Strasbourg 26 May 2026
The Council of Europe has denounced Turkey’s crackdown on lawyers and freedom of expression, as well as the lack of independence of the judiciary.
The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, has issued a sweeping indictment of Türkiye’s human rights record, warning that anti-terrorism laws are being systematically misused to silence lawyers, journalists, and civil society — while courts openly defy binding constitutional rulings.
The findings, published today in a formal memorandum following O’Flaherty’s visit to Türkiye last December, paint a picture of a justice system under serious structural stress: judges transferred for the wrong verdicts, prosecutors filing cases thousands of pages long on legally protected conduct, and lower courts refusing to free people even after the country’s own Constitutional Court orders it.
Lawyers Under Siege
Among the most striking findings is the deteriorating position of the legal profession itself. The Istanbul Bar Association — one of the most prominent in the country — faced criminal prosecution for terrorist propaganda and spreading misleading information, charges stemming from a public statement it made in December 2024 calling for an independent investigation into the deaths of two journalists killed in northern Syria.
The Bar was acquitted in January 2026, but the prosecutor immediately appealed, keeping the proceedings alive. A member of its Executive Board, Fırat Epözdemir, arrested in January 2025, remains subject to criminal proceedings on charges of membership of, and propaganda for, a terrorist organisation.
The Commissioner reports that lawyers across Türkiye increasingly face practical obstruction: denied entry to court buildings, removed from hearings, blocked from meeting detained clients — sometimes for prolonged periods at the most critical early stages of detention — and refused timely access to case files through confidentiality orders.
More troubling still, lawyers representing refugees, Kurdish activists, LGBTI individuals, and journalists have reportedly been questioned by prosecutors about their clients’ activities, with some subjected to criminal investigation themselves. The Commissioner described this as an “improper conflation of lawyer and client identities” — a practice that strikes at the heart of the right to a fair trial.
Türkiye has not yet signed or ratified the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer, a gap the Commissioner explicitly calls on Ankara to close.
Article 314 and the Anti-Terror Law: A Tool of Repression?
The memorandum singles out the Anti-Terrorism Law’s Article 7 and the Penal Code’s Article 314 — covering terrorist propaganda and membership of an armed criminal organisation — as provisions whose application has been found by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to fall foul of the Convention, yet which continue to be deployed against protected expression and civil society activity.
The Commissioner notes that the Venice Commission as far back as 2016 concluded that several of these provisions carried “excessive sanctions and had been applied too widely, penalising conduct protected under the Convention.” The Committee of Ministers has since repeatedly observed that domestic courts have still not aligned their practice with Convention requirements of legality, foreseeability, and restraint.
Reports received by the Commissioner indicate the provisions are being applied to conduct including peaceful political speech, human rights advocacy, and journalism. In several instances, journalists have faced multiple simultaneous criminal investigations based on the same or similar facts — a pattern the memorandum suggests creates the appearance that criminal law is being weaponised to silence critical reporting.
Twenty-nine journalists were in detention at the time of publication.
Prosecutors and the Collapse of Fair Trial Standards
The memorandum raises serious concerns about prosecutorial practice, describing indictments that list lawful democratic activity — statements, protests, civil society work — as evidence of criminal intent to commit grave offences, while failing to provide the legal reasoning needed to show how that evidence constitutes proof of any specific crime.
The Commissioner also flags the sheer scale of some indictments, noting that documents running to thousands of pages make effective defence practically impossible. Judges and prosecutors are described as routinely opening multiple overlapping cases on identical or near-identical facts and legal grounds — a practice that produces complex, years-long proceedings with a severe impact on defendants’ right to a fair trial.
Pre-trial detention, which should be a last resort, is reported to be ordered without sufficient individualised reasoning or rigorous review, with the ECtHR having found violations of Article 5 of the Convention — the right to liberty — on multiple occasions concerning journalists and civil society figures in Türkiye.
The overuse of secret witnesses, whose testimony in some cases cannot be challenged through cross-examination, is also cited as a significant threat to the equality of arms between prosecution and defence.
A Judiciary Without Independence
At the structural level, the Commissioner revisits concerns about the Council of Judges and Prosecutors (CJP), the body responsible for judicial appointments, promotions, and discipline. Its members are either elected by parliament or appointed directly by the President, while the Minister and Deputy Minister of Justice sit as ex-officio members — an arrangement the Venice Commission has repeatedly said extends presidential control across the entire judiciary.
In practice, the memorandum reports that the CJP has been used to promote judges in breach of seniority requirements, discipline judges who rule in favour of defendants, and suddenly transfer judges — including to remote postings — shortly before or after significant hearings. The Commissioner notes that these measures have disproportionately affected proceedings involving journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition politicians.
Unlike dismissal decisions, most CJP rulings are not subject to any independent judicial review, a gap the Venice Commission has described as contrary to European standards.
Courts Refusing to Obey Courts
Perhaps the most constitutionally alarming section of the memorandum concerns the non-implementation of binding judicial decisions — including by Türkiye’s own Constitutional Court.
The Commissioner highlights the cases of Can Atalay and Tayfun Kahraman, in which the Court of Cassation openly refused to comply with Constitutional Court rulings ordering their release, arguing the higher court had exceeded its authority. At the time of writing, a second Constitutional Court decision in the Atalay case had also not been acted upon. A criminal complaint has since been filed against the Constitutional Court judges who voted to find a violation — a development the Commissioner describes with evident alarm.
Administrative courts have reportedly begun adopting similar reasoning to justify non-compliance with Constitutional Court rulings.
On the international level, Türkiye has the largest number of ECtHR judgments pending execution of any Council of Europe member state — 445 cases in total, with 37 classified under the enhanced supervision procedure, meaning the Committee of Ministers has determined they require priority attention. Many have been outstanding for five years or more.
What the Commissioner Demands
The memorandum sets out a series of formal recommendations. On criminal law, it calls for the amendment or repeal of key provisions including Article 299 (insulting the President) and the anti-terrorism articles used against journalists and civil society, in line with ECtHR case law. On the judiciary, it calls for genuine independence of the CJP, transparent merit-based appointments, and an end to executive interference. On lawyers, it calls for the signing and ratification of the relevant Council of Europe convention and an end to the conflation of lawyers with their clients.
On the non-implementation crisis, the Commissioner is unequivocal: Türkiye must ensure that all judgments of both the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights are executed — including in cases concerning liberty, free expression, peaceful assembly, and the right to a fair trial.
Source: Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Memorandum CommHR(2026)34, following the Commissioner’s visit to Türkiye from 1 to 5 December 2025, published 22 April 2026.
Categories: Turkey Human Rights Blog