 ruled on Tuesday that Turkey violated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by arresting 51 judges and prosecutors in the aftermath of a failed 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.){kind=link}
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on Tuesday that Turkey violated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by arresting 51 judges and prosecutors in the aftermath of a failed 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The court found that their pretrial detention was unlawful and ordered Turkey to pay each applicant €5,000 in non-pecuniary damages.
The ruling in Elibol and Others v. Türkiye, issued by a three-judge panel of the ECtHR’s Second Section, determined that the applicants’ right to liberty and security under Article 5 of the ECHR had been violated. The court also rejected Turkey’s objections to the case being heard by a panel and dismissed the government’s claim that some of the applicants had not exhausted domestic legal remedies.
The case stems from the mass purge of Turkey’s judiciary following the July 15, 2016 coup attempt. Turkish authorities blamed the failed coup on the faith-based Gülen movement.
Members of the Turkish judiciary had been arrested after the coup attempt as part of a mass crackdown on the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom President Erdoğan blames for the failed coup. Gülen and the movement deny any involvement.
Following the abortive putsch, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. More than 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors as well as more than 24,000 members of the armed forces, were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
The 51 applicants in the ECtHR case were all serving as judges or prosecutors at the time of their arrest. On July 16, 2016 the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched a criminal investigation targeting alleged members of Gülen movement in the judiciary, including members of Turkey’s high courts. The applicants were detained on accusations of membership in an armed terrorist organization, a charge under Article 314 of Turkey’s Criminal Code.
Their arrests were part of a broader crackdown that saw more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors removed from office and detained.
In its judgment the ECtHR ruled that Turkish authorities had failed to follow legal procedures in detaining the applicants, rejecting the government’s justification that the charges fell under the category of a “continuing offense” or that there was a case of in flagrante delicto (caught in the act), which would have allowed for immediate arrest without parliamentary or presidential authorization.
The court noted that similar violations had been identified in previous cases, including Baş v. Turkey and Turan and Others v. Turkey, which also dealt with post-coup purges of the judiciary.
The ECtHR judges emphasized that while the attempted coup created an exceptional situation, the arrests and detentions were not carried out in accordance with domestic law or the ECHR.
“The pre-trial detention of the applicants had not taken place in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law within the meaning of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention,” the ruling stated.
“While the applicants were detained a short time after the coup attempt — an event that prompted the declaration of the state of emergency — this measure cannot be said to have been strictly required by the exigencies of the situation.”
The court ordered Turkey to pay each of the 51 applicants €5,000 in non-pecuniary damages and legal costs, amounting to a total of €255,000. While the applicants had also sought compensation for pecuniary damages, including loss of earnings from their dismissals, the ECtHR rejected those claims, citing precedent in similar rulings.
The ECtHR’s ruling is the latest in a series of decisions condemning Turkey’s post-2016 crackdown on judges, prosecutors and other government officials accused of links to the Gülen movement. The Strasbourg court has so far upheld more than 1,000 applications by judges and prosecutors over their pretrial detention.
International human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have documented widespread due process violations0, including arbitrary detentions, prolonged pretrial detention and politically motivated prosecutions in Turkey’s post-coup crackdown.
Among the applicants in the Elibol case was Haşim Güney, a former Council of State judge sentenced to 10 years in prison. His 26-year-old son, Nahit Emre Güney, took his own life by jumping from İstanbul’s Galata Tower in October 2022 after struggling with distress caused by his father’s imprisonment.
Turkey remains the country with the highest number of cases before the ECtHR, particularly concerning freedom of expression, arbitrary detention and fair trial rights. Despite repeated rulings against it, the government has failed to implement several key ECtHR decisions. The non-implementation of a ruling about jailed philanthropist Osman Kavala prompted the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Committee of Ministers to launch an infringement procedure against Turkey in February 2022, which is still ongoing.