Strasbourg condemns Turkey for detaining more than 400 judges and prosecutors | International
The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday condemned Turkey for the arrest of 427 judges and prosecutors in the days following the failed 2016 coup attempt. The Strasbourg court considers that the arrests were carried out according to procedures which violated the statute which protects the representatives of justice and, consequently, the Turkish State will have to pay compensation of 5,000 euros to each of the persons concerned, most of whom are in prison. .
The July 15, 2016 military uprising – in which 251 people died on the side of government loyalists and at least 100 among the coup plotters – was led by some units of the Turkish armed forces who, according to the Turkish government, followed the directives of the politico-religious organization of Fethullah Gülen, an Islamist preacher who was once an ally of the current Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but with whom he broke off relations in 2013.
Since the 1980s, smileys They infiltrated their supporters at different levels of the administration, including the police and the judiciary, where judges and prosecutors attached to this religious organization acquired great powers as a result of the judicial reform approved in 2010 and supported by Erdogan. Although Fethullah Gülen has denied his involvement in the 2016 coup, there is evidence of the involvement of close supporters of this preacher.
Purges against opponents
After the coup, the purges were unleashed against all those suspected of having had relations with the smileys, although later they were also extended against opponents of different political signs. More than half a million people have been investigated and nearly 100,000 have been imprisoned. Some 130,000 civil servants lost their posts, although some managed to get them back later. Almost 200 media have been closed.
The 427 judges and prosecutors mentioned in the “Turan and Others v. Turkey ”who have just been convicted by the Strasbourg Court served before the Supreme Court, the Court of Cassation and other tribunals and offices, and were arrested in the days following the failed coup. . The day after the coup, Erdogan announced that he had lists of justice suspects who had been arrested.
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The justification of the Turkish justice to proceed to the arrest of these judges and prosecutors is that they were in “flagrante delicto”, being members of the organization smiling, which in Turkey is defined as a “terrorist organization FETÖ”. But the European Court of Human Rights considers that they could not be arrested and placed in preventive detention except in relation to a flagrant act of the coup d’état “at the time or immediately after having committed an act directly related to the attempted coup ”and not on the basis of“ assumptions ”about its relationship with the organization that initiated the attempt. The Strasbourg Court also recalls that judges and prosecutors, within the framework of the democratic order, enjoy a special status in the event of an investigation and can only be placed in preventive detention if they are discovered committing a blatant crime.
The Turkish state will now have to pay more than two million euros in compensation, because Turkey, as a founding state and a member of the Council of Europe, has the obligation to comply with the Strasbourg judgments. However, in recent years the Erdogan government has sought excuses not to comply with the rulings of this pan-European court, for example those demanding the release of philanthropist and activist Osman Kavala and Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtas. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has already indicated that, if these demands are not met, an infringement procedure will be initiated which could result in the withdrawal of Turkey’s voting rights. Riza Türmen, a former Turkish judge at the Strasbourg Court, went even further and, in a recent interview, raised the possibility of Turkey being expelled from the organization for its refusal to carry out sentences.
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