Turkey sentenced by European Union Court of Rights for 14-month detention of judge

(CN) One of more than 2,735 judges and prosecutors purged while Turkey declared a state of emergency, ex-lawyer Hakan Ba ​​jailed for more than a year without trial prevailed Tuesday before the European Court of Human Rights.

In addition to deciding that the Turkish government violated Ba's right to liberty and security, the court said there were no reasonable suspicions for detaining him in the first place.

Given the preponderant place that the judiciary occupies among the organs of the State in a democratic society and the growing importance attached to the separation of powers and the need to safeguard the independence of the judicial power… the Court must be particularly attentive to the protection of members of the justice system. the judiciary when examining the manner in which a detention order has been carried out from the point of view of the provisions of the convention, underlines the 82-page opinion of the Human Rights Tribunal .

The Turkish government declared a state of emergency on July 15, 2016, after an attempted coup that Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoan blamed his former ally, Fethullah Glen, for a chief Muslim living in the Pennsylvania countryside.

Erdoan marked Glens followers of the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FET) to justify a subsequent purge that wiped out the perceived allies of the religious leader of the military, the press, the judiciary and the forces of l & # 39; order.

Glen, who described his religious movement as a voice of moderation, denies any connection to the 2016 coup attempt.

Four days after the attempted coup, authorities arrested Ba. It will take another 14 months before Bas is taken into custody for a trial that was already underway.

The Turkish court found him guilty of belonging to a terrorist organization and sentenced him to seven and a half years in prison.

What the Strasbourg, France-based human rights court clarified on Tuesday, however, is that Turkey had no evidence to link Ba to a group or attempted to overthrow him at the time of his detention.

Although the decision clearly indicates the extent to which alleged FET / PDY members have infiltrated influential public institutions, in particular the judiciary, it does not contain any fact or information relating directly and personally to the applicant, the panel found. seven judges, referring to a Turkish decision under review. He was not among the individuals mentioned as being the subject of disciplinary and criminal investigations in the decision, and his name does not appear at all.

The Human Rights Court ruled unanimously for Ba on two of the three counts, a Turkish court judge dissenting on one of the counts 39; accusation.

Justice Arnfinn Brdsen of Norway wrote separately to highlight the pressure on judicial independence in Turkey.

Judges' arrest and pre-trial detention will continue to raise serious concerns about the independence of the judiciary, the separation of powers and the rule of law, Brdsen wrote in a concurring opinion of 2 pages. This is all the more true in the present case, which cannot be considered independently of the fact that in the days and weeks which followed the attempted coup on the night of July 15-16 2016, a remarkably high number of judges were suspended from their functions. , arrested and detained.

Judge Saadet Yksel of Turkey sought to justify it in a partial dissent.

Lifted on July 18, 2018, the Turkish state of emergency was denounced as an effort by the Erdoans to consolidate power and stifle national dissent by exploiting the fear of the Glenists. In the year the emergency was lifted, the Associated Press estimated that the Turkish government had arrested more than 160,000 people for interrogation and officially arrested 77,000 people for suspected terrorist links. A group of exiled journalists called Turkey Purge have put the estimates up.

Press freedom turkeys fell during this period, ranking the world's number one journalist imprisoned for three consecutive years. After the revocation of this state of emergency, Turkey’s position improved slightly last year as the world's second largest media incarcerator after China.