Turkey saw worsening restrictions on human rights, mounting prosecutions of rights defenders, growing political pressure on the judiciary and a deepening culture of impunity for abuses in 2025, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
The report documented a growing number of investigations, prosecutions and convictions targeting people and groups exercising their right to freedom of expression and association, including the İstanbul Bar Association, staff of satirical magazine LeMan, singer Mabel Matiz, activist Enes Hocaoğulları and nongovernmental organizations such as the Migration Monitoring Association and the Young LGBTI+ Association.
The report said the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association were arbitrarily restricted, citing police intervention against people marking May Day, International Women’s Day and Pride marches, with law enforcement officials using less lethal weapons that caused numerous injuries.
Amnesty also said violations of the right to a fair trial intensified with human rights defenders facing baseless investigations, prosecutions and convictions, while authorities continued to defy binding rulings from Turkey’s Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
The report cited the continued imprisonment of former pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) leader Selahattin Demirtaş and philanthropist Osman Kavala as prominent examples.
Amnesty also pointed to a growing crackdown on the political opposition, particularly the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), through criminal investigations and prosecutions targeting its mayors and officials, including İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
İmamoğlu, widely seen as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s strongest political rival, was detained on March 19 and arrested days later on corruption charges in a case critics and international observers described as politically motivated and intended to sideline him ahead of the of the 2028 general election.
Violence against women remained a serious concern in Turkey in 2025, with at least 294 women killed by men and another 297 found dead under suspicious circumstances.
Discriminatory rhetoric by senior public officials continued to fuel gender stereotyping, homophobia and transphobia, while Amnesty described 2025 as a year of “unprecedented assault on the human rights of the LGBTI+” people, as the government proposed three bills restricting those rights, though none were submitted to parliament.
Refugees and migrants in Turkey remained at risk of unlawful return and arbitrary rejection of international protection, with the report pointing to the disappearance of two Turkmen activists who had been held in a deportation center.
The report said victims of human rights violations by state officials continued to face a culture of impunity, with allegations of torture and ill-treatment, particularly during mass protests in March and in the aftermath of earthquakes that struck southeast Turkey in 2023 not effectively investigated.
