The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute and The Arrested Lawyers Initiative have released a detailed report highlighting the declining independence of the legal profession and bar associations in Turkey. The report underscores the targeting of law professionals through unfair trials, arbitrary detainment, imprisonment and harassment, as well as the alarming misuse of counter-terrorism legislation to prosecute lawyers in the course of their legitimate work.
In partnership with IBAHRI, Redress, London Advocacy and Human Rights Solidarity, The Arrested Lawyers Initiative organised a panel discussion on targeted human rights sanctions, focusing on Turkey. The panel was hosted by Baroness Kennedy of Shaws in the UK Parliament.
The Kavala verdict of the European Court of Human Rights foreshadows the possibility of severe sanctions against Turkey. Kronos Haber talked to former First President of the Court of Cassation Prof. Dr. Sami Selçuk about the Kavala verdict and other issues on the agenda, we translated it into English.
Using Turkish Intel’s own report, Dr Yasir Gokce demonstrates several instances of data manipulation, raising legitimate concerns about the quality of Bylock evidence. Such concerns, coupled with the ECHR’s findings in the Yalcinkaya case, require Turkish courts to re-evaluate the admissibility of Bylock as evidence.
Turkish lawyer, Elif Hendekci, recounts her and her baby’s harrowing experience in prison. Imprisoned for providing legal aid to dissidents, Hendekci faces abuse and bureaucratic indifference in jail, struggling to protect her daughter amidst a system lacking empathy and basic human rights. Her story exposes political repression and inhumanity within Turkey’s incarceration system post-2016.
Turkey’s Council of Judges and Prosecutors coerced the dismissed judges and prosecutors signing undated resignation letters by threatening them with social death.
Fethi Un, Murat Korkmaz and Metin Yucel were nothing but lawyers. They were unlawfully identified with their clients and targeted. They were arrested and whilst in detention treated -in late Fethi Un’s own words- “worse than an animal” and their lives were stolen. Let us hope that no other prisoner shares the same fate.
The murder trial of Tahir Elçi, a prominent Kurdish human rights lawyer and then president of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, who was shot dead in November 2015, is now overshadowed by serious allegations of impunity, prosecutorial misconduct and torture of witnesses.
The connections of dethroned mafia figure Ayhan Bora Kaplan continue to be exposed. This time it has been revealed that the head of the Ankara police directorate’s organised crime unit personally trafficked at least 30 kilos of cocaine.
Işınkaralar’s case highlights quite a number of serious issues including widespread torture and sexual abuse in police custody, the reduction of safeguards against torture, non-compliance with the Istanbul Protocol on medical documentation of torture, impunity and corruption.
In a series of critical remarks that underscore the deepening judicial crisis in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has sharply criticized two of the country’s highest courts, the Council of State and the Constitutional Court. Labeling their decisions as “incomprehensible” and “unsettling”.
In total disregard of the ECHR rulings, which serve as directly applicable precedents for the case at hand, the Ankara Appeals Court sentenced 19 lawyers to 125+ years for entirely lawful activities.
Mehmet Ali Uçar’ın çektiği çile, hem iç hukuk hem de uluslararası insan hakları standartlarının hiçe sayıldığı, kaygı verici düzeyde keyfilik ve yolsuzlukla işleyen bir yargının simgesidir.
