On 13 October the European Court of Human Rights delivered three judgments against Türkiye, all adopted on the same day in September and all unanimous. They concern a women’s rights activist, 26 people detained after the 2016 coup attempt, and a prisoner whose conversations with his family were recorded for a year.

In Kaya v. Türkiye, the Court found violations of Article 5 §§ 1 and 3. Adalet Kaya was president of the Rosa Women’s Association in Diyarbakır when she was detained on 23 May 2020 on suspicion of membership of the PKK. She was released on 18 August, after 87 days. She was elected to parliament for the DEM Party in May 2023.

The suspicion rested on an anonymous witness who said the association’s stated work on femicide and harassment concealed its true purpose, and on banned publications, a banner bearing the letters TJA and a piece of yellow, red and green cloth.

The Court found the witness’s allegations “expressed in abstract and unsubstantiated terms”, with no detail of any clandestine activity, no explanation of what instructions the PKK was said to have given, and nothing to show the association acted on them. It noted that the authorities produced no evidence that the organisations the association was said to extend had themselves engaged in unlawful activity, only that one had been dissolved by emergency decree.

As to Kaya’s own conduct, the Court found that the authorities “mostly listed the events attended by the applicant and the slogans chanted at them, without providing any reasoning as to how those elements substantiated or reinforced the suspicion against her”, and never alleged she had chanted anything herself. Her association’s work fell within Article 11 and her speeches within Article 10. The Court awarded €4,000 and €1,000 in costs.

In Ocak and Others v. Türkiye, 26 people detained after the coup attempt for periods of up to 11 months and 10 days won on Article 5 § 3. The domestic courts had relied on the nature and severity of the offence, its presence in the “catalogue” at Article 100 § 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the state of the evidence and the risk of flight, without individual assessment. The Court held that any system of mandatory pre-trial detention is incompatible with Article 5 § 3 in itself, and that reasons worded in stereotyped terms can on no account justify detention. Because the applicants were detained entirely or predominantly after the state of emergency was lifted, the derogation under Article 15 could not account for it. Each was awarded €1,500 to cover damage and costs together.

The Court reached that conclusion without deciding whether the suspicion against them was reasonable, which it held unnecessary to examine.

Ocak follows Turan and Others in 2021, with 427 applicants, Kolay and Others in 2023, with 284, and Taş and Others in 2024, with 213. Those four judgments dispose of 950 applications raising the same defect.

In Cengiz c. Türkiye, the Court found a violation of Article 8. Abdi Cengiz was serving a sentence at Sincan prison when the administration decided, on 15 September 2021, to listen to and record the conversations of all prisoners in certain categories with their visitors, for one year.

The Court held that the measure “resulted not from an individual decision concerning the applicant, but from the direct application of the statutory provisions indiscriminately to all prisoners covered”, and that the administration ordered a year of recording “without any concrete and individual assessment of the applicant’s situation, and without any balancing of the competing interests”. The execution judge confined himself to verifying that a legal basis existed and did not address the duration at all. The Court awarded €1,500.

The legal basis has a history. In 2020 the Constitutional Court found that recording prison visits had no basis in law. Parliament supplied one in June 2021. In December 2022 the Constitutional Court upheld the new provision, finding it contained sufficient safeguards. In October 2025 its Plenary found a violation anyway, holding that prisons were applying the measure without individual reasoning and that execution judges were treating themselves as having no discretion in the matter. Strasbourg cited that judgment as confirming that the domestic framework does not guarantee that the circumstances of each case will be considered.

One further finding is on the record. The Turkish Government told the Court that Cengiz’s conversations had never been monitored or recorded. The Court found that assertion unsupported by the file, contradicted by the Government’s own argument that the recordings had been erased after a year, and contradicted by a letter from the Ankara prosecutor’s office which the Government had itself produced.

In each of the three cases the Constitutional Court had already disposed of the complaint. In Kaya a panel of two judges declared it manifestly ill-founded by reference to a different case. In Ocak the applications were declared inadmissible in summary fashion. In Cengiz the complaint was rejected with a standardised formula.

Kaya and Ocak are final. Cengiz was given by a Chamber and may still be referred to the Grand Chamber under Article 44 § 2.

The first of the Ocak applications was lodged on 4 October 2019. The judgment came seven years later. By then the applicant had been released, tried and convicted.