Arrested Lawyers Initiative · May 2026 · Based on TLSP Report: Dismantling Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law in Türkiye (I)
A major new report documents the systematic capture of Türkiye’s courts. For lawyers and human rights defenders already in detention, its findings explain the machinery being used against them — including prosecutors who have been rewarded for partisan conduct and a pattern of repeated prosecutions designed to keep dissidents permanently ensnared.
The Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project (TLSP) has published a landmark report documenting, in granular legal detail, the capture of Türkiye’s judiciary by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and allied power networks. For those working on the cases of detained lawyers, the report provides an essential framework: it shows that the prosecutions are not aberrations or miscarriages of individual justice, but the intended output of a court system that has been systematically repurposed to serve political ends.
The report’s central argument is unambiguous. “The dismantling of judicial independence, and therefore the separation of powers, has been central to widespread violations of human rights in Türkiye.” The institutions that should provide redress — courts, prosecutors, the Constitutional Court — have instead become instruments of the violations themselves.
I. The machinery of capture
Taking control of the judicial council
The capture of Türkiye’s judiciary began not in the courtroom but in the institution responsible for governing it: the Council of Judges and Prosecutors (CJP). The CJP controls appointments, promotions, transfers, disciplinary proceedings, and case assignments across the judiciary. Whoever controls the CJP effectively controls who sits on the bench — and how judges behave if they want to keep their positions.
Through a series of constitutional and legislative changes — in 2010, 2014, and most radically in 2017 — the executive progressively gained a decisive grip on the CJP’s composition. The 2017 amendments reduced its membership from 22 to 13. Where previously nearly half of members were elected by the judiciary itself, appointments are now made directly by the President (4 members), the Minister and Undersecretary of Justice (2 members), and via parliamentary election along strict party lines (7 members). The Venice Commission confirmed as recently as December 2024 that the CJP’s composition “deprives that body of independence from the Government and has enabled its politicisation.”
“The main objective of reforms depriving Poland’s judiciary of the right to nominate and elect judicial members of the national judicial council was to give the executive and legislature a decisive influence on the council’s composition.”European Court of Human Rights, Reczkowicz v. Poland — reasoning the TLSP report applies directly to Türkiye
The appointment in February 2026 of Akın Gürlek as Minister of Justice — and therefore ex officio president of the CJP — crystallises what the report describes. Gürlek is the prosecutor-turned-judge who oversaw politically motivated convictions of opposition politicians, human rights defenders, and lawyers, routinely disregarding ECtHR and Constitutional Court judgments. His elevation to the highest judicial office in government is not an anomaly: it is the system working as designed.
II. Prosecutors as instruments of power
When the prosecution function becomes a tool of repression
International standards require that prosecutors exercise their functions independently, impartially, and free from political instruction or reward. The TLSP report documents how, in Türkiye, the reverse has become the norm: prosecutorial careers have advanced precisely in proportion to prosecutors’ willingness to pursue politically convenient targets, and to ignore or actively circumvent rights-compliant outcomes.
The career of Akın Gürlek is the report’s most detailed case study in prosecutorial capture — but it is far from unique. As Istanbul’s chief criminal court judge, Gürlek presided over high-profile terrorism convictions of opposition figures and government critics, consistently disregarding binding Constitutional Court and ECtHR rulings. He was appointed Undersecretary of Justice, making him an ex officio CJP member. In October 2024, he was elevated to Chief Public Prosecutor of Istanbul. Within months, a wave of arrests followed — including that of Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in March 2025. By February 2026, Gürlek had been appointed Minister of Justice, now chairing the very body that governs every judge and prosecutor in the country.
Pattern of prosecutorial capture
The Gürlek–Tuncay appointments
On 20 February 2026, Can Tuncay — another prosecutor prominent in high-profile terrorism cases — was appointed Deputy Justice Minister. He had signed two separate indictments against İmamoğlu just ten days earlier. Tuncay had previously been reported to have ordered the detention of a man who died in prison from suspected torture; the UN Human Rights Committee found that his detention was unreasonable, that he was not promptly informed of charges, and that authorities failed to conduct an impartial investigation. The HRC findings did not prevent his promotion. These appointments reveal a consistent pattern: loyalty and aggressive prosecution of government critics are rewarded with seniority and institutional power.
Prosecutors have been insulated from accountability through the same mechanisms used against independent judges. The CJP’s politically motivated decisions on prosecutors’ careers — appointments, transfers, promotions, and disciplinary proceedings — are excluded from judicial review under Türkiye’s Constitution. A prosecutor who brings rights-compliant charges faces the risk of involuntary transfer or disciplinary action; one who pursues politically convenient prosecutions faces promotion. The incentive structure could not be more clearly aligned with capture.
The report also documents how prosecutors have been used as a primary tool against members of the judiciary who resist capture. In 2015, two judges who ordered the release of police officers detained in a corruption investigation implicating government relatives were themselves arrested — without the prior ministerial authorisation legally required. The ECtHR found these arrests violated the judges’ right to liberty. No accountability followed for the prosecutors involved.
III. Repeated prosecutions as a strategy
Using the courts to keep dissidents permanently ensnared
One of the most troubling patterns the TLSP report documents — and one directly relevant to the lawyers, journalists, and human rights defenders the Arrested Lawyers Initiative follows — is the use of successive, stacked prosecutions to keep individuals under legal threat regardless of the outcome of any individual case. Acquittal does not mean freedom. It means the beginning of the next prosecution.
This pattern operates through several mechanisms. First, acquittals in politically sensitive cases have been quashed and retrials ordered — in some instances after the judges who delivered the acquittal faced disciplinary measures. The report notes that in the Kavala proceedings, judges who acquitted the human rights defender were put under investigation after their decision, and a judge who later dissented from his conviction faced an involuntary CJP transfer. The message to the bench is explicit: independence carries professional consequences.
