The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that Turkey violated the rights of Metin Topuz, a former US Consulate employee, by keeping him in pretrial detention for more than two years without sufficient justification before his 2020 conviction on terrorism-related charges over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
In a unanimous judgment delivered on Tuesday, the Strasbourg-based court found that Turkey violated Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to liberty and security, saying domestic courts failed to provide “relevant and sufficient” reasons for Topuz’s continued pretrial detention.
Topuz, who worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) at the US Consulate General in İstanbul, was detained on September 25, 2017, and put in pretrial detention on October 4. Prosecutors accused him of having “unusually frequent contacts” with police officers and prosecutors involved in December 2013 corruption investigations that implicated then-prime minister and current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, members of his family and several ministers.
Topuz denied the allegations, saying the contacts were part of his official duties and that prosecutors selectively presented legitimate professional communications as evidence of criminal activity.
Erdoğan has accused the Gülen movement, inspired by the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, of orchestrating the 2013 corruption investigations, dismissing the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy. Erdoğan’s government designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified a sweeping crackdown on alleged followers after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies orchestrating the corruption investigations and involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
On June 11, 2020, the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court convicted Topuz of “aiding an armed terrorist organization” and sentenced him to almost nine years in prison. He was acquitted of charges of espionage, attempting to overthrow the government, violating the confidentiality of an investigation and unlawfully obtaining personal data. He was released under judicial supervision on November 8, 2023, after becoming eligible for conditional release under the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) upon completing three-quarters of his sentence.
In its ruling the ECtHR criticized Turkish courts for relying on “almost identical, if not stereotypical” formulas in extending Topuz’s pretrial detention. The court said judges repeatedly referred to the nature of the alleged offenses without presenting concrete evidence justifying continued imprisonment.
The ECtHR also said Turkish authorities based their assessment of flight risk largely on the severity of the potential sentence and failed to explain why less restrictive measures, such as judicial supervision, would not have been sufficient.
The court ordered Turkey to pay Topuz €3,000 in non-pecuniary damages.
According to the latest figures from the justice ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted of alleged links to the movement since 2016, with 11,085 still in prison. Legal proceedings are ongoing for over 24,000 individuals, while another 58,000 remain under active investigation nearly a decade later.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
