Report by UK lawmakers and legal experts finds ample evidence of Turkey’s breach of ECHR.

Report by UK lawmakers and legal experts finds ample evidence of Turkey’s breach of ECHR. HT: TodaysZaman.


A report prepared by UK lawmakers and legal experts upon the request of the Turkish Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) that they investigate violations of the rule of law and persecutions targeting the Gülen movement concluded that there is ample evidence to establish breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and other treaties to which Turkey is a party.

During a discussion on Thursday of the findings of the report, which was prepared by the Rt. Hon. Lord Harry Woolf CH, Professor Sir Jeffrey Jowell KCMG QC, the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Garnier QC MP and Sarah Palin, a practicing barrister in London, GYV representative Fatih Ceran said the authors of the report consider the witch hunts and other illegal actions targeting institutions affiliated with the Gülen movement, also known as the Hizmet movement, to be cases of discrimination, according to the ECHR.

Summarizing breaches of human rights and the rule of law in Turkey, which have targeted the Gülen movement in particular since December 2013, the approximately 100-page report stated that these violations “represent a serious setback for Turkish democracy and its respect for human rights.”

The authors of the report stress that they were asked by the GYV to conduct an independent desk-based inquiry into the actions of the Turkish government, its institutions and its officials against supporters of the Gülen movement. Read the full story here.

Related: 'Advanced Islamist Democracy' Turkey preparing to target the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).