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.
On the 50th session (13 June–8 July 2022) of the Human Rights Council a resolution titled “Independence and impartiality of the judiciary, jurors and assessors, and the independence of lawyers: participation of women in the administration of justice” was adopted.
The UN Special Rapporteur presented his report on the Protection of lawyers against undue interference in the free and independent exercise of the legal profession to the 50th Human Rights Council that is to be held in Geneva between 13… Read More ›
The Arrested Lawyers Initiative published published its new report on the systematic attacks against the legal profession in Turkey.
The report reveals 474 lawyers have been sentenced to a total of 2,966 years in prison.
The EU and member states are consolidating the practice of pushbacks to prevent unauthorised entrants from crossing their borders and/or submitting asylum applications. From Spanish north African enclaves in Ceuta and Melilla to the EU’s Mediterranean and Atlantic Sea borders, as well as at eastern land borders from Greece, Hungary and Croatia all the way to Poland and Lithuania, informal practices have become commonplace. De facto, human rights are being subordinated to strategic migration policy goals, by design.
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.
Despite reforms which INTERPOL has made, further action is needed the European Parliament and experts said.
The European Parliament particularly condemned continuing crackdown on lawyers. MEP said:
the Parliament “is appalled by reports of a pattern of persecution of lawyers representing individuals accused of terrorism whereby the lawyers were prosecuted for the same crime as that attributed to their client.”
FIDU – Italian Federation for Human Rights / Italian Helsinki Committee pursuant to the permission given by the European Court of Human Rights prepared a legal expert opinion on the abusive and unforeseeable use of anti-terror provision, namely Art. 314 of… Read More ›
Official statistics highlight that Turkish public prosecutors have filed more than 420,000 charges under Article 314 of the Turkish Penal Code within the last eight-years. What is worse, between 2016 and 2020 more than 265,000 individuals have been sentenced for membership of an armed terrorist organisation.
According to a report of the Council of Europe, Turkey has the largest population of inmates convicted for terrorism-related offences. The report shows there are currently a total of 30524 inmates in COE member states who were sentenced for terrorism, and Of those 29827 are in Turkish prisons.
“Not the first time a police officer turns bad”, one might think. .“Just another bad apple”. It would perhaps be considered as such, if the police officer in question was not from the narcotics unit and previously decorated for his efforts during a successful drug operation and the car, he was driving did not belong to a public prosecutor from the Terrorism Bureau of the Office of Adana Chief Public Prosecutor.
Since the failed coup attempt in 2016, lawyers, judges and prosecutors have persistently been subject to illegal surveillance and mass arrests. The latest such arrest of 50 lawyers took place on September 11th, 2020, during police raids in Ankara in… Read More ›
The purpose of these two blog posts is to consider the implications of Turkey’s recent ad hominem emergency decrees under the Turkish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”). This first blog post will provide some context and… Read More ›
Dr Yasir Gokce wrote about a software called ATAC that is being used by Turkish police to vacuum en masse of personal data of individuals, as well as its consequences on data subjects.