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The new chair of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations, Erinç Sağkan, said that the Union’s new executive committee will not remain silent on human rights violations like the former one did.
When asked by a reporter what he thought about the Turkish judiciary’s insistence on not releasing Selahattin Demirtaş and Osman Kavala despite a decision by the European Court of Human Rights calling for their release, Sağkan said on Wednesday: “Everyone knows that the judiciary is not independent in Turkey. The ones who say ‘the judiciary is independent’ are aware of this fact before everyone else. The main issue is whether we want the judiciary to be independent or not. We want it to be independent.”
Speaking to ANKA news agency, Sağkan stated that they would be denying their own existence if they continued to remain silent on violations of human rights.
“We believe that the lack of judicial independence is the source of all problems that Turkey is facing, including economic problems. The non-implementation of ECHR decisions, or the statements like, ‘the judiciary will do whatever needs to be done,’ actually show that members of the judiciary are getting instructions.
“If the Union of Bar Associations will remain silent over such interventions, we can’t even talk about its existence. If it will remain silent over human rights violations, restrictions on expression, violations of the right to fair trial, restrictions on defence, we can’t talk about a union. The main difference between the old and new terms will emerge at this point.”
Sağkan emphasised that they will be taking action in cases of rights violations: “At this point, the Union of Turkish Bar Associations will start fulfilling its lawful duty in cases of human rights violations, and it will not be just words.
“We will monitor such cases closely and will help to create public opinion. We will inform the lawyers on those cases. Foremost amongst everything, we will not abandon the lawyers who are putting up a struggle in such cases, as the representatives of the defence.”
Erinç Sağkan won against the former chair, Metin Feyzioğlu, in the general assembly vote of the TTB on Sunday. Feyzioğlu had been widely criticised for siding with the administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan while a new regulation was introduced and passed in the Turkish parliament, enabling the establishment of other bar associations and putting an end to the historical role of the TTB as the sole representative of lawyers in Turkey.
Feyzioğlu had also remained silent as the judiciary lost its independence and eventually started serving more than ever as a tool for punishing the administrations’s political rivals and human rights defenders.
Selahattin Demirtaş, the former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), has been imprisoned since November 2016, while Osman Kavala, a prominent human rights defender and businessperson, has been imprisoned since October 2017, despite ECHR rulings in both cases.
