Öz
Current public international law built on the accumulation of human beings from the first political formations to the present has been shaped according to the framework of the European Public Law and the interests of the winners of the Two World Wars and Cold War. This formation has taken place in a wide area, from the writing of the history of international law to the international organizations and international treaties.In this context, the notions used in international law emerge as one of the important tools of this formation. Through the notions, manipulation is created in the reality of facts, and by this means, powerful states instrumentalize international institutions and rules in their favour, legitimizing their unlawful acts or transforming them into an act by international law. In this study, the function of notions in international law is analysed through the notions of “failed state”, “sanction” and “national minority”. Here, in the context of each notion, the primary meaning of the notion and definition of the phenomenon according to the notion, the appearance of the phenomenon in international law, and the misconception about the phenomenon created with the notions are revealed. Aftermath, based on the data obtained in the study, basic inferences are made about the instrumentalization of the notions in international law, and finally, the existence of a critical point of view towards notions in the Turkish international law literature will be briefly questioned.