The V-Dem Institute’s Human Rights Index for 2025, published through Our World in Data, places Türkiye at 0.402 on a scale of 0 to 1, in 140th position.

The index measures the extent to which people are free from government torture, political killings and forced labour, hold property rights, and enjoy freedom of movement, religion, expression and association. It is compiled from the assessments of several thousand country experts and built from three components: physical integrity rights, private civil liberties and political civil liberties.

The countries immediately around Türkiye in the table are Algeria at 136th, Vietnam at 141st, Zimbabwe at 142nd, Qatar at 144th and the United Arab Emirates at 146th. Pakistan ranks 131st and Somalia 133rd, both above Türkiye.

Türkiye has been a member of the Council of Europe since 1950, ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1954, and has been a candidate for European Union accession since 1999. Among European states in the same dataset, Greece scores 0.878, Bulgaria 0.849, Hungary 0.793, Serbia 0.730 and Georgia 0.700.

The index is an expert assessment rather than a legal finding. It is nonetheless measuring the same things the Convention protects, and the two records point the same way. In the year the index covers, the European Court of Human Rights found violations affecting thousands of Turkish applicants in cases turning on association and lawful conduct treated as evidence of terrorism; the Committee of Ministers continued enhanced supervision of the Kavala and Yalçınkaya judgments; and the Freedom on the Net 2025 report rated Türkiye’s internet “Not Free” at 31 out of 100, the lowest score among the European countries assessed.

A rank is a summary, not an argument. What it summarises here is a position shared with states that are not party to the Convention and have never undertaken its obligations.