Turkey’s Constitutional Court has for a second time found rights violations in the case of jailed city planner Tayfun Kahraman, ruling unanimously that the failure to implement its earlier decision violated both his right to a fair trial and his right to an effective remedy through an individual application to the top court, Turkish Minute reported.
Kahraman, one of the defendants convicted over the 2013 Gezi Park protests, returned to the top court after an İstanbul court refused to carry out a July 31, 2025, Constitutional Court ruling that had found a violation of his right to a fair trial and ordered a retrial.
The İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court had rejected that ruling in November, arguing that the Constitutional Court had acted like an appeals court and exceeded its authority. It also denied requests to halt the execution of Kahraman’s 18-year prison sentence and release him pending retrial.
Kahraman was sentenced in April 2022 along with other defendants on charges of aiding an attempt to overthrow the government in connection with the Gezi protests, which began as a small demonstration against an urban development plan in central İstanbul and grew into nationwide anti-government unrest. His conviction was upheld first on appeal and then by Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals in 2023.
The new ruling is likely to deepen scrutiny of Turkey’s judiciary, where lower courts have in several high-profile cases refused to comply with Constitutional Court decisions. Critics say such defiance has eroded legal certainty and weakened one of the few remaining domestic remedies for rights violations.
The European Commission’s 2025 report on Turkey said high-profile rulings of the Constitutional Court remained unimplemented, while the World Justice Project ranked Turkey 118th out of 142 countries in its 2025 Rule of Law Index.
Erinç Sağkan, head of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations, said implementing the decision was necessary for the constitutional order and warned that continued defiance would amount to the collapse of Turkey’s individual application system, which allows defendants to challenge rulings before the Constitutional Court after exhausting the appeals procedure. Main opposition leader Özgür Özel also called for Kahraman’s immediate release, saying the debate was over after a second violation ruling issued unanimously.
Kahraman has been in prison since April 25, 2022. His case has drawn added attention because of his health. He has multiple sclerosis, and his wife said in February that he had again been hospitalized after an acute relapse, renewing calls for the Constitutional Court’s earlier retrial order to be enforced. Doctors and the İstanbul Medical Chamber have warned that relapses can cause permanent neurological damage.
The Gezi Park protests posed one of the biggest challenges to the rule of then-prime minister and current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan later described the demonstrations as a coup attempt, and the case against Kahraman and other defendants has long been cited by rights advocates as an example of the use of the judiciary to punish dissent.
