New Protests in front of Turkish Consulates in Europe

We are demonstrating today in front of the Turkish Consulate in Hamburg, The Hague, Brussels and Milan to protest the recent
arrest of 16 of our colleagues from Turkey. Since mid-September, they are detained in Ankara, Istanbul and Diyarbakır.

We are especially concerned about the situation of lawyers Barkın Timtik, Engin Gökoglu and Özgür Yılmaz. We fear that they are (again) suffering torture. These lawyers are members of the “People’s Law Office” (“People’s Law Office”) and have represented two opposers of the regime who are currently in hunger strike after being released from their teaching activities.

We are convinced that our colleagues are only exposed to state repression because of their professional activities.

The number of lawyers prosecuted in Turkey is 1343 after this last wave of raids against lawyers. 524 of them have been arrested since the staged coup attempt in July 2016.

Our protest is not just taking place here in Hamburg.

These demonstration has emerged as a common   initiative of the umbrella organization for European Democratic Lawyers (EDL).

There are lawyers from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Catalonia, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Italy and Turkey who share the same democratic, modern and humane ideals in Europe.  As a professional organization, as an international organization, it pursues the international purpose of respecting the rights of the defense in particular, the physical integrity and the political and economic freedom of lawyers.

In September, rallies were held in Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels. Even today, many other cities are to be demonstrated before Turkish interests.

We will not give peace and our colleagues will not be left in the lurch. We demand the release of the lawyers who have been imprisoned!

 

On the repression in Catalonia on the 1st of October 2017

The events that have taken place on the 1st of October in Catalonia are very concerning for a Democracy. Therefore, we severely condemn the actions taken by the Policía Nacional and the Guardia Civil, which have violated the fundamental rights of the people, like the right to health and physical integrity, the right to political participation, the freedom of assembly, the right to vote and the freedom of expression. The Spanish police forces have acted in a totally disproportionate and unjustified manner, in a context of passive and peaceful protest, without acts of provocation or violence being committed.

The first aim of the police action was to frighten the population in order to dissuade them from voting – without going into the legality of the vote. Moreover, some of the action on the ground of the Guardia Civil and the Policía Nacional has exceeded the order of the judicial authority. These police forces needed a justification to act violently, with hatred, against independence, a justification that this judicial decision provided them. This explains the gratuitous and cruel aggressions against citizens who were in the polling stations as well as the systematic destruction public furniture and school buildings.

Police action has violated the law by the widespread and indiscriminate violence against the population with the use of anti-riot materials such as rubber bullets or tear gas, which are strictly prohibited in situations where there is no serious danger. This was not the case, instead there were millions of people exercising fundamental rights in a peaceful manner. Besides the physical – more than 870 wounded – and psychological damage, their actions have prevented thousands of people from voting, through unprecedented repressive action at European level. Their actions did not even respect people in situations of vulnerability such as the elderly, they attacked the sexual integrity of women and caused extensive damage to community-owned equipment.

This widespread and disproportionate repressive action against all citizens of a territory without distinction is contrary to the rules of any democratic state.

The AED considers that the problem lies in the political weakness of the Spanish government to democratically approach a political demand and denounces the instrumental use of the police, of prosecutors and judges who should not be agents or arbitrators in a conflict of political nature.

Finally, the AED stresses the impressive silence of the EU institutions on this conflict.

2nd of October 2017

Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Athens,

Download this press release in FRENCH or in ENGLISH

 

On the Catalonian Referendum

The Bureau of the Association “AVOCATS EUROPEANS DEMOCRATES” (AED) -created 30 years ago and which has brought together associations and unions of European lawyers committed to the defense of the rights of people- has met in Berlin and notes with concern some of the reactions of the Spanish administrative and judicial authorities against the decision of the political authorities and the citizens of Catalonia to celebrate on the 1st of October a referendum on self-determination approved by a law of the Catalonian Parliament and organized by its government. The reaction of the Spanish government has been to challenge its validity, while the Spanish Constitutional Court suspended the law.

