A Netherlands-based human rights foundation has urged prosecutors outside Turkey to investigate alleged torture, enforced disappearances and crimes against humanity committed during the decade since a failed coup, saying domestic authorities have failed to provide accountability, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.
The 175-page Justice Square report calls for broad investigations under universal-jurisdiction laws, the identification of suspects named in court records and possible criminal cases when they travel abroad.
Universal jurisdiction allows courts in some countries to investigate exceptionally serious international crimes committed elsewhere. National rules vary, and some countries require that a suspect be present before prosecutors can bring charges. Alleged abductions, threats or surveillance carried out on a country’s territory could also be investigated under its ordinary criminal laws.
The report asks European governments to investigate alleged Turkish operations carried out within their borders, decline extradition or INTERPOL cooperation in cases arising from prosecutions it considers abusive and consider targeted sanctions against officials credibly implicated in torture or enforced disappearances.
It also calls for an independent mechanism in Turkey, with international participation, to investigate torture, deaths in custody and disappearances, including the cases of seven people whom the report says remain missing. It also asks the United Nations to preserve evidence for future proceedings, stating that records should be secured even where prosecutions cannot immediately begin.
Justice Square argues that arbitrary imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearances, persecution and other alleged abuses formed part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians, principally people associated — or perceived to be associated — with the faith-based Gülen movement. It says the acts meet the definitions of crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute and the Turkish Penal Code. No international court has made such a finding about Turkey’s post-coup crackdown.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Justice Square says foreign action is necessary because allegations of serious abuses have not been effectively investigated in Turkey and because Turkish courts have resisted applying binding European human rights judgments in similar cases.
The report cites alleged enforced disappearances and cross-border renditions as one potential area for foreign investigations. It says it documented 136 international abductions or attempted abductions and 27 cases inside Turkey by the end of 2024, involving 163 people in all.
It separately cites a 2022 statement by then-justice minister Bekir Bozdağ saying Turkish authorities had brought 121 people to Turkey from 28 countries without using extradition proceedings. Former vice president Fuat Oktay told lawmakers that the national intelligence service had brought back more than 100 alleged movement members, according to the report.
Human rights organizations and United Nations bodies have alleged that some of the transfers were extrajudicial renditions carried out without access to courts or formal extradition procedures.
The report says the alleged campaign has continued beyond Turkey through surveillance of diaspora organizations, attempted use of INTERPOL channels and the collection of information about critics living abroad. It cites police intelligence reports that allegedly classified interfaith events and cultural activities organized by Turkish groups in the Netherlands as evidence of terrorism.
Justice Square also bases its call for international action on judgments by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), whose rulings are binding on Turkey as a member of the Council of Europe.
In its 2023 Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Turkey judgment, the court found that Turkish judges had violated the prohibition against punishment without law, the right to a fair trial and freedom of association. It identified a systemic problem in convictions based on ByLock, an encrypted messaging app that was available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play, and ordered Turkey to take broader measures covering comparable cases.
Turkish authorities have considered ByLock to be a secret tool of communication among supporters of the Gülen movement since the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, despite a lack of evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
In May 2026, the court’s Grand Chamber extended the principle beyond ByLock in Yasak v. Turkey. It ruled that a terrorism conviction required individualized proof that the defendant knowingly and willingly adhered to an organization’s violent aims and that criminal responsibility could not be based on collective guilt or association alone.
The report says Turkish courts have not applied those principles broadly, pointing to the renewed conviction of Yalçınkaya and later rulings involving thousands of applicants convicted on similar grounds. It argues that the failure to implement the judgments strengthens the case for international evidence gathering and outside investigations.
President Erdoğan rejected the implications of the Yalçınkaya ruling after it was issued, accusing the European court of aligning itself with a terrorist organization. The justice minister at the time said the judgment applied only to the individual case and should not be treated as a precedent, according to statements reproduced in the report.
As evidence of the crackdown’s scale, government figures show that judicial proceedings were initiated against 720,338 people over alleged Gülen links between July 2016 and July 2026 and that 127,102 were convicted. More than 130,000 public employees were dismissed through emergency decrees.
Justice Square says its findings draw on Turkish government statistics and official statements, emergency decrees, court and medical records, European court judgments and findings from United Nations bodies, European institutions and human rights organizations. It acknowledges that its figures are not exhaustive and says fear and censorship limit the number of cases that can be publicly documented.