Akın Gürlek, a former judge and deputy justice minister known for convicting dissidents in politically motivated trials, has been appointed as the chief public prosecutor in İstanbul, causing concerns of ever-growing judicial pressure on government critics.
The decision on Gürlek, 42, was announced by the Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) in a decree on Wednesday. İstanbul’s incumbent chief prosecutor, Şaban Yılmaz, has been appointed vice chairman of the HSK.
The HSK also appointed eight new judges to the Supreme Court of Appeals to replace incumbents who retired due to age and three to the Council of State, while also replacing several other chief prosecutors across the country in the same decree.
Gürlek, who earlier served as a high criminal court judge, is known for his controversial rulings including the sentencing of Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtaş to four years, eight months in prison for spreading the propaganda of a terrorist organization, and the sentencing of main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP)’s former İstanbul provincial chairman Canan Kaftancıoğlu to nine years, eight months due to her social media posts.
Gürlek was also the presiding judge of İstanbul’s 14th High Criminal Court, which defied a ruling of the Turkish Constitutional Court ordering that a lower court retry CHP deputy Enis Berberoğlu, claiming that the order for a retrial was “interference in the decision made within the jurisdiction of our court.”
In December 2022 the same court also rejected a motion for the release of prominent businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala, who had been behind bars on a series of charges since 2017, when his lawyers took the case to an appeals court after the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court extended his imprisonment.
Gürlek is also known for convicting some members of the Academics for Peace, who drew the ire of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by issuing a declaration demanding a peaceful solution to the country’s Kurdish issue and criticizing Turkish security forces for a heavy-handed response that saw citizens confined under long-lasting curfews in predominantly Kurdish cities under bombardment.
CHP leader Özgür Özel called Gürlek a “mobile guillotine” and the “killer of justice” earlier this year due to the handing down of a two-year sentence to journalist Barış Terkoğlu in May based on a complaint from Gürlek.
According to data from the Media and Law Studies Association, which follows journalists’ trials, Gürlek was the complainant in five of the six criminal complaints filed against journalists in the 2023-2024 judicial year.
Adalet Bakan Yardımcısı Akın Gürlek, İstanbul Cumhuriyet Başsavcısı olarak atandı
MLSA'nın 2024 Dava Takip Programı verilerine göre Gürlek 2023-2024 adli yılında en az altı gazeteciye karşı açılan beş davada şikayetçi olarak yer aldı. https://t.co/VwoPreIWgY pic.twitter.com/4HEUrh4e9q
— MLSA (@mlsaturkey) October 2, 2024
Gürlek’s rapid rise in the judicial ranks, despite his relatively young age, has been remarkable.
In September 2021 the HSK promoted Gürlek to the position of “first-class judge” despite its previous decision not to promote judges whose verdicts were overturned by the Constitutional Court for rights violations.
In June 2022 he was appointed deputy justice minister and was put in charge of the HSK in August 2023.
The HSK, Turkey’s top judicial administrative body, was set up to ensure an independent judiciary, but over time it has become a political tool for putting the judiciary under government control.
The erosion in the rule of law in Turkey worsened after a failed coup in July 2016, when more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors were removed on the pretext of an anti-coup fight.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is accused of replacing the purged judicial members with young and inexperienced judges and prosecutors who have close links to the AKP.
In a development that confirmed the erosion of the Turkish judiciary, Turkey was ranked 117th among 142 countries in the rule of law index published by the World Justice Project (WJP) in October 2023, dropping one place in comparison to 2022.