The Human Rights Association (İHD) has presented its 2025 Human Rights Violations Report in İstanbul. The report draws on the association’s own documentation, press and open sources, applications to its offices, and data from other rights groups. İHD says its figures cover only cases that became public and that the true numbers are likely higher.
İHD recorded at least 1,842 people subjected to torture or other ill-treatment in 2025. Of these, 1,493 were affected during police interventions in meetings and demonstrations, 90 in official custody and 185 in prisons. İHD says eight in ten were ill-treated before entering any place of detention.
The report records 20 suspicious deaths in places of detention: 16 in prisons, two in removal centres and two in police custody.
İHD classifies 6,719 detentions in 2025 as arbitrary and records 1,328 people remanded in custody.
Police intervened in at least 268 demonstrations and detained at least 8,477 people. In cases linked to protest participation, 1,112 people were remanded and 1,625 placed under judicial control. Governors imposed blanket bans on all demonstrations in 13 provinces, for a combined 126 days, affecting 40.8 million residents. In the nine days after İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was detained on 19 March 2025, at least 1,879 people were detained and 260 remanded.
For expressing their views, at least 507 people were detained, 109 remanded and 123 placed under judicial control. 303 journalists faced investigations or prosecutions. 42 were remanded during the year, and 28 were in pre-trial detention on 31 December 2025. Access was blocked to 489 news reports.
Citing Justice Ministry data, the report states that prosecutors filed 9,348 cases against 8,005 people in 2025 for insulting the president, state symbols or state institutions. Courts convicted 1,923 defendants and deferred the verdict for 2,127.
Between the March 2024 local elections and the end of 2025, the Interior Ministry removed 27 mayors, including five metropolitan mayors, and reinstated one. Government-appointed trustees replaced elected administrations in 13 municipalities.
Citing Bianet’s tally, the report records 299 women and 64 children killed by men, and 471 suspicious deaths of women.
İHD notes that these figures come from a year in which a process towards resolving the Kurdish conflict raised hopes, and says it was not accompanied by democratisation.
Among its 2025 findings, İHD lists the continued non-implementation of the European Court of Human Rights’ judgments in the Kavala and Demirtaş cases. However, as Solidarity with Others, we note with regret that IHD report’s account of unimplemented European Court judgments leaves out ECtHR Grand Chamber’s Yalçınkaya (Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Türkiye [GC], no. 15669/20, 26 September 2023), which concern the largest group of prosecutions in Türkiye since 2016.
