Turkey’s interference with its judiciary deepened in 2024 with binding rulings of the local constitutional court and judgements of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ignored, Amnesty International said on April 29 in the Turkey section of its annual report.

Turkey, said Amnesty, was an unrelenting offender in all fields:

• Baseless investigations and prosecutions along with convictions of human rights defenders, journalists, opposition politicians and others persisted.

• The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association were unlawfully restricted.

• Violence against women and girls remained widespread.

• The country continued to host large numbers of refugees and migrants. Some remained at risk of an unlawful return.

• Victims of human rights violations by state officials continued to face a culture of impunity.

• Climate policies were assessed as “critically insufficient”.

Growing cost of living crisis

Also in 2024, Turkey faced a growing cost of living crisis with official inflation running in the 40%s, the Amnesty report noted.

Local elections saw the main opposition party achieving significant gains while in some districts the official election results were flouted by officials, resulting in mass protests.

Similar widespread demonstrations were sparked when the interior ministry dismissed elected mayors in a number of provinces and districts on terrorism-related charges, and appointed trustees endorsed by the ruling party in their place.

Several attacks by armed groups took place. Seven people and four attackers were killed in terror attacks at Santa Maria Church and a courthouse in Istanbul as well as at Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAS/TAI) in Ankara.

Still ignoring binding court rulings

The government, the report said, continued to ignore binding court rulings on fair trial issues. Despite consecutive rulings released by local and international courts, "star" prisoners Osman Kavala, Selahattin Demirtas, Figen Yuksekdag and Can Atalay remain in jail.

Yuksel Yalcinkaya, who in 2023 received an ECHR judgement that suggested using mobile phone app Bylock cannot be the basis of a conviction and sentencing for membership of a terrorist organisation, was retried and re-convicted.

In 2016, Turkey’s intelligence service MIT acquired a web hosting company in the Netherlands to access the list of users of Bylock, an encrypted "chat" app used by Gulenists.

Women, human rights defenders, Kurds, LGBT…

More Kurdish politicians, lawyers, journalists and civil society workers were jailed last year. Kurdish associations were shut down.

Human rights defenders were detained, jailed and tried.

LGBT pride marches, feminist marches, May Day marches, Saturday Mothers (mothers of those not seen again after being detained and kidnapped) gatherings and pro-Palestine protests were banned again. Local governorates regularly ban all protests.

Acik Radyo was shut down for referring to the Armenian Genocide during a show aired on April 24, 2024.

Hundreds more women were killed by men.

More use of torture

In August, the UN Committee Against Torture raised concerns about increasing allegations of torture and other ill-treatment since the attempted coup in 2016, in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquakes in the southeast of the country in February 2023 and in the context of counter-terrorism operations.

Counter-terror

In May, a regional appeals court upheld the acquittal of army officials and village guards in the Mardin Dargecit JITEM (Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, a paramilitary group that was launched to wage irregular warfare against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, during the 90s) prosecution regarding the 1995-1996 enforced disappearances of eight people, including three children.

In June, a Diyarbakir court acquitted three police officers accused of “causing death by culpable negligence” in the killing of human rights lawyer Tahir Elci in 2015.

In October, the court of cassation upheld the acquittal of 16 people, including former state officials, for “intentional killing as part of the activities of an armed organisation established for the purpose of committing a crime” in the Ankara JITEM case. This case was related to enforced disappearances or extrajudicial executions conducted between 1993 and 1996.