The authorities undermined fair trial guarantees by targeting lawyers for their professional activities. Lawyers continued to be subject to increasing pressure, taken into custody, detained, exposed to legal harassment through investigations and criminal proceedings.
Official statistics highlight that Turkish public prosecutors have filed more than 420,000 charges under Article 314 of the Turkish Penal Code within the last eight-years. What is worse, between 2016 and 2020 more than 265,000 individuals have been sentenced for membership of an armed terrorist organisation.
According to a report of the Council of Europe, Turkey has the largest population of inmates convicted for terrorism-related offences. The report shows there are currently a total of 30524 inmates in COE member states who were sentenced for terrorism, and Of those 29827 are in Turkish prisons.
18 May 2021 marks the second anniversary of the torture incident which took place in Sanliurfa province of Turkey between 18 May 2019 and 28 May 2019, and victimized some fifty individuals.
Within the scope of Turkey Human Rights Accountability Project, the Arrested Lawyers Initiative summarily translated the report of Human Rights Center of Sanliurfa Bar Association to English. We also worked with renowned Italian artist Gianluca Costantini who illustrated the accounts of the victims.
With regard to Factor 4 named ‘Fundamental Rights’ Turkey ranked 123rd out of 128 countries -just ahead of Iran, Egypt, China, Venezuela and Myanmar-.
The @ArrestedLawyers Initiative published a factsheet on Turkey’s state of emergency dismissals. It includes the latest statistics on the Inquiry Commission’s work, criteria applied for the dismissals and the definition of the connection and cohesion made by Ankara Regional Appeal Court.
Venice Commission: The 2020 amendments to the Attorneyship Law endangers the independence of legal profession in Turkey