Regardless of the debate on the legal validity and the political value that may result from such a referendum, provisionally suspended by a court of constitutional guarantees, and regardless of the debate if the suspension of the referendum automatically means to prevent violently its effective celebration, in these days we are witnessing restrictions on the fundamental rights of the citizenship, often without judicial intervention, such as the freedom of expression, the freedom of information, the right of assembly, the secret and integrity of communications and the right to the natural judge predetermined by the law, going far beyond measures characteristic of a state of emergency.

Thus, the public mail service, without judicial authorization, has withheld correspondence for its content; public initiatives to discuss the referendum have been suspended; citizens have been identified and detained for the only reason of publicly defending their political ideas; print material has been seized, together with the red carnations, which were distributed to emphasize the peaceful character of the Catalonian proposal for political change. More than 700 Catalan mayors have been summoned by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, who has opened criminal proceedings against Catalonian Parliamentarians, as well as all the Catalan Government in full. Printing presses haven been registered without previous judicial order and the media has issued coercive police warnings.

These are signs of the democratic weakness of the Spanish State and are part of a repressive strategy that denies politics as an instrument of change. The AED considers this corresponds to an undemocratic violation of fundamental rights and demands the Spanish State to reinstate these political and civil rights immediately.

 

Free our 16 colleagues

Free our 14 colleagues, members of ÇHD (Progressive Lawyers Association), arrested in Turkey:

 

 

Barkın Timtik

Ebru Timtik

Süleyman Gökten

Ezgi Çakır

Ahmet Mandacı

Yağmur Ereren

Aytaç Ünsal

Didem Baydar Ünsal

Ayşegül Çağatay

Engin Gökoğlu

Behiç Aşçı

Aycan Çiçek

Şükriye Erden

Özgür Yılmaz

Zehra Özdemir

Naciye Demir

 

We have been informed that our 14 of our colleagues have been sent to jail  in Ankara, Istanbul and Diyarbakır. We are very worried about the situation of the lawyers Barkin Timtik, Engin Gökoglu and Ozgur Yılmaz.

16 members of ÇHD were arrested on the 12th of September in Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Ordu and Diyarbakır. We have been informed that our colleagues have been tortured. Our colleague, Engin Gökoğlu, who has been on hunger strike for 28 days, has been sent to the hospital after he severely beaten by police officers

 

The president of ÇHD Selçuk and Betül Kozağaçlı have not been arrested but we have been informed that their practice of lawyering has been limited and their phones and computers seized.

 

As we have been informed, with this last wave of crackdowns against lawyers, the number of lawyers under criminal prosecution in Turkey is now 1343. 524 of them have been arrested since the coup attempt in July 2016.

 

We urge the Turkish government to ensure that the 16 lawyers mentioned above are immediately released because we believe that they were taken into custody solely because of their professional activity as lawyers.

 

We demand to take all necessary measures to guarantee the physical and psychological integrity of lawyers in Turkey as well as their ability to perform their professional duties without fear of reprisal, hindrance, intimidation or harassment.

 

We express our concern over the situation in Turkey where the regime of President Erdogan harasses lawyers and pursues them by the tribunals, used as a weapon for repression. The lawyers seem to be purged because of the exercise of their duties as Lawyers defenders.

 

The AED finally wants to express its concern over the situation of human rights defenders in Turkey and emphasises the due respect for human rights and the rule of law. We are very concerned with situation of the persecuted lawyers.

 

Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, 13th of September 2017.

The Criminalization of Turkish Lawyers

l’AED entend dénoncer la criminalisation des défenseurs des droits de l’homme en Turquie et en particulier la mise en cause personnelle de notre confrère Selçuk KOZAĞAÇLI, visant à déstabiliser la défense et à l’empêcher de mener à bien la défense des droits fondamentaux de ses clients Nuriye Gulmen and Semih Özakça.

