“Now the Court President asks for a delay to you”
Because Turkish lawyers feel a strong solidarity, not only with their clients, but also with their colleagues, the courtroom is full of lawyers in robes. Also, at least 5 international lawyers are observing the trial, for nearly 3 days already, in the Istanbul Caglayan Courthouse. They’re representatives of Lawyers for Lawyers, Défense sans Frontières and the Foundation Day of the Endangered Lawyer.
We just heard the news that, once again, there will not be given a verdict. Next week, a bigger trial against the members of the Board of the Istanbul Bar Association will continue in court. More and more big trials are held against more and more lawyers. The tension in the juridical world keeps growing every day.
The background of this case:
All the persecuted lawyers and their own lawyers see this court case as a politically motivated trial. A conspiracy trial.
The trial has been postponed 32 times. To be persecuted, to be tried, since 2016 puts an enormous, unbearable, continuing psychological pressure on these 12 lawyers, as well as on the other persecuted people from the prisoners’ rights organisation. The European Treaty for Human Rights does not accept such an enormous delay in this nearly Kafkaesque trial. Some of the 12 lawyers were already persecuted when they first started as a lawyer, and other lawyers have been tried before in political cases.
In the meantime, the political landscape in Turkey has changed completely, in many different ways. Now there is even a peace process going on, between the government and the PKK, which might bring changes to Turkey.
Accusations:
Nearly all attacked lawyers – and their lawyers as well – have argued that many of the factual things they are accused of are just a normal part of their daily work as a peoples’ lawyer. In this area of peoples’ lawyers, prison visits to their own clients and clients of colleagues, press conferences about human rights violations, declarations of solidarity are ‘part of the normal game’.
Nevertheless, the 12 are persecuted and accused of being members of a terrorist organisation, or supporting an armed organisation. They are accused of making terrorist propaganda. And they are accused of insulting the Turkish public state. Just because they are working hard for their clients in- and outside of prison and supporting their clients in many court cases. Especially filing many cases against Turkey before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and giving press conferences about sentences of the European Court via social media causes them to be treated as enemies.
For our persecuted colleagues, these accusations create an absolute irrational, incomprehensible situation. This seems to be the way how justice is done to them.
Procedural rights and fair trial:
In this trial, many of the lawyers have given abundant, detailed examples about how their normal active and serious lawyer work is now being seen as ‘criminal deeds’, according to the indictment of the Prosecutor.
During this trial, the judges never ask the lawyers and their defendants any questions. At the very least, this is strange. Especially in cases like this, with accusations like this, there have to be very good investigations and enquiries and communication should be perfect.
The Prosecutor has not said a word in these 3 days. He did not investigate any situation, but he leans completely on the interpretations made by the Police in the files. Wrong conclusions about wired/tapped phone calls. Misinterpretation of the facts. So many examples we have heard, but the judges don’t react to this at all.
Nevertheless, the lawyers continue to ask the Court for much deeper and better investigations into the ‘facts and situations’ which are interpreted as ‘heinous crimes’ by the Police all the time.
By the way, these police investigations have started already in 2013. But until now, in previous years, all requests and demands made by the lawyers and their defendants have been denied by the Court and the Prosecutor.
In the past years, the Prosecutor never changed his opinion about his accusations against the lawyers, in spite of all the detailed explanations and statements in the trials about the way these lawyers normally work each day.
Since years, the lawyers have denied all alleged so-called ‘criminal facts’ in this 2016 trial. However, for the Prosecutor, this is not a reason to really listen to them and to change the indictments. He didn’t even investigate the accusations about falsifying documents, which were well motivated.
The lawyers feel victimised by the way the whole case is built against them and about the way the Police has misinterpreted the facts. Like a real ‘conspiracy case’ as they say, full of wrong interpretations of what they did and said during wiretapped conversations on the phone or otherwise.
Now the 12 lawyers and their defenders ‘have had enough’, being accused of undermining the state or begin labelled as terrorists. This enemy-making strategy of persecution hides that these lawyers are ethically good lawyers, who are just helping the weak and the poor in their country and who are defending the Rule of law, especially in Turkey. They fight for maintaining the human rights and upholding many other important principles of law in Turkey.
Finally, the way these lawyers are being prosecuted them goes completely against the internationally accepted UN principles on the role of lawyers, which guarantee that a lawyer cannot be persecuted for doing his work as a lawyer.
This trial observation was made possible thanks to the continuing hospitality and support (like the continuous translating) by the Turkish colleagues.
September 4, 2025
Hans Gaasbeek
Istanbul