The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) notified Turkey in November that it had combined applications concerning the arrest and pretrial detention of 30 officers, soldiers and military cadets over their alleged involvement in a failed coup in Turkey in 2016, Turkish Minute reported on Tuesday.
In the case of Kökçü and others v. Türkiye, communicated to Turkey on November 29, the Strasbourg court combined 30 applications in which the applicants complained, among other issues, that “there were no relevant and sufficient reasons to justify their initial and/or continued pre-trial detention.”
According to TR724, the court will assess whether the conditions for reasonable suspicion were met in the cases of the applicants.
The applications mainly concerned the arrest and pretrial detention of the applicants in the aftermath of the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, on suspicion of membership in an alleged terrorist organization, referring to the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the failed coup and labeled as a terrorist organization.
The movement, inspired by the views of the late Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, denies the accusations.
The court has issued many rulings over the past years against Turkey due to its violations of the rights of people with alleged links to the Gülen movement who were prosecuted in the aftermath of the coup attempt.
The ECtHR has found Turkey to have violated the rights of a total of 3,182 people in 64 different applications related to the post-coup rights violations. Turkey has been ordered to pay a total of 12,563,538 euros in non-pecuniary damages and expenses in these cases.
Despite the ECtHR decisions, the Turkish government is continuing its crackdown on real and alleged followers of the Gülen movement.
In the largest targeting of alleged Gülen followers since the death of the 83-year-old scholar in the US on October 20, Turkish police detained 459 people across 66 provinces on terrorism accusations over alleged links to the movement.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said there would be “no slackening” in the fight against the movement following the death of Gülen, echoing a similar promise made by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other government officials following Gülen’s passing.
