Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals’s recent decision to uphold the acquittal of the last defendant in the terrorism-related trial of rights activists has brought the case to a close after an eight-year legal process, the T24 news website reported on Wednesday.
Eleven human rights defenders — including Taner Kılıç and İdil Eser of Amnesty International Turkey; Günal Kurşun and Veli Acu of the Human Rights Agenda Association; Özlem Dalkıran and Nalan Erkem of the NGO Citizens’ Assembly; Ali Gharavi, an Iranian-Swedish playwright and technology specialist; Peter Steudtner, a German human rights activist and documentary filmmaker; Nejat Taştan of the Association for Monitoring Equal Rights; Şeyhmus Özbekli of the Rights Initiative; and İlknur Üstün of the Women’s Coalition — were accused of terrorism for attending a series of meetings on İstanbul’s Büyükada island in 2017. They were targeted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who alleged that the meetings’ agenda was to plan the continuation of a coup attempt against his government on July 15, 2016.
In July 2020 the İstanbul 35th High Criminal Court sentenced Kılıç to more than six years in prison on charges of “membership in a terrorist organization,” and convicted rights activists Dalkıran, Eser and Kurşun for knowingly and willingly supporting such an organization, sentencing each to 25 months in prison, while acquitting the remaining seven human rights defenders.
The 3rd Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the convictions in November 2022, saying Dalkıran, Eser and Kurşun should be acquitted. The case of Kılıç, a refugee rights lawyer and honorary chair of Amnesty International’s Turkey branch, was quashed on the grounds of an “incomplete investigation” and referred back to the court of first instance.
The retrial was concluded in June 2023, with the İstanbul 35th High Criminal Court ruling for the acquittal of all defendants. However, the prosecution appealed the verdict concerning Kılıç.
According to T24, the 3rd Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals rejected the prosecutor’s appeal and upheld Kılıç’s acquittal, thereby clearing all 11 defendants of the charges and bringing the eight-year legal process to a close.
Turkey remained in the “not free” category in the “Freedom in the World 2024” report by the Washington-based Freedom House, with a score of 33/100, in the same category as Russia, China and Iran, according to the annual country-by-country assessment of political rights and civil liberties.
The report evaluates countries based on 10 political rights and 15 civil liberties indicators, including political pluralism and participation, freedom of expression and belief, rule of law and individual rights.