"Detention Procedures of Turkish Courts Violate Fair Trial Rights"
MLSA
©Comprehensive justice monitoring study by MLSA suggests that Turkish courts rely on detention measures excessively in freedom of speech trials; detainees are often not brought to court, or they are handcuffed unnecessarily
Turkish courts detain suspects when the only evidence against them is their written or spoken words, a justice monitoring study conducted by the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA) and the International Press Institute (IPI) in the second half of 2018 has found.
According to the findings of the study, which was supported by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNST), 38% of the defendants in free-speech trials observed were imprisoned; a violation of international standards. The study also identified a large number of other systematic violations of the right to a fair trial, such as the surprisingly high number of trials where imprisoned defendants are not brought to court in person.
To share the results of the study with the public, a press conference was held on 22 January 2019, Tuesday. Representatives from the Consulates of the United States, Germany, Czech Republic, Croatia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, and Russia, as well as local and foreign journalists, attended the event.