A member of Turkey’s parliament said Thursday that the government’s new judicial reform bill repeats an old pattern by freeing many violent offenders while keeping in prison thousands of people jailed on disputed terrorism convictions after a failed 2016 coup, Turkish Minute reported.
Mustafa Yeneroğlu, an independent lawmaker from İstanbul and a former member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said the AKP’s new bill would initially allow 55,000 prisoners to leave prison under an expanded supervised release scheme, a number expected to rise to 115,000 in the following months. The proposal forms the centerpiece of the government’s 11th Judicial Package now before Turkey’s parliament.
Yeneroğlu said the release plan will exclude people convicted under Turkey’s terrorism laws even when the underlying conduct involved no violence. Those cases stem from a crackdown that followed the coup attempt in 2016, when the state retroactively classified many routine and previously legal activities as proof of membership in a terrorist group. These activities included opening an account at the wrong bank, belonging to the wrong labor union, using a particular mobile phone app or canceling a television subscription in protest.
Tens of thousands received sentences that ranged from six years to life in prison.
Turkey’s first large release scheme during the COVID pandemic in 2020 applied the same rule. People convicted of homicide, assault or drug trafficking could leave prison, but those convicted under terrorism provisions stayed behind bars even when their cases involved no link to weapons or violence. The new bill again keeps these prisoners outside the scope of early release.
The lawmaker said these men and women are now punished twice because they lost their right to a fair trial and now face unequal treatment in the execution of sentences. He said this double standard violates public trust and leaves the country’s prison system with the highest inmate population in Europe, over 428,000.
In his post on X, he cited official data showing that Turkey recorded 23,805,000 criminal offenses in 2024 and that the prison population has grown from 58,000 in 2004 to 428,267 today. He said the rise stems from a justice system that cannot operate independently from the government.
Under the bill, many inmates who meet the rules for time served would move from higher security prisons to lower security “open” facilities and then become eligible to leave prison as much as three years early under a supervised release program. The package also brings new disciplinary rules for lawyers, gives regional appeals courts broader powers and sets new rules for debt collection, property transfers and online fraud cases.
Since the failed coup in 2016, Turkey has used terrorism laws to pursue an enormous post-coup crackdown.
Justice ministry data show that a total of 3,093,084 people have been investigated for terrorism-related offenses since the coup attempt, with 527,100 convicted, often on the basis of ordinary social or professional ties that were legal at the time.
Many of those targeted are alleged followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, as well as journalists, Kurdish activists and other government opponents.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following an abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
International human rights groups and legal experts say Turkey’s counterterrorism provisions in the Turkish Penal Code and the Counterterrorism Law are vague and open to political use, allowing the state to treat peaceful conduct as support for terrorism.
Once people are labeled terrorism suspects or convicts, they face lasting bans from public employment, travel restrictions and social stigma, even if the charges are later dropped or they are acquitted.
It is this group of people convicted of terrorism for acts with no link to violence that critics say is being excluded again from the new early release scheme, while thousands sentenced for ordinary crimes, including serious offenses, stand to benefit.
