Turkey’s largest bar association unfurled a banner reading “Dark Year” at its İstanbul headquarters on Monday, using the first day of the judicial calendar to accuse authorities of silencing the defense in court proceedings and eroding access to justice, Turkish Minute reported.
The judicial year in Turkey begins every September 1 after a summer recess, with ceremonies at courthouses nationwide and a central program hosted by the Supreme Court of Appeals in Ankara.
Bar associations are public-law bodies representing licensed lawyers, and the İstanbul Bar is both the oldest and the largest, often setting the tone in debates over the rule of law. On İstiklal Avenue its banner declared: “A judicial year in which there are attempts to silence the defense [in court proceedings] and there is no justice is a dark year.” Lawyers at the protest chanted, “The defense has not been silent and will not be silent.”
The demonstration coincided with the official event marking the judicial year in Ankara, attended by Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz, Supreme Court of Appeals President Ömer Kerkez, Constitutional Court President Kadir Özkaya, Council of State President Zeki Yiğit, Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç, opposition leader Özgür Özel and Turkish Bar Association President Erinç Sağkan. Earlier, Kerkez led a delegation to Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in a customary visit that precedes the session.
In his speech Kerkez called for speedier trials and said Turkey may revisit its sentence enforcement rules. Yılmaz told the audience that courts should perform reviews of legality rather than policy judgments, remarks widely read as a response to opposition criticism of judicial rulings.
Speaking for the umbrella bar association, Sağkan said an independent judiciary requires authorities to implement top court decisions, citing the Constitutional Court’s ruling in the case of opposition lawmaker Can Atalay and judgments from the European Court of Human Rights that found detentions pursued political aims under Article 18 of the European Convention.
In İstanbul the official courthouse program took place at the Anatolian Courthouse on the Asian side, but the city bar chair joined the protest instead. Bars associations in Diyarbakır and Ankara also issued statements stressing judicial independence and urging the execution of Constitutional Court and European court rulings.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did not attend the Ankara ceremony because he was in Tianjin, China, for a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.