 

L’AED en appelle à la vigilance de toutes les organisations d’avocats en Europe, pour s’assurer que notre confrère Selçuk KOZAĞAÇLI pourra mener sa mission d’avocat à bien, librement et sans intimidations de quelque nature que se soit.

 

 

The AED intends to denounce the criminalization of human rights defenders in Turkey and in particular the personal intimidation of our colleague Selçuk KOZAĞAÇLI, aimed at destabilizing the defense and preventing it from successfully defending the fundamental rights of his clients Nuriye Gulmen and Semih Özakça.

 

The AED calls for the vigilance of all lawyers’ organizations in Europe to ensure that our colleague Selçuk KOZAĞAÇLI will be able to carry out his duty as a lawyer, freely and without intimidation of any kind whatsoever.

 

 

Paris, 13th July 2017

Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça are not alone!

Today (16.06.2017), is the 100th day of the hunger strike undertaken by the university professor Nuriye Gülmen’s and primary school teacher Semih Özakça. However, they are still in Sincan prison.

The situation of these two young educators is simple but a describes perfectly the current situation in Turkey. Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça were dismissed by governmental decree without any kind of individualized justification or proof. They are not only dismissed from their jobs, but banned from any kind of public service, which means that they cannot continue their careers or even their daily life without financial support. Over 100.000 public officers are in the same situation, which is equivalent with a kind of “civil death”.

In november 2016, Gülmen and Özakça started a sit-in protesting against a governmental decree in front of the human rights’ monument in the center of Ankara. They were beaten by the police, detained more than 30 times. On the 9th of March 2016 they started a hunger strike.

On the 22nd May, Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça were detained from their homes and one day later, a court in Ankara sent them to the prison. They are accused of participating and disseminating propaganda for a terrorist organization. The trial will be held on 14th of September, 2017.

 

In spite of their hunger strike, the court has announced the continuation of their detention. However, different reports as well as their lawyers fear that every day spent in jail, just takes them one step closer to the death.

As European Democratic Lawyers (AED), we would like to underline that Turkey insists on violating fundamental human rights such as the right to life. We are concerned about Nuriye Gülmen’s and Semih Özakça’s lives, but not only about them. Over 100.000 people have been dismissed from their work, thousands of people are in jail and every single day a new suicide is published in the Turkish newspapers. A young academic, Mehmet Fatih Traş, signatory of the Academics for Peace Statement, committed suicide months after his dismission. Unfortunately, reports show that he is not the only example.

As Europan Democratic Lawyers, we would like to remind that, even under the extraordinary measures imposed by the current State of Emergency, the violation of fundamental human rights and especially human dignity cannot be accepted. We call, thus, for the respect of basic human dignity.

Finally, we would like to announce that the European Democratic Lawyers (AED) are also defending of Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça. in front of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg. Because we believe that their future is our future, that they are the voice of all the oppressed people.

19th of June 2017

Le glas de la démocratie ne cesse de sonner en Turquie

COMMUNIQUE CONJOINT MEDEL – AED-EDL

Le glas de la démocratie ne cesse de sonner en Turquie et le référendum constitutionnel tendant à donner les pleins pouvoirs à Recep Tayyip Edogan le fera résonner une nouvelle fois.

La fin de l’état de droit démocratique en TURQUIE

Tout se passe dans un contexte de répression arbitraire allant crescendo depuis le coup d’état raté du 15 juillet pour atteindre une ampleur considérable : près de 45 000 personnes ont été arrêtées (dont 3800 magistrats, 300 avocats, 140 journalistes, des élus, notamment 12 députés, des universitaires…), plus de 150 000 ont été limogées dont un quart des magistrats en poste à la mi-juillet. Ces chiffres -pouvant varier selon les sources mais restant toujours dans le même ordre de grandeur- traduisent une volonté de faire régner la peur bien au-delà de la sphère « complotiste ».

