Mirna Shalash: The law in Turkey is no longer applied

Mirna Shalash, a representative of the Partners for Transparency Foundation, made an oral intervention before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva in conjunction with the 44th session of the Council, and she welcomed the recent report of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, and stated that the Foundation has concerns about the exacerbation of the phenomenon of corruption and the risks it poses. On the issue of human rights in general and the independence of the judiciary in particular.

She emphasized that the Partners Foundation is very concerned about the rapid decline of human rights and democracy in Turkey in recent years, especially under a government that has extended its hegemony over the judiciary system, and under a president who does not hesitate to threaten the judiciary system if it hesitates to issue decisions and rulings to arrest his critics And his opponents. The Turkish judiciary also continued to issue verdicts that are predominantly retaliatory, despite strong evidence and evidence of the security services' practice of torture against the accused in order to force them to confess.

For her part, Mirna Shalash stressed that this intervention was made in order to draw the attention of the Human Rights Council that the law in Turkey is no longer applied, that the local Turkish judiciary has become ineffective, and that the court's work has become restricted to the government's political agenda, so the government now controls and interferes in the procedures for appeals submitted to the authority. The higher judiciary, the forms of pressure on the entire judiciary have varied, which has made it lose its independence and integrity, and turned it into a body subject to the executive authority through multiple and systematic means and mechanisms. Where the executive authority tightened its grip on the institutions of the judiciary and the public prosecution, whether through arbitrarily arresting, dismissing and transferring judges and public prosecutors, as well as issuing threats to lawyers, and indicated that Law No. (667) Turkey, related to the higher judicial bodies, granted the bodies The Appellate Judiciary has the power to dismiss its members, which led to the dismissal, arrest and detention of a large number of judges and public prosecutors, under the pretext that they have links with the Gulen group, as 4,240 judges and prosecutors were dismissed by the issuance of executive orders from the Supreme Judicial Council and public prosecutors, and the Constitutional Court was also dismissed. Two of its judges, 6 members of the Supreme Council of Judges and Public Prosecutors were dismissed, 3,500 of them were arrested, and at least 600 judges and prosecutors were held in solitary confinement. Almost two-thirds of them were canceled from the Syndicate on July 16, 2016, the day after the attempted coup, and the state froze their bank accounts before any charges were brought against them, and the state broadcast their names in the media, so they became convicted before they knew the charges against them.

The Turkish Authorities Partners Foundation called for the need to take serious and concrete steps to ensure the independence and integrity of the Turkish judiciary, and recommended the release of all judges who were arbitrarily arrested, and consideration of the return of those who were arbitrarily dismissed. And the need to stop the increasing arrests carried out by the Turkish government against lawyers because of the legal services they provide to detainees.