Edited / Update on 10 March 2021.
Since 2016’s coup attempt, President Erdogan has been ruling Turkey in an increasingly authoritarian way. As of today, Turkey is the largest jailer of lawyers, judges and journalists. According to the Freedom House, Turkey is no longer a free country, and according to the World Justice Project’s rule of law index Turkey ranks as 101st out of 113 countries indexed.
Under the emergency rule, Turkey dissolved 4100 profit-oriented or non-profit legal entities including 1412 associations and 139 foundations and transferred their assets to the Treasury without any judicial procedure and compensation. Moreover, Turkish Government seized the control of more than 1000 companies worth more than 12 Billion Euro and has been running these companies through trustees appointed by a governmental body (Savings Deposits Insurance Fund). Total worth of arbitrarily seized assets is more than 32 Billion USD.
More than 120.000 public servants were dismissed with the Decree Laws without any judicial or administrative investigation. According to a survey by the Arrested Lawyers Initiative, there is a steady increase in the use of anti-terrorism law on individuals by public prosecutors. The survey highlights that Turkish public prosecutors have filed more than 392,000 charges under Article 314 of the Turkish Penal Code within the last seven-years. What is worse, between 2016 and 2019 more than 220,000 individuals have been sentenced for membership of an armed terrorist organisation.
UN Human Rights Commissioner, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International have been reporting the violation of non-derogable human rights law such as prohibition of torture and ill-treatment, and the principle of no retrospective punishment. On 11 December 2018, nine media organizations from eight countries revealed Turkey’s international kidnapping operations and its black sites to torture the dissident people. The UN Working Group has constantly established Turkey’s ongoing mass arrest campaign constitutes Category V violation, in other words systematic arbitrary detention on the grounds of discrimination based on origin, opinion, or any other status, that aims towards or can result in ignoring the equality of human beings [See: 47/2020, 51/2020,44/2018, 42/2018, 53/2019, 10/2019, 78/2018, 42/2018, 43/2018, 44/2018, 11/2018] WGAD further implied that Turkey's systematic imprisonment campaign may constitute crimes against humanity. [47/2020, 51/2020]
As a member of the Council of Europe, Turkey has been ignoring the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights and refusing to release Selahattin Demirtas, Osman Kavala, Alparslan Altan.
Despite all these systematic gross human rights violations, the Council of Europe (COE), its member states and European Democrats are content with timid condemnations. What is worse, the COE has been running an appeasement policy towards Erdogan.
Are the European States virtually powerless against the Turkish Government on the face of state sovereignty?
Since the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), states enjoy the principle of sovereignty and therefore have almost absolute authority within their territory except the practices that infringe the jus cogens rules, general principles of international law and their obligations stem from the international treaties.
Turkey is the member of the Council of Europe and party to the ECHR. Article 33 of the ECHR stipulates the inter-state cases and empowers ‘any High Contracting Party to refer any alleged breach of the provisions of the Convention and the Protocols thereto by another High Contracting Party to the Court.’
After the military coup of 1980 (in Turkey), France, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden filed separate cases against the Turkey before the then European Commission of Human Rights which is the predecessor of the Court. Five cases by the five members of the COE were combined in one case. The applicant Governments alleged violations of prohibition of torture, the right to liberty, the right to fair trial, the freedom of association and expression.
These applications, although not known by Turkish people, led to historical positive outcomes. The case which ended with friendly settlement on 7 December 1985, called forth 13 legislative amendments (abrogation of the Decree issued by the Military Junta), and two amnesty laws of which one was for disciplinary punishment in 1985 and the other was criminal cases in 1988.
Today the situation in Turkey is not better than 1982, deputies and mayors of Turkey’s third largest party have been in jail despite the ECHR ruling comdemning the situation as an infringement of the Convention. There is wide-spread torture and ill-treatment in the country and pro-government mafia leaders call for individual armament with no legal accountability. Population in Turkish prisons exceeds %25 of its already artificially increased capacity.
It is high time to act for the members of the COE to file an inter-state case against Turkey. Such application is in favor of both Turkish and European peoples as well as the COE and the EU.