Dire le droit, rendre la justice, défendre un accusé, écrire un article, couvrir un évènement, enseigner … cela n’est plus possible sauf à se soumettre aux exigences du pouvoir.

La liberté d’expression, la liberté académique, l’indépendance et l’impartialité de la justice, le droit à une défense libre, la liberté d’association et de syndicalisation, autant de principes démocratiques qui n’ont plus de place dans le régime turc. La liste des violations des principes démocratiques est sans fin. Sans oublier le rétablissement de la peine de mort, annoncé « au nom de la volonté du peuple » et retentissant comme un énième acte de défi envers l’Europe et ses valeurs.

Il n’y a plus de justice en TURQUIE

Après l’échec du putsch, la démocratie n’a pas triomphé même si le régime politique civil a été sauvé. Et l’épicentre de ce séisme démocratique est la détérioration de la justice et la mise à mal, qui n’en finit plus, de l’Etat de droit.

Des juges menacés en permanence de destitution et d’arrestation ne peuvent juger de façon indépendante et impartiale. Sans compter la quasi annihilation de la défense par des dispositifs procéduraux d’exception (entretien limité et enregistré avec l’avocat, accès au dossier entravé par « l’ordonnance de confidentialité »…) ou par l’intimidation répressive.

En outre, l’instauration de l’impunité d’Etat crée un climat propice à des abus de pouvoir à large échelle. Les ONG Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, l’ONU …tous font état de tortures et de mauvais traitements. Or, dans les décrets-lois pris en application de l’état d’urgence, désormais en place depuis plus de 8 mois, a été insérée une disposition accordant l’immunité aux forces de police pour les crimes commis pendant cette période trouble.

En pleine tempête politique : un référendum constitutionnel pour donner les pleins pouvoirs au président

Dans un tel contexte d’état d’exception permanent, de répression arbitraire et d’écrasement des libertés fondamentales, on ne peut imaginer une consultation électorale sereine sur un texte constitutionnel censé organiser la vie publique des prochaines générations et sceller le sort de la Turquie pour les années à venir.

Tout Etat a le droit de choisir son propre système politique, que ce soit présidentiel ou parlementaire, ou mixte. Ce droit n’est cependant pas inconditionnel : les principes de séparation des pouvoirs et de primauté du droit doivent être respectés et pour cela des contre-pouvoirs doivent être intégrés dans le système politique. Alors que le manque d’indépendance de la justice en Turquie est depuis longtemps préoccupant, les modifications proposées ne feraient qu’affaiblir le rôle de la justice. La mainmise du pouvoir exécutif sur le fonctionnement de la justice serait accentuée, notamment, grâce à un contrôle des décisions de nomination, mutation, discipline et révocation des magistrats via le Conseil des juges et procureurs dont les treize membres seraient nommés directement ou indirectement par le président. Il en serait de même pour les 15 membres de la Cour constitutionnelle.

Et bien d’autres dispositions sont considérées comme dangereuses par la commission de Venise dans un avis récent [-29-CDL-AD (2017) 005] qui souligne la dégénérescence démocratique du système proposé s’orientant clairement vers un régime autoritaire et personnel.

L’Europe, empêtrée dans la gestion des flux migratoires, peine à agir efficacement pour soutenir les mouvements des démocrates en Turquie et la Cour Européenne des droits de l’homme déçoit, pour le moment, la confiance mise par ceux-ci en cette justice des droits de l’homme.

Nous ne devons pas rester silencieux face à ce qui se passe en Turquie et Nous MEDEL et AED continuerons à nous mobiliser aux côtés des démocrates turcs en faveur d’un avenir serein de leur pays dans la plénitude d’une démocratie laissant toute sa place à une justice indépendante et une défense libre.

