Turkey violated a prisoner’s right to family life by refusing to move him to a prison closer to his family without properly assessing the hardship caused by the distance, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled Tuesday.
The court said Turkish authorities rejected Rafet Emre’s request to be transferred closer to his family using broad administrative reasons, such as prison capacity and the nature of his conviction, without assessing his personal circumstances or the hardship imposed on his children.
Under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the right to family life includes a prisoner’s ability to maintain regular and meaningful contact with close relatives, particularly spouses and children, through visits and communication. The court has previously ruled that long distances between prisons and families can severely undermine that right when visits become rare or impractical .
Emre has been imprisoned since 2016 over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement and was held in Kırşehir, in central Turkey, while his wife and two school-aged children live in Edirne, near the Greek border. The court found that visits required journeys of up to 45 hours by bus with multiple connections, making regular family contact extremely difficult over several 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.
In 2018, Emre asked prison authorities to move him to a facility closer to Edirne, offering to pay the transfer costs and naming several nearby prisons. The Directorate General for Prisons and Detention Centers rejected the request, saying the prisons were full or unsuitable because of his offense. Turkish courts upheld the decision, and the Constitutional Court dismissed his complaint in 2020.
The Strasbourg court said Turkish authorities did not examine whether Emre could be transferred to any of the suggested prisons or whether steps such as longer visits or increased phone access could have reduced the impact of the distance.
While governments have discretion in managing prisons, the judges said that discretion must be exercised through an individualized assessment that takes family ties into account, especially when children are involved and the separation lasts for years .
The court unanimously ruled that Turkey violated Article 8 of the convention, which protects the right to respect for private and family life. Emre did not seek compensation, and no damages were awarded.
