Turkey’s Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) has appointed 11 judges and prosecutors as new members to the Supreme Court of Appeals. The appointment came shortly after President Erdogan’s highly debated announcement about new judicial reforms aimed at stabilising the legal situation – one of the most fiercely debates topic in the country. In the […]
Five years ago, on 28 November 2015, Diyarbakır Bar Association Chair Tahir Elçi was murdered while making a statement to the press in Sur, Diyarbakır. Elci was a highly respected lawyer who was well known for representing victims at the European Court of Human Rights in a cases relating to forced evictions of Kurdish villages, […]
Turkish authorities, who are notorious for breaching the international labour standards, continue to violate fundamental labour rights through illegal tactics. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, unpaid leave has been used as a stick against workers which reveals the unequal impact of the pandemic in the labour market compared to the other segments of […]
Violence against women and gender inequality have intensified in Turkey in the past year, even as the women’s resistance has grown in Turkey against the relentless attacks on women’s rights and failure of the judiciary and police to bring to justice perpetrators. On 17 November, we met with women in Turkey to better understand the […]
Kemal Kurkut, 23 year old university student at the Fine Arts Faculty, was killed by police during the Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakır -a southeastern province of Turkey- on 21st March 2017. According to the Dicle News Agency (DIHA) Kurkut was shot despite a “Don’t shoot” order of the police chief. The published photos of the murder were documented by DIHA editor Abdurrahman Gok at the […]
Economic and social inequality, and violence against women and girls continues to rise in Turkey, but women refuse to bow to the AKP’s regressive policies and attacks on women’s rights. In preparation for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls, SPOT, together with Day-Mer Women, have organised an online webinar […]
Kudret Yener’s throat was slit by two men during a violent robbery in the southern Turkish city of Adana in 2017. A criminal court yesterday sentenced the defendants, İsmail and Vural Yetik to aggravated life imprisonment for the murder of the 72 year old woman. Aggravated life sentences of the offenders were reduced to a […]
The deputy mayor of Istanbul’s Kucukcekmece district – which is led by main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) – has been suspended from his duty following an investigation related to a playground renewal in the region. The investigation is about the colours and shapes on the rubber surfacing of the playground allegedly resembling the colours […]
Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s finance minister, and also the son in law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, yesterday announced his resignation in an Instagram post. Albayrak, who mentioned health reasons for his resignation also deleted his Twitter account at the same time. Albayrak -who was previously Turkey’s energy minister for nearly three years- resigned a day […]
Omer Yeğit, a Turkish policeman crashed an armoured vehicle into a house in Silopi -a town in Şırnak province in the southeast of Turkey- killing siblings Muhammed (7) and Furkan Yıldırım (6) as they were sleeping inside their house on 3 May 2017. Shortly after, Ali İhsan Su, who was then the governor of […]
As of today at least 111 people died and 1034 people have been injured in İzmir, the coastal city of Turkey, after a strong earthquake struck in the Aegean Sea on Friday 30 October. According to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) the magnitude of the earthquake was 6.6, on the other hand the United […]