‘Türkiye ranks highest in compliance with ECHR decisions’

ANKARA

Türkiye has the highest rate of compliance among the countries that have committed to comply with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decisions, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ said.

“The compliance rate of the countries that have committed to complying with and implementing the ECHR decisions is 80.14 percent. Türkiye’s compliance rate is 87.90 percent,” he said on Aug. 10 at the 13th Ambassadors’ Conference.

The Turkish court implemented and complied with the decision of the ECHR regarding the violation of rights regarding Osman Kavala and he was arrested for another crime and his trial continued, he noted.

Critics of Türkiye bring up only a handful of cases out of 7,621,783 cases, the minister stated.

“Is it fair to judge the judiciary of this country over two files, evaluate this country’s understanding of justice according to social media or politicians who make judgments based on two political advocacy, and convict Turkey’s justice system, judiciary and those who perform their judicial duties without knowing the file and the evidence? It is not fair,” Bozdağ said.

Elaborating on the extradition requests sent by Türkiye to some countries, Bozdağ said: “From 2012 to 2022, Türkiye requested legal assistance in 1998 within the scope of terrorist crimes from foreign countries. So far, 735 of them have been rejected, 18 of them have been accepted and the others have no answer yet.”

Kavala was first arrested on criminal charges related to the 2013 Gezi protests when small protests in Istanbul spread into nationwide demonstrations, leaving eight protesters and a police officer dead.

He was briefly released but later remanded into custody as part of a probe into the 2016 defeated coup, with prosecutors accusing him of spying.

The ECHR had called on Türkiye to immediately release Kavala. The Council of Europe (CoE) launched the infringement procedure against Türkiye after it did not comply with the European court’s ruling on Kavala.

In July, Europe’s top rights court decided moving further in the process could lead to Ankara’s suspension from the CoE as Türkiye had not complied with a ruling that called for the release of Kavala.