Judicial changes aim to reduce human rights violations

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

DHA Photo

Turkey’s higher courts are undergoing structural changes in order give way to fewer violations of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), in a move that aims to downsize the number of European Court of Human Rights cases against Turkey, head of the Supreme Court of Appeals Ali Alkan said today in a speech at Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University.

Alkan was the keynote speaker at the university’s conference on the decisions of the Supreme Court of Appeals within the framework of the human rights convention. He underlined the country’s attempt in trying to allow fewer issues to remain unsolved by internal judicial authorities.

Turkey remains the country with the highest number of violations of the convention, with over 2,500 rulings containing at least one or more violations, according to Supreme Court of Appeals member Necati Meran, one of the conference’s guest speakers.

Of those cases, 738 are violations of the right to a fair trial, 634 of them are property violations and 544 of them are on longer trial periods, Meran said.

Alkan also mentioned issues of fair trials and trial periods and highlighted recent changes to “the structural strengthening of the high courts after European standards.”

The changes aim at building a strong internal judicial process while clearing out cases that have been piling up for years with no results, Alkan told participants.

“We need to have the proper conditions and then the solving of simple conflicts can be taken care of,” Alkan said. “We would like to leave future generations a better judicial system.”

Despite the present situation, some of the conditions that give way to violations will be fixed with the upcoming fourth judicial package, guest speaker and member of the Supreme Court of Appeals and Güngör Babacan said, adding that while some issues remain unsolved future debates will bring them up in the process.

The fourth package, which oversees a series of changes, including the unification of military and civilian high courts to better follow up human rights violations, was to be submitted to Parliament shortly, Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said Feb.5.