Approximately 21,600 applications from Turkey are pending before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), making it the highest case-count country in 2024, comprising more than a third of the ECtHR’s caseload, according to statistics from the court.

ECtHR President Marko Bošnjak will hold a press conference in Strasbourg on Friday at 4 p.m. local time that will not be live-streamed unlike in previous years, to give an overview of the court’s activities in 2024 and presenting statistics for the past year.

Nearly three-quarters of pending applications at the court involve five countries. Turkey tops the list, accounting for 35.8 percent of the total, followed by Russia with approximately 8,150 applications, Ukraine (7,700), Romania (3,850) and Greece (2,600).

Turkey remained the highest case-count country in 2024 as in the past year, after replacing Russia in 2022. Russia was excluded from the Council of Europe in March 2022 due to its war on Ukraine. In September 2022 Russia ceased to be a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. The ECtHR is reviewing applications from Russia filed before September 16, 2022.

The court ruled on some 36,819 applications throughout 2024. While 68,450 applications were pending at the close of 2023, the figure had declined by 8 percent to around 60,350 by the end of 2024, the statistics showed.

In addition according to the ECtHR’s data on violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by article and state, at least one violation was found to have been committed in 67 of the 73 adjudicated cases from Turkey. Among those, 19 involved violations of the right to liberty and security, 15 involved violations of the right to freedom of expression, 13 involved violations of the right to respect for private and family life and six involved violations of the right to freedom of assembly and association.

The number of friendly settlements in applications from Turkey declined from three in 2023 to one in 2024, the statistics further showed.

The applications mainly concerned the arrest and pretrial detention of the applicants in the aftermath of a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, on suspicion of membership in an alleged terrorist organization, referring to the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the failed coup and labeled as a terrorist organization.

The movement, inspired by the views of the late Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, denies the accusations.

The court has issued many rulings over the past years against Turkey due to its violations of the rights of people with alleged links to the Gülen movement who were prosecuted in the aftermath of the coup attempt.

The ECtHR has found Turkey to have violated the rights of a total of 3,182 people in 64 different applications related to the post-coup rights violations. Turkey has been ordered to pay a total of 12,563,538 euros in non-pecuniary damages and expenses in these cases.

Despite the ECtHR decisions, the Turkish government is continuing its crackdown on real and alleged followers of the Gülen movement.

In the largest targeting of alleged Gülen followers since the death of the 83-year-old scholar in the US on October 20, Turkish police detained 459 people across 66 provinces on terrorism accusations over alleged links to the movement.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said there would be “no slackening” in the fight against the movement following the death of Gülen, echoing a similar promise made by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other government officials following Gülen’s passing.

The ECtHR’s annual report detailing its work in 2024 highlighted the case of Aydın Sefa Akay v. Türkiye, which concerned the arrest and pretrial detention of an international judge with diplomatic immunity.

Akay, a Turkish national and a judge at the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, was arrested in Turkey following the 2016 coup attempt despite official UN statements affirming his immunity.

The court ruled in April that Turkey’s interpretation of his immunity lacked legal certainty and foreseeability, violating Article 5 § 1 as well as Article 8 of the convention. The case was included in the report due to its significance in reinforcing the principle that judicial independence applies to international judges and that claims of diplomatic immunity must be assessed swiftly to prevent undue detention.

Inter-state cases

According to the court’s annual report, the ECtHR continues to process cases related to conflicts between member states, with 12 inter-state cases currently pending. These include one brought by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia, three by Ukraine against Russia, four by Armenia against Azerbaijan, one by Armenia against Turkey, two by Azerbaijan against Armenia and one by Georgia against Russia.

Along with the inter-state cases, approximately 10,500 individual applications related to these conflicts are being handled by the court’s Conflicts Unit. According to the Copenhagen Declaration of 2018, individual cases involving the same issues or circumstances as a pending inter-state case are, where practicable, not decided before the broader inter-state proceedings are resolved. The examination of conflict-related cases remained a priority for the court in 2024.