Turkish lawyer, Elif Hendekci, recounts her and her baby’s harrowing experience in prison. Imprisoned for providing legal aid to dissidents, Hendekci faces abuse and bureaucratic indifference in jail, struggling to protect her daughter amidst a system lacking empathy and basic human rights. Her story exposes political repression and inhumanity within Turkey’s incarceration system post-2016.
After a fact-finding mission, the international coalition expressed profound concern over the ongoing harassment, arbitrary detention, and mistreatment of lawyers in Turkey.
Turkish lawyer Hendekci, imprisoned for 5 years, continues to fight for justice and calls for solidarity from the International Bar Association. Having been vindicated by the Constitutional Court, Hendekci is both pressing for accountability and fighting for an acquittal in her retrial.
The European Parliament adopted its annual Turkey report which found the state of democracy, rights and freedoms is deplorable and condemned systemic rights violations.
Recently, lawyer Nesimi Yalçınoğlu died, becoming yet another victim of the Turkish judiciary, which has been weaponised by the Erdogan government to rule by fear.
The case of lawyer Erol Altintas has highlighted the worrying practice of Turkish courts of using perfectly legal activities as grounds for criminal conviction, as well as ignoring relevant rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee, raising doubts about the fairness and independence of the country’s legal system.