PARIS le 25 April 2017

 

 

Suite à l’évacuation de Calais

Madame ou Monsieur le Bâtonnier,

Vous êtes comme nous sensibilisé à la situation d’urgence qui se profile pour chacun de nos barreaux du fait de l’évacuation du bidonville de Calais et de la relocalisation un peu partout en France de ses occupants.

Le CNB a d’ailleurs noté l’accès quasiment inexistant à l’information et au suivi juridique des migrants et l’absence de mesure de protection des personnes vulnérables, notamment les mineurs isolés.

Dans la continuité de l’appel du CNB en date du 13 octobre dernier, nos organisations ont décidé de réunir leurs efforts afin de coordonner des actions communes, l’objectif étant d’améliorer l’accès aux droits des personnes qui arrivent dans nos barreaux, tant au niveau du contentieux de l’éloignement que du conseil en matière de séjour des étrangers et de l’asile.

Dans cette optique, il est urgent de constituer des listes d’avocats, compétents, volontaires et acceptant d’intervenir exclusivement au titre de l’aide juridictionnelle, dans chaque barreau sous l’égide de l’Ordre afin de renforcer les dispositifs de défense d’urgence déjà existants.

Ce dispositif pourrait également avoir un prolongement tant au niveau régional que national, en coordination avec les ordres, les associations signataires et les initiatives citoyennes d’aide aux migrants.

Bien entendu, il est indispensable dans ce contexte que chacun de ces justiciables ait un égal accès à l’avocat.

A cette fin, nous souhaiterions vous rencontrer au plus tôt pour vous exposer de manière plus précise notre projet.

Vous remerciant de l’attention particulière que vous porterez à la présente, Très respectueusement et confraternellement,

ADDE représentée par Flor TERCERO, avocate au barreau de Toulouse
AED représentée par Pascale TAELMAN, avocate au barreau du Val-de-Marne ELENA représentée par Alexandre ASLANIAN, avocat au barreau de Paris
SAF représenté par Florian BORG, avocat au barreau de Lille

Paris, le 18 octobre 2016

schermata-2016-10-21-alle-17-53-19

Another lawyer under threat in Turkey

To: ANTALYA CHIEF PUBLIC PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE

(ANTALYA CUMHURİYET BAŞSAVCILIĞI’NA)

2016/69739 No.

Fax Number: + 90 242 237 11 11 (Turkey)

 

Créteil, Barcelona and Amsterdam, October 24, 2016.

European Democratic Lawyers (AED-EDL) are very concerned about the news that the former director member of ÇHD Antalya – Çağdaş Hukukçular -Progressive Lawyers Association, the advocate Özden SALDIRAN was arrested 9 days ago, on the 15th of October. His home and office were searched. She’s still in police station and has not yet been sent to the courthouse.

Ms. Özden SALDIRAN is suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure. Without medical care the police custody may endanger her health.

It is clear that Özden Saldıran has no connection with FETÖ. The arrest of lawyer Özden SALDIRAN is another case against lawyers simply because they perform their professional duties. This arrest is part of a pattern of prosecutions for alleged terrorist offenses that the Turkish government brings against its citizens, including journalists, trade unionists, human rights activists, parliamentarians, academics and students who are committed to a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue and freedom of expression.

Since the government started operations giving as their reason the fight against the called Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), it is clear that they are using this as a pretext for oppression of organisations and individuals who have definitely no connection with FETÖ.

ÇHD is our partner in the struggle for the defence of Humans Rights. Since 1974, it has campaigned for respect and defence of human rights and the defence of oppressed peoples in Turkey. This is not the first case of government attacks against the dissidents. The trial of 22 other senior members of ÇHD has been underway since 2013. .

AED-EDL strongly condemns the arrest and detention of lawyer Özden SALDIRAN and demands her immediate release and the end of all unjustified persecution. AED-EDL demands furthermore that the Turkish government respects the professional work and role of lawyers, and complies in particular with Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as Article 16 and 18 of the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers.