A group of international rights organizations has warned that Turkey’s refusal to implement judgments from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has reached a crisis point that threatens the European human rights system and demands a principled and strategic EU response.
The joint briefing, published on Monday and submitted to EU institutions by Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists and the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project, accuses Turkish authorities of systematic noncompliance with legally binding rulings from the Strasbourg-based court.
The groups say Turkey now represents the most extreme case of a Council of Europe member state openly defying the European court and the European Convention on Human Rights, which the country ratified in 1954.
The report notes that Turkey had 22,450 pending applications before the court as of November 2024, accounting for 36.7 percent of the ECtHR’s total caseload.
It adds that as of June 2024, 156 leading judgments and 375 repetitive cases remained unimplemented, making Turkey the worst performer among Council of Europe states in terms of compliance.
According to the authors, the situation deteriorated further in 2025, particularly in the aftermath Turkey’s March 2024 local elections, when Turkish authorities intensified politically motivated prosecutions and crackdowns on dissent.
The report points to the arrest of opposition mayors, including İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, as well as police violence against protesters, the arrest of hundreds of young demonstrators and criminal proceedings against lawyers and journalists.
The authors describe the dismissal and prosecution of the İstanbul Bar Association’s executive board as emblematic of the state’s effort to dismantle the independence of the legal profession.
The briefing warns that these actions reflect a shift from authoritarian drift to full authoritarian consolidation, echoing a May 2025 open letter to EU leaders signed by 58 civil society, media and legal organizations.
The briefing lists numerous ECtHR rulings that Turkish authorities have refused to implement, despite sustained international pressure.
These include Osman Kavala v. Turkey, where the civil society leader remains imprisoned despite two judgments ordering his release and infringement proceedings initiated by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers.
The case of Selahattin Demirtaş v. Turkey is also cited, with the pro-Kurdish opposition leader still jailed more than four years after the court found his detention politically motivated.
The court’s ruling in Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Turkey, a 2023 Grand Chamber judgment that declared Turkey’s use of digital evidence and association to convict thousands of people as a violation of fair trial rights, has similarly gone unimplemented.
The report says Turkish courts have continued to issue verdicts using the same methods the ECtHR ruled unlawful in Yalçınkaya’s case, affecting tens of thousands of people accused of terrorism-related offenses based on weak or circumstantial evidence.
The refusal to implement rulings also extends to former Constitutional Court judge Alparslan Altan, dismissed and imprisoned after a coup attempt in 2016, as well as mass public-sector dismissals under emergency decrees that have never been reviewed by an independent authority.
The groups argue that Turkey’s rejection of the ECtHR’s authority to determine the compatibility of domestic laws with the convention marks a grave rupture in the European human rights system.
The report outlines what it describes as three pillars of collapse: the bad-faith prosecution of dissenters; the “capture” of the judiciary, noting that a post-2016 purge removed more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors and left the judiciary vulnerable to executive influence; and the structural paralysis of Turkey’s own Constitutional Court.
According to the authors, domestic courts now enable rather than prevent rights violations and are used as instruments of repression.
The Constitutional Court, once considered a final safeguard, is no longer seen as offering effective remedy in politically sensitive cases due to political capture and defiance from lower courts.
The briefing states that this trajectory poses not only a concern for the Council of Europe but directly implicates the European Union’s credibility and coherence in promoting democracy, the rule of law and human rights in its external relations.
It notes that under Articles 2, 3 and 21 of the Treaty on European Union, the EU is legally bound to promote and defend these values globally.
The report warns that continued EU financial and political engagement with Turkey, including through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA III), the customs union modernization process and bilateral diplomatic frameworks, risks enabling and legitimizing authoritarian backsliding in the absence of binding conditionality.
It urges EU institutions to make ECtHR judgment implementation and judicial independence a central pillar of all future engagement with Turkey, including in trade and security matters.
The report calls on the European Commission, Council and Parliament to issue unequivocal public statements denouncing the crackdown on political participation, civil society and press freedom.
It also demands that EU officials publicly press for the immediate release and full restoration of rights for Osman Kavala, Selahattin Demirtaş, Figen Yüksekdağ and other opposition figures jailed in violation of ECtHR rulings.
The briefing lists more than a dozen ECtHR judgments for which Turkey remains in defiance, including Kavala, Demirtaş, Yüksekdağ, Yalçınkaya and Alparslan Altan.
It urges the EU to impose clear consequences for continued non-compliance and demand a time-bound action plan from Turkey to align its judiciary with the Venice Commission’s recommendations.
The authors also call on EU institutions to increase trial monitoring of politically motivated cases in Turkey, step up funding for independent legal professionals and human rights defenders and coordinate closely with the Council of Europe and United Nations bodies.
The briefing concludes with a warning: Without unified and firm action from the EU, Turkey will continue drifting further away from democratic norms and the rule of law, while the EU’s own credibility in promoting these values globally will be significantly weakened.