Turkey’s parliament discussed the country’s 2021 budget which aims to allocate 24 billion Turkish lira (£ 2.4 billion) for expenditures of the Ministry of Justice.
According to Turkish media the Ministry of Justice plans to spend significant portion of this amount for the construction of 39 new prisons. This means that Turkey’s already extremely high incarceration rate will increase much more. As of May 2020 the incarceration rate in Turkey was 344 prisoners per 100,000 residents which is the second highest rate in OECD countries.
In the last decade hundreds of thousands of people who were considered critical of the current government -in particular opposition politicians, journalists and political activists- have been jailed on terrorism charges and subjected to ill-treatment in Turkey.
Politician’s supporting Erdogan must remember that anybody can become a victim of the judiciary in Turkey where the court rulings are influenced by Erdogan’s decisions.
