Amnesty International’s 2024-2025 report, published on Tuesday, said human rights violations continued in Turkey and emphasized the ongoing lack of judicial independence.
According to the report, the crackdown on freedom of expression in Turkey continued, with authorities facing little accountability for alleged mistreatment and torture of detainees. Violence against women and LGBTQ+ individuals continued at an alarming rate, while refugees and migrants continued to be unlawfully returned to Syria and Afghanistan. Additionally, the independence of the judiciary was heavily compromised, leading to politically motivated trials and the suppression of dissent, ultimately undermining the credibility of the legal system.
The report found that despite court rulings calling for their release, human rights advocates and pro-Kurdish political leaders remained imprisoned as the government’s crackdown on human rights advocacy efforts persisted.
An example it pointed to was the continued imprisonment of businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala despite a 2019 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling that found his detention aimed to silence him for political reasons. Kavala was listed as one among many human rights defenders who have been incarcerated over the years.
Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtaş was also mentioned as unlawfully imprisoned. Demirtaş has been jailed since November 2016, in defiance of a 2020 ECtHR judgment stating that his detention served to suppress pluralism and restrict political debate.
At the time of their arrests, Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ co-chaired Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). In May 2024 Demirtaş received a 42-year sentence and Yüksekdağ 30 years, on charges of “undermining state unity” and “inciting criminal acts.”
The report also referred to a Turkish court’s refusal to comply with a ruling from the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR in the retrial of Yüksel Yalçınkaya, a teacher who had been found guilty of membership in an armed terrorist organization in the aftermath of a 2016 coup attempt due to his links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
Despite a landmark decision from the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR in 2023 in his favor, a court in the central province of Kayseri again convicted him of terrorism in his retrial last year.“
The retrial failed to consider the 2023 ECtHR judgment that found violations of the rights to a fair trial, no punishment without law and freedom of assembly and association. Yalçınkaya’s appeal against the decision was pending at year’s end,” said the Amnesty report, referring to the pending case at the appeals court.
The former teacher was one of more than 130,000 civil servants purged from public service due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement or terrorist groups in the aftermath of the coup attempt, through government decrees that were not subject to judicial review.
The Gülen movement is accused by the Turkish government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of masterminding the failed coup and is labeled a “terrorist organization,” although the movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The report said amid continued human rights violations Turkish authorities had imposed blanket bans on protests and continued to use unlawful and indiscriminate force against peaceful demonstrators.
“The Istanbul governorship banned a night march to commemorate the 25 November International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Law enforcement officials used unnecessary force against those who gathered despite the ban, and arbitrarily detained at least 169 people, including two protest observers, three foreign citizens and bystanders.”
This is only one ban among many preventing women, LGBTQ groups and journalists from demonstrating peacefully. In one notorious case nine journalists were detained and later arrested last December for protesting the killing of two Kurdish journalists in a reported Turkish drone strike in northern Syria.
