The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that Turkey violated the right to a fair trial in three separate cases concerning mass dismissals that followed a 2016 coup attempt, ordering the government to pay a total of 8,250 euros in compensation, Turkish Minute reported.
In Yıldırım v. Türkiye the Strasbourg-based court found that a contract public employee had been dismissed solely based on allegations of affiliation with the faith-based Gülen movement, without any individual assessment or substantiated evidence.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as some of his family members 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 the 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.
Following the failed coup, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, and more than 24,000 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
Yıldırım, represented by lawyer M. Çam, had challenged his dismissal before Turkish courts and the Constitutional Court, arguing that no investigation or disciplinary process had been initiated against him.
The European court concluded that Turkish courts failed to provide adequate reasoning for the decisions and did not respond to the applicant’s key arguments, violating Article 6 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The court emphasized that judgments must address decisive arguments raised by the parties and cannot rely on automatic or formulaic justifications.
In a similar ruling the court found a violation in Şimşek v. Türkiye, where the applicant was dismissed from his job at a private company contracted by a district municipality.
Şimşek, represented by lawyer M. Gül, claimed he was laid off during the state of emergency without explanation or proof of affiliation with any illegal organization.
The Gaziantep Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal by simply stating it was carried out under an emergency decree-law, without assessing the basis of suspicion or the applicant’s individual circumstances.
The European court again found that Turkish courts had failed to examine the core issues raised by the applicant, violating the right to a fair trial under Article 6 § 1 of the convention.
Both applicants were awarded 2,000 euros in non-pecuniary damages. Şimşek was also awarded an additional 250 euros for costs and expenses.
In the third case, Akarsu v. Türkiye, the court ruled that proceedings before the Turkish Constitutional Court had lasted an unreasonably long time.
The applicant, Mustafa Akarsu, a former judge at the Supreme Court of Appeals, challenged the early termination of his mandate under emergency legislation passed after the 2016 coup attempt.
His individual application was lodged on August 19, 2016, but the Constitutional Court did not issue a decision until October 5, 2023 — more than seven years later.
The Strasbourg court found that this duration, even accounting for the state of emergency, an increased caseload and the COVID-19 pandemic, was excessive for a single level of judicial review.
It held that the delay violated the “reasonable time” requirement under Article 6 § 1 of the convention and awarded Akarsu 4,000 euros in non-pecuniary damages.
Since 2016 the ECtHR has found Turkey to have violated the rights of more than 3,300 people in dozens of different applications related to post-coup rights violations.
