The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled Tuesday that Turkey violated the rights of 93 people accused of links to the Gülen movement who were arrested andput in pretrial detention after a failed 2016 coup.
In two judgments issued the same day, the ECtHR found that authorities lacked reasonable suspicion to justify the arrest of dozens of suspects in one case and that Turkish courts failed to provide sufficient justification for lengthy pretrial detention in another.
In Yaman and Others v. Türkiye, the court reviewed 77 applications and concluded that the applicants’ arrests and placement in pretrial detention were not supported by sufficient evidence to establish a reasonable suspicion that they had committed a criminal offense.
In a separate judgment, Çakar and Others v. Türkiye, involving 16 applicants, the court found that Turkish courts failed to provide adequate reasons when ordering and repeatedly extending the applicants’ pretrial detention, which ranged from about one year to more than four years.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family 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 an 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.
The applicants were arrested on suspicion of membership in an armed terrorist organization, an offense under Turkey’s criminal code. Turkish authorities classify the Gülen movement as such an organization. According to the case files, domestic courts relied on various forms of evidence when ordering arrests and detentions.
In the Yaman judgment, the European court said the reasons cited by Turkish authorities included financial activity involving Bank Asya, social media posts, contact with other suspects, employment in institutions linked to the movement and possession of certain publications.
The ruling also addressed cases in which authorities relied on alleged use of the ByLock messaging application as key evidence. The court reiterated its previous case law that use of the application alone cannot establish reasonable suspicion that a person committed a criminal offense related to terrorist membership
Turkish authorities have considered ByLock to be a secret tool of communication among supporters of the Gülen movement since the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, despite a lack of evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
The court said that such acts, when considered on their own, could not reasonably justify suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization. Activities such as having a bank account, subscribing to publications or enrolling children in certain schools were lawful at the time and did not automatically demonstrate criminal intent without additional evidence, the judges said.
The judges further criticized domestic court decisions that justified detention by broadly referring to the severity of the alleged offense or unspecified “evidence in the case file” without identifying concrete facts linking the individuals to criminal activity.
In the Çakar judgment, the court focused on the reasoning used to prolong pretrial detention once suspects had already been jailed. The judges said Turkish courts relied on generalized statements about the seriousness of the alleged offense, the state of the evidence and risks such as flight or interference with evidence.
Such reasoning, the court said, amounted to a formulaic repetition of legal language rather than an individualized assessment of whether continued detention was necessary in each case.
The European court acknowledged that the coup attempt created exceptional circumstances and that authorities were responding to a serious threat. However, it said that measures restricting liberty must still comply with the safeguards of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), even during a state of emergency.
In the Yaman case, the court ruled that Turkey violated Article 5 §1 of the convention, which protects individuals against arrest without reasonable suspicion of having committed a criminal offense.
In the Çakar case, the court found a violation of Article 5 §3, concluding that domestic courts had not provided sufficient reasons to justify prolonged pretrial detention.
As compensation, the court ordered Turkey to pay 5,000 euros to most applicants in the Yaman case and 3,000 euros to most applicants in the Çakar case to cover nonpecuniary damages and legal costs.
The rulings are part of a series of cases in which the Strasbourg court has examined detentions carried out after the 2016 coup attempt.
Following the failed uprising, Turkish authorities carried out a large-scale purge across the state apparatus and wider society. Tens of thousands of people were arrested on suspicion of links to the Gülen movement, and more than 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as 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.
The ECtHR has in recent years issued multiple judgments assessing whether arrests, pretrial detention orders and criminal proceedings in the aftermath of the coup complied with the protections of the European Convention on Human Rights.
