ANKARA — Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 2026–2027 judicial year, Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB) President Av. R. Erinç Sağkan delivered a wide-ranging address warning that rule-of-law principles in Turkey are being eroded by practices that target the legal profession, politicize the judiciary, and misuse pre-trial detention.

Defense rights under threat

Sağkan argued that judicial independence cannot exist without an independent and effective defense bar, and said this independence is increasingly being tested by unlawful practices that damage the rule of law. He said lawyers’ professional activities are, in some closely watched cases, being turned into criminal accusations without sufficient concrete evidence, accompanied by unlawful detentions, arrests, and improper searches and seizures at law offices. Such measures, he said, strike at the core of the right to defense — affecting not only lawyers but citizens’ broader right to a defense and their right to a fair trial, even though the law sets strict safeguards around office and home searches.

He called for moving away from the practice of conflating lawyers with their clients, for strict adherence to Turkey’s special investigation procedures, and for Turkey to become a party to the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer.

Violence against lawyers

Sağkan said violence against lawyers can no longer be treated as isolated incidents, describing near-daily reports of attacks on colleagues across the country. He noted that lawyers are increasingly seen as parties to the disputes they handle, and are being assaulted and even killed. He specifically commemorated Av. Hatice Kocaefe, killed in an attack in Bursa on April 28, and Av. Zekeriya Polat, a young colleague shot and killed in Yalova on January 7 while carrying out duties representing a public institution.

He called for a comprehensive policy response — including deterrent sanctions and preventive mechanisms — stressing that recommendations already submitted to the Ministry of Justice and Parliament should be implemented without delay, framing the issue as one of access to justice rather than a purely professional demand.

Politics and the judiciary

Sağkan also warned of a growing convergence between political and judicial language in Turkey, saying political disputes are increasingly being carried into courtrooms and judicial processes are being read more for their political consequences than their legal reasoning. In such a climate, he said, public attention shifts from a ruling’s legal grounds to the intent presumed to lie behind it — a dynamic he described as deeply damaging to democratic order and to public trust in justice.

He linked the judiciary’s reputation, the dignity of the legal profession, and public confidence in justice as interdependent, warning that erosion in one inevitably spreads to the others.

Pre-trial detention and judicial control measures

A central theme of the speech was the misuse of detention. Sağkan said pre-trial detention and related judicial control measures are increasingly being applied disproportionately and without regard to statutory conditions, functioning in practice as instruments of punishment rather than procedural safeguards. He said criminal investigations and sentence enforcement are becoming blurred, and criticized authorities for breaching investigative confidentiality in ways that damage the presumption of innocence and individuals’ right not to be stigmatized before conviction, fueling public distrust in the criminal justice system.

Sentence enforcement reform

Sağkan described sentence-enforcement policy as a major problem in its own right, citing frequently amended legislation and what he called non-objective decisions by prison observation boards. He called for a new enforcement law grounded in human dignity, subject to effective judicial oversight, applied equally to all, and designed around a fair review mechanism.

Freedom of expression

On freedom of expression, Sağkan said judicial practice in Turkey has increasingly narrowed rather than protected this fundamental right. He pointed in particular to prosecutions under the Turkish Penal Code’s “Crimes Against Public Peace” provisions, arguing that certain applications effectively draw a line between permitted and impermissible thought. He said the punitive use of protective measures — creating what he called an intolerance even toward release decisions — cannot simply be dismissed as erroneous judgment, and is generating pressure and anxiety across a significant part of society.

Sağkan closed by reiterating that judicial reputation, the dignity of the defense profession, and citizens’ trust in justice rise or fall together, and that the measure of that trust lies not in how it is described, but in how consistently it is delivered in everyday legal practice.

Categories: Turkey Human Rights Blog