November 12, 2025 — A newly filed indictment against Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and 99 others includes concerning allegations against his lead defense lawyer, Mehmet Pehlivan, further escalating concerns that the Turkish government is criminalizing legitimate legal defense in politically sensitive cases.
The indictment, submitted yesterday to the Istanbul court, heavily relies on the testimonies of a so-called “confessing witness,” identified as Soytekin. It also draws extensively on testimonies from 15 secret witnesses, listed under code names such as Meşe, Doğan, İlke, Çınar, Rüzgar, and Mimoza. The use of this unusually high number of anonymous witnesses has raised further concerns about the credibility and transparency of the investigation.
Legal experts note that the extensive reliance on secret witnesses — whose identities, affiliations, and potential incentives remain undisclosed — undermines the defendants’ right to a fair trial. Human rights groups have long criticized Turkish prosecutors for systematically using anonymous witnesses in politically charged cases to fabricate evidence or pressure defendants.
According to the indictment, confessing witness Soytekin alleged that during a private discussion, lawyer Pehlivan “said everyone knew which lawyer had been assigned, that I was assigned Onur, that it was already determined which lawyers would represent the bureaucrats detained from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB), that they had decided what would be said during questioning, and that if municipal bureaucrats were arrested, financial assistance would be provided to them. He said this was a political operation and advised everyone not to testify.”
Legal experts and observers have dismissed these statements as describing nothing more than standard legal preparation by a defense team working in a high-profile political case. However, prosecutors have framed these coordination efforts as evidence of ‘membership in a criminal organization,’ suggesting that merely arranging legal representation constitutes a criminal act. The indictment also highlights another passage from Soytekin’s statement:
“Nezahat Kurt, who is currently detained in Kütahya Prison, was visited by a lawyer sent by the CHP Kütahya provincial branch to ask if she needed anything. I told her not to request anything from anyone and not to feel indebted. This is how they run the system in prison.”
The prosecution appears to treat this standard humanitarian outreach by a political party as evidence of an illicit organizational network. Commentators noted that such reasoning turns legitimate legal aid into a punishable offense.
The indictment also refers to another conversation, allegedly between Pehlivan and the wife of a detained municipal official, Murat Kapkı. Prosecutors claim that Pehlivan told her, “We are organizing everything. We are sending lawyers to everyone who is arrested. Everything is under our control, don’t worry.”
The prosecution’s emphasis on witness statements about routine legal coordination underscores what rights groups describe as a broader pattern of judicial harassment targeting lawyers defending political opponents and critics of the government.
The Arrested Lawyers Initiative notes that criminalizing coordination of legal defense is identical to the 2018 indictment against 52 lawyers in Ankara, where prosecutors accused defense lawyers of forming a “hierarchical structure” merely because they communicated and cooperated while representing clients in politically sensitive trials.
An 2024 report by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) and The Arrested Lawyers Initiative (TALI) –A Profession on Trial: The Systematic Crackdown Against Lawyers in Turkey– documented the declining independence of lawyers and bar associations and the widespread persecution of legal professionals through unfair trials, arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and harassment.
The report underscored the alarming misuse of counter-terrorism legislation to prosecute lawyers in the course of their legitimate work. According to the findings, in 77 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, lawyers have been detained, prosecuted, and convicted since the 2016 coup attempt, often on the basis of vague and overly broad anti-terror charges such as “membership of an armed terrorist organization” and “spreading terrorist propaganda” under Article 314 of the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terrorism Law No. 3713.
These charges are frequently combined with the misidentification of lawyers with their clients, effectively criminalizing the act of legal defense. To date, more than 1,700 lawyers have been prosecuted, 700 have been remanded to pretrial detention, and at least 553 lawyers have been sentenced to a total of 3,380 years in prison.
The Arrested Lawyers Initiative condemns the targeting and detention of Mehmet Pehlivan, describes it as “a grave escalation in the ongoing persecution of the legal profession in Turkey.” The organization said the indictment “once again illustrates how the Turkish authorities conflate lawyers with their clients and weaponize the justice system to silence dissent.”
TALI called for Pehlivan’s immediate release, the withdrawal of politically motivated charges, and urged the international legal community and bar associations to take a unified stance in defense of the independence and safety of Turkish lawyers.
Categories: Situation in Turkey, Turkey Human Rights Blog