Last Update: June 2, 2025

Turkey’s government-controlled Council of Judges and Prosecutors has appointed Deputy Minister of Justice Akın Gürlek as Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Minister of Justice in June 2022, Gürlek was a judge at the Istanbul Court and was notorious for trying all sorts of political cases and punishing lawyers, journalists and opposition politicians, as well as defying the rulings of the Constitutional Court.

His new appointment as Istanbul’s chief prosecutor could be part of Erdogan’s strategy to neutralise the opposition CHP mayors of Istanbul and its districts through political prosecution.

The anatomy of a judge: Akın Gürlek

The Arrested Lawyers Initiative has compiled a list of the controversial rulings made by Gürlek against critics of Erdoğan and the AKP government who include lawyers, opposition politicians, journalists, and academics.

Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas who was co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and HDP deputy Sırrı Süreyya Önder were convicted for spreading terrorist propaganda over their speech delivered in a peaceful gathering by the court presided by Gürlek. They were given four years and eight months and three years and six months respectively.

Demirtaş was a vocal critic of Erdoğan and the AKP before he was jailed. He ran in the presidential elections of 2014 and 2018 as a rival to Erdoğan and conducted his election campaign from jail for the 2018 election.

Gürlek was again on the panel of judges that handed down a prison sentence of nine years, and eight months to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP)’s İstanbul provincial chairman Canan Kaftancıoğlu in 2019 for spreading the propaganda of a terrorist organization in her social media posts.

Kaftancıoğlu played a key role in the shock victory of the CHP’s İstanbul mayoral candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu in 2019 — the first time in 25 years that Erdoğan’s party had lost power in Turkey’s biggest city.

Prominent human rights activist and head of the Turkish Medical Union (TTB) Professor Şebnem Korur Fincancı was also among the critics of the AKP government who was given a prison sentence by a court in which Gürlek was serving. Fincancı was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison in December 2018 on charges of disseminating “terrorist propaganda.”

Fincancı is an outspoken critic of the Turkish government and frequently brings the widespread human rights violations in the country to public attention as well as calling on the government to improve the working conditions of healthcare professionals who complain about an excessive workload and violence from patients or their relatives.

Gürlek was also the presiding judge of a high criminal court in İstanbul which ruled in October 2020 for the confiscation of the property of exiled journalist Can Dündar, who is currently living in Germany, and declared him a “fugitive.”

Dündar, the former editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet daily, had to flee Turkey in 2016 to avoid a government crackdown caused by a 2015 report in Cumhuriyet on National Intelligence Organization (MİT) trucks allegedly transporting arms to rebels in Syria. He was handed down a prison sentence of 27 years, six months in December 2020 on charges of obtaining state secrets for the purpose of espionage and supporting an armed terrorist organization without having membership in it in a trial concerning the news report, which sparked a political firestorm in Turkey.

Gürlek also came to public attention as a judge in an İstanbul court that refused to comply with a Constitutional Court ruling on opposition lawmaker Enis Berberoğlu. He was the presiding judge of İstanbul’s 14th High Criminal Court, which refused to retry CHP deputy Berberoğlu, claiming that the Constitutional Court exceeded its authority.

Berberoğlu, also a former journalist, was sentenced to five years, and 10 months in prison in 2017 for his alleged role in leaking confidential documents about the MİT trucks carrying weapons to Syria.

He was found guilty of espionage and of providing footage of the trucks to the opposition Cumhuriyet daily. Cumhuriyet published the original report on the shipment in May 2015 based on a video that allegedly came from Berberoğlu.

In September 2021 Turkey’s Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) promoted Gürlek to the position of “first-class judge” despite its previous decision not to promote judges whose verdicts on rights violations were overturned by the Constitutional Court.

Gürlek was also relentless in his crackdown on the human rights lawyers. In March 2019, he sentenced 18 human rights lawyers to a total of 159 years for terrorism-related charges. One of those lawyers was the late Ebru Timtik who launched a hunger strike in protest of the long jail sentences the lawyers had been handed down to. She was asking for a fair (re)trial and the immediate review of the lawyers’ appeals pending at the Court of Cassation. Unfortunately, she passed away on the 238th day of her hunger strike.

His new appointment as Istanbul’s chief prosecutor could be part of Erdogan’s strategy to neutralise the opposition CHP mayors of Istanbul and its districts through political prosecution.

Update (January 20, 2025): Since Gürlek’s appointment, two opposition mayors from the main opposition CHP party have been arrested and remanded in custody in Istanbul, namely the mayors of Esenyurt and Besiktas districts of Istanbul. President Erdogan supported these arrests, stating that “the real deal is yet to come,” which is interpreted by political commentators to mean that Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who is Erdogan’s most formidable potential rival in the next presidential election, could be the next to be arrested.

Update (June 2, 2025):
Since the appointment of Akın Gürlek as Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor, operations targeting opposition-led municipalities have intensified significantly.

• January 17: Beşiktaş Mayor Rıza Akpolat was among 23 individuals arrested in an investigation.

• January 21: Leader of the Victory Party (Zafer Partisi), Ümit Özdağ, was detained.

• March 19: Authorities issued detention warrants against over 100 individuals, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, as part of sweeping allegations.

• March 23: İmamoğlu was arrested on the day of a CHP internal vote to select its next presidential candidate—he was the sole contender.

• May 31: Additional arrests included:

  • Büyükçekmece Mayor Hasan Akgün

  • Gaziosmanpaşa Mayor Hakan Bahçetepe

  • Avcılar Mayor Utku Caner Çaykara

  • Ceyhan Mayor Kadir Aydar

  • Seyhan Mayor Oya Tekin

  • Beşiktaş Deputy Mayor Ozan İş

  • Avcılar Deputy Mayors Erhan Daka and Mehmet Mandacı

  • Büyükçekmece Deputy Mayors Rıza Can Özdemir and Ömer Kazancı

To date, 284 people have been subjected to detention orders in five waves of Istanbul-centered operations targeting CHP-led municipalities. Of the 11 CHP mayors taken into custody since the March 31, 2024 local elections, six have been formally arrested.

The timing and scope of these operations, coinciding with rising speculation around İmamoğlu’s presidential candidacy, have led many observers to interpret this as a broader campaign to neutralize Turkey’s democratic opposition through legal and judicial mechanisms under Gürlek’s oversight.

Categories: Turkey Human Rights Blog