UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention accepted 8 individual complaints made from Turkey with an ‘Urgent Action’ procedure, reported Euronews Turkish on April 3. Unlike other UN human rights mechanisms, the Working Group does not require local remedies to be exhausted to declare a submission admissible.
Speaking to Euronews Turkish, Human Rights Lawyer Kurtuluş Baştimar said that the applications were accepted by the UN working group on as a ‘systematic right violation.’
Baştimar, indicating that the applications were lodged on behalf of 8 individuals who had been convicted in judicial proceedings in Turkey, added, “The Committee took a very important decision with respect to the situation of thousands who had been deprived of their liberty arbitrarily in Turkey. Among the applicants, there are people who have been arrested on the grounds of using By-Lock smartphone application, depositing money in Bank Asya and being a member of the associations. With this decision the Committee rejected to accept those grounds as sufficient to arrest people and to deprive them of their liberty. Although these actions are accepted as crime by the local courts, the Committee interpreted these accusations as a form of freedom of expression and the exercise of the right to freedom of associations.”
The Committee does not require exhaustion of domestic remedies
Reminding that the UN Working Group investigates whether arrests and detentions are imposed arbitrarily and whether they comply with international law Baştimar said, “In Turkey lawyers go to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for arbitrary detention cases. However, application to the ECtHR takes many years and the Strasbourg Court strictly requires the exhaustion of domestic remedies. On the contrary the UN Working Group does not require the exhaustion of domestic remedies which means that one can go to the Working Group without exhausting domestic remedies and without first going to the Constitutional Court. Unlike the ECtHR which takes many years to take a decision the UN Working Group decides on applications very rapidly and in a short span of time.”
The Working Group is expected to announce its reasoned decision in two months.
The UN Human Rights Committee (CCPR), in its decision dated May 28, 2019 found a violation in individual applications of Academic İsmet Özçelik and Turgay Karaman, the Director of the Time International School, who had been taken in custody in Malaysia and brought to Turkey on the grounds of being adherents of the faith-based Gülen movement, led by Fethullah Gülen. Calling on the Turkish authorities to release of Özçelik and Karaman the Committee gave 180 days to Turkey to give effect to the decision. Turkey rejected to implement this decision.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began to target adherents of the Gülen movement after two massive corruption and graft investigations dated 17 and 25 December 2013, which implicated him, his four ministers and other prominent figures from his government or support base. Accusing the movement of instigating investigations, President Erdoğan designated the movement as an armed terrorist organization and seized all Gülen-inspired media outlets, a private bank (Bank Asya) and businesses owned partially by people affiliated to the movement.
After a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 of which he accused Gülen masterminding, an accusation repeatedly denied by Gülen, he declared an all-out war against the Gülen movement, thus locking up hundreds of thousands of people affiliated to the movement and expropriating their assets. In identification of the adherents of the movement, the Erdoğan government has developed such criteria as using a smartphone application called bylock, owning an account in movement-affiliated Bank Asya, sending a son or a daughter to a Gülenist school, subscription to daily Zaman and other perceived Gülenist periodicals based on which many were sent behind the bars.
The post UN Working Group accepted 8 Turkish arbitrary detention applications appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/un-working-group-accepted-8-turkish-arbitrary-detention-applications/
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