-Territorial Autonomy, The
Basque Autonomous Community, Spain, Right to self – determination. It might be considered that autonomy can be easily defined since there are so many autonomy models in different parts of the world. However, autonomy does not have the same functioning system in all these parts. Some of them show the same characteristics whereas the others have differences. For instance, autonomy can be for both religious-ethnic groups and indigenous people in different geographical areas. In such group-based autonomies, group members have the right to rule certain matters, e.g. cultural or family issues, whereas autonomy for indigenous people possesses local administrative authorities, locally elected legislative assembly and local independent courts ( Hannum, 1990:467-468 qutoed in
Xanthaki, 2007:165)
Therefore, Potier (2001:54) claims that ‘international lawyers have failed to come to an agreement on a stable workable definition for autonomy’. According to his assumption, it is impossible to define autonomy accurately since ‘it is a loose and disparate concept which contains many threads, but no single strand’2 However, although he points at the difficulty of the theory of autonomy, there have been many scholars to explain it from different perspectives. We owe great thanks to forefather scientists in particular Ruth Lapidoth, Hurst
Hannum, Markku Suksi, Yash Ghai and Yoram Dinstein, who dedicated so many researches to autonomy.
Unless content of autonomy is internalized, proposing sample of it for any ethnic conflicts will not be grounded. While explaining the autonomy as well as its forms, the right to self-determination, one of the most controversial subjects that affects ethnic groups’ future, will be discussed in order to come to conclusion whether autonomy can be an answer to the right to self-determination claim or not.