Second, the same individuals face prosecution across multiple, parallel or sequential sets of proceedings on different charges, often arising from the same underlying conduct but reframed under different articles of the anti-terrorism law. Each new indictment resets the clock on detention and reactivates pre-trial measures regardless of prior outcomes. The report identifies this explicitly in the proceedings against İmamoğlu, who faced separate sets of charges — including “insulting public officials” and, in 2026, leading a criminal organisation — across multiple courts simultaneously.
Third, the report documents the retroactive criminalisation of lawful professional conduct as a structural feature of repeated prosecutions against lawyers. Activities that were entirely legal at the time they occurred — membership of a bar association, use of a lawful messaging application, representation of clients in politically sensitive cases — are recharacterised in subsequent indictments as evidence of terrorist organisation membership. Each recharacterisation creates a new ground for prosecution.
The effect is not merely to keep individuals imprisoned or under legal threat. It is to deter the entire profession. Lawyers who take on cases involving government critics, opposition politicians, or alleged terrorism suspects know that their professional work itself may one day be cited as the basis for their own prosecution. The report notes that attacks on the legal profession have been “instrumental to shaping a ‘justice’ system that is neither independent and effective, nor just.”
“Criminal proceedings against judges and prosecutors can be motivated by political ends more broadly, transforming the prosecutorial function into a tool of repression.”UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, cited in the TLSP report
IV. What this means for detained lawyers
The tools used to silence the profession
For the lawyers whose cases the Arrested Lawyers Initiative follows, the report identifies precisely the mechanisms deployed against them.
Strategic case assignment. The CJP’s power to assign and reassign judges has been used to ensure that politically sensitive proceedings reach courts amenable to the government. In the case of İmamoğlu, two of three judges scheduled to hear his appeal were replaced without justification. In proceedings against Kavala and lawyer Selçuk Kozağaçlı, the same figure — Akın Gürlek — appears repeatedly in different institutional roles.
The weaponisation of “in flagrante delicto.” Turkish law protects judges and prosecutors from arrest without specific safeguards. After 2016, domestic courts reinterpreted the “in flagrante delicto” exception to encompass mere suspicion of network membership. The ECtHR found this “manifestly unreasonable.” The same logic has been applied to lawyers: professional activities reframed as acts of terrorism, requiring no further evidence of an offence in progress.
Reliance on secret witnesses. The ECtHR has found Türkiye in breach of fair trial guarantees in multiple cases where anonymous testimony served as decisive evidence without adequate procedural safeguards. This is pervasive in terrorism prosecutions of lawyers and journalists. In the absence of substantive evidence, the secret witness becomes the prosecution’s foundation — and the defence has no means of challenging it.
Retroactive criminalisation. Opening a bank account at a lawful institution, subscribing to a legal publication, using the ByLock messaging application — each treated as evidence of terrorist membership. The ECtHR’s Grand Chamber ruling in Yüksel Yalçınkaya v Türkiye found this violated fair trial rights and called for general measures. New mass arrests on ByLock grounds followed shortly after the judgment.
V. The last line of defence
The Constitutional Court’s failure
For individuals whose rights are violated, the Constitutional Court is in theory the supreme domestic avenue for redress before turning to Strasbourg. The TLSP report documents how that avenue has been systematically blocked.
The President appoints 12 of 15 Constitutional Court members. Since 2017 the President has been permitted to remain a party member, removing even the formal expectation of neutrality. Through control of the CJP, which elects members of the Court of Cassation and Council of State, the ruling coalition shapes who is promoted to the top courts — and then to the Constitutional Court itself. The result is a court “repurposed from upholding judicial independence and constitutionally guaranteed human rights to legitimising the judicial harassment of dissidents.”
The Constitutional Court’s approach to ByLock prosecutions illustrates this precisely. In its rulings, the Court cited passages from the ECtHR’s Yalçınkaya judgment acknowledging the severity of the post-coup situation — while entirely omitting the judgment’s core holding that treating ByLock use alone as evidence of terrorist membership violated legality and fair trial rights. This was not error; it was selection.
For detained lawyers, the implications are stark. Domestic remedies are not merely inadequate — they are, in many cases, structurally unavailable. The pathway to the ECtHR is not a last resort but often the only resort. Yet Türkiye has also repeatedly refused to implement ECtHR judgments, leaving those in detention without the remedy they are owed.
VI. Conclusion
What reform must address
The TLSP report concludes that Türkiye’s judiciary, “while maintaining a formal illusion of separation of powers, is subject to executive control and cannot be regarded as independent.” Individuals tied to the ruling AKP have been placed in key positions throughout the judicial system, fostering a climate of fear and submission. Prosecutors who pursue the government’s critics are promoted; those who apply the law impartially face punishment.
For the Arrested Lawyers Initiative, this report matters because it names the system. Lawyers in detention in Türkiye are not the victims of a justice system that has malfunctioned. In many cases they are the intended targets of a system functioning exactly as those who captured it designed it to. The repeated prosecutions, the retroactive criminalisation, the secret witnesses, the stacked charges — these are not procedural failures. They are the mechanism.
The report also carries a warning beyond Türkiye’s borders. The process of judicial capture it describes followed a recognisable sequence: incremental changes to judicial governance; the use of security emergencies to accelerate purges and appointments; systematic reward of loyalty and punishment of independence; and the hollowing out of constitutional review. As the report concludes, these steps “provide an important warning” to any democracy where judicial independence is treated as given rather than actively defended.
Categories: Turkey Human Rights Blog