Turkey: Statement on mass trials of Ankara lawyers

IAPL reports

The Platform for an Independent Judiciary in Turkey expresses its concern and calls for the
attention of the international community on the mass trials against lawyers that are going on in
Turkey.

On 4-6 January 2023 the last hearings of a retrial are scheduled before the Ankara Regional
Appeal Court (22nd Penal Chamber, docket no: 2022/311). These proceedings concern 21
members of the Ankara Bar Association which started with the intervention of the Prosecutor’s
office and the police raids in 2016. Before the Court of Cassation ordered a new trial in March
2022, the defendants had been sentenced in first instance and appeal to prison terms ranging
from more than six years to well over eight years.1 2

These lawyers clearly face persecution only due to their role as defense counsels for persons
who face criminal prosecution because of the alleged membership of a terrorist organization.3

This last development sadly confirms a trend already pointed out in the 2020 report by the
Commissioner for human rights of the Council of Europe (CommDH(2020)1), highlighting an
increasingly suspicious and hostile attitude towards lawyers who play an active role as human
rights defenders and the chilling effect for the entire profession caused by numerous judicial
actions specifically targeting lawyers, where acts that form part and parcel of their profession
were admitted as evidence.

We call to mind here the numerous international standards that stress the crucial role lawyers
have in order to guarantee the fairness of the judicial system, and more generally, in the
protection and defense of human rights and thus also – if necessary – by bringing the violations
of these rights to daylight.

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