ARBITRARY DETENTION AND ARREST
Throughout the week, prosecutors ordered the detention of at least 79 people over alleged links to the Gülen movement. In October 2020, a UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) opinion said that widespread or systematic imprisonment of individuals with alleged links to the group may amount to crimes against humanity. Solidarity with OTHERS has compiled a detailed database to monitor the Gülen-linked mass detentions since a failed coup in July 2016.
January 25: Prominent MP and human rights defender Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu called for the immediate release of Yusuf Bekmezci, a 82-year-old businessman jailed for links to the Gülen movement. An İzmir court had denied Bekmezci release despite a forensic medicine report that found him unfit to stay in prison.
ARBITRARY DEPRIVATION OF LIFE
January 28: An armored police vehicle in Şırnak hit and killed Abdulgaffar Dayan, a 23-year-old Kurdish man.
ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES
No news has emerged of Yusuf Bilge Tunç, a former public sector worker who was sacked from his job by a decree-law during the 2016-2018 state of emergency and who was reported missing as of August 6, 2019 in what appears to be one of the latest cases in a string of suspected enforced disappearance of government critics since 2016.
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY AND ASSOCIATION
January 25: The police in Antalya detained local labor union executive İlhan Karakurt due to a speech he made at a protest calling for a secular education.
January 25: The authorities suspended the monthly loans of students who participated in nationwide demonstrations against student housing shortages.
January 27: The authorities launched an investigation into 33 people who were briefly detained by the police in İzmir while protesting unaffordable living costs for university students.
January 28: The police in İstanbul detained without a detention warrant three women who allegedly participated in women’s rights protest in November 2021.
January 28: The Batman Governor’s Office refused to authorize the opening of a stand to call for the official recognition of the Kurdish language.
January 28: The Van Governor’s Office issued a ban on all outdoor gatherings for a period of 15 days.
January 29: The police in Ankara briefly detained three people holding a protest in front of the Justice Ministry.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND MEDIA
January 24: A court sentenced Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş to 11 months, 20 days in prison on charges of insulting a former prime minister.
January 24: The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), Turkey’s broadcasting watchdog, imposed a temporary broadcast ban on TELE1 TV over the remarks of journalist Sedef Kabaş who was later detained and arrested for insulting the president.
January 24: Throughout the week, courts and other authorities blocked access to at least eight websites used by pro-Kurdish or leftist news agencies, newspapers or platforms to publish news.
January 24: A report released by an opposition MP found that journalists in Turkey made 475 court appearances in 2021, with the courts handing down a total of 80 years in prison to 36 of them.
January 25: An İstanbul prosecutor indicted exiled journalist Abdullah Bozkurt on charges of insulting the president, over an article he wrote about a convicted jihadist.
January 25: A Hatay court sentenced local HDP executive Abdurrahim Şahin to two years, one month in prison on terrorism-related charges, over a speech he made in 2014.
January 25: The European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to pay €12,300 in damages to German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel, ruling that his detention in Turkey violated his rights.
January 26: The authorities pressed charges against lawyer Efkan Bolaç for insulting the president on social media.
January 26: European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) President Róbert Ragnar Spanó claimed during a conference that the court’s insufficient resources were the reason that the applications from two journalists in Turkey who have been behind bars for seven years are still pending.
January 26: Twitter’s Transparency Report for the first half of 2021 revealed that Turkey ranked third after Japan and Russia in the number of requests for content removal.
January 27: A Samsun court ruled to block access to three news reports on a judge who was seen taking family pictures of a mob boss.
January 27: Turkey ranked first in terms of European Court of Human Rights judgments regarding violations of freedom of expression in 2021, according to the court’s annual activity report.
January 28: The Constitutional Court rejected journalist Mehmet Güleş’s individual application, saying that his prison sentence of nine years, four months over his social media posts did not violate his freedom of expression.
January 28: An İstanbul court ruled to block access to three news reports on an opposition politician’s remarks concerning the president’s son.
January 28: An İstanbul court ruled to block access to three news reports on an opposition politician’s remarks targeting the president.
January 29: A HDP official announced that plainclothes police officers detained four people who were singing Kurdish-language music on a historic street in İstanbul.
January 30: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a presidential decree threatening to punish media outlets over content “incompatible with national and moral values.”
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
January 27: The Constitutional Court ruled that the cancelation of passports of people expelled from public service by decree-laws was unconstitutional.
KURDISH MINORITY
January 24: A court sentenced Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş to 11 months, 20 days in prison on charges of insulting a former prime minister.
January 25: A Hatay court sentenced local HDP executive Abdurrahim Şahin to two years, one month in prison on terrorism-related charges, over a speech he made in 2014.
January 26: The police in Diyarbakır detained Seval Gülmez, an executive of the Democratic Regions’ Party (DBP), on terrorism-related charges.
January 28: An armored police vehicle in Şırnak hit and killed Abdulgaffar Dayan, a 23-year-old Kurdish man.
January 28: The police in four provinces detained 15 people including HDP members.
January 28: The Constitutional Court rejected journalist Mehmet Güleş’s individual application, saying that his prison sentence of nine years, four months over his social media posts did not violate his freedom of expression. Güleş was a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dicle news agency (DİHA).
January 28: The Batman Governor’s Office refused to authorize the opening of a stand to call for the official recognition of the Kurdish language.
January 29: A HDP official announced that plainclothes police officers detained four people who were singing Kurdish-language music on a historic street in İstanbul.
OTHER MINORITIES
January 29: A group of transexual women revealed that the police in İzmir refused to help them after an assault by four men earlier in January.
PRISON CONDITIONS
January 26: Gürbüz Dönmez, an 80-year-old inmate suffering from prostate cancer, announced that he has no access to proper healthcare in prison despite being critically ill.
January 27: Çetin Çiftçi, a former inmate who as released earlier in January, said in an interview that inmates in a Van prison were deprived of proper healthcare and were left to die.
January 27: An NGO report on prisons in the Marmara region found that 3,118 violations of rights took place in the last quarter of 2021, including eight losses of life.
January 30: An inmate named Mehmet Hanefi Bilgin lost his life in a Bolu prison five months prior to the end of his sentence. The authorities claimed that the cause of death was a heart attack.
TORTURE AND ILL-TREATMENT
January 24: Murat Duran, an inmate held in an İzmir prison, was physically assaulted by soldiers who were accompanying him during his hospitalization and suffered an injury on his face.
January 26: Reports indicated that a group of people detained due to alleged links to the Gülen movement were subjected to torture at a police detention center in Ankara.
January 26: The guards in a Kayseri prison physically assaulted inmates during a ward control.
January 26: Muhlise Karagüzel, an inmate held in a Kayseri prison, refused to go to the hospital due to the torture and ill-treatment she suffered during the transfer to the hospital.
January 28: Hacer Karaşal, the wife of a jailed former military officer announced in an interview that she suffered a miscarriage after being beaten by police officers at the Ankara Courthouse in January 2019.
January 28: Opposition MP Sezgin Tanrıkulu announced that a total of 3,145 people were subjected to torture and ill-treatment in 2021.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
January 28: The police in İstanbul detained without a detention warrant three women who allegedly participated in women’s rights protest in November 2021.