Because they were said to have used an encryption app, thousands of Turks were accused of membership in a terrorist group and convicted by Turkish courts. Wrongfully so, says the European Court of Human Rights.
In January, at the hearing before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, one of the lawyers appealed to the judges: “Your court has often said that justice must not only be done, but also seen to be done Justice has been established.”
In fact, the ECHR has now provided some justice for many Turkish convicts. That’s not how it works, said the Grand Chamber, the highest judicial body: Just because someone is said to have used the messenger app called ByLock (editor’s note: app for sending encrypted messages), you can’t classify him as a supporter of the banned Gülen organization condemn.
Conviction for alleged ByLock app use
There are currently around 8,500 Turkish lawsuits before the Strasbourg Court that concern this app alone. The Court has now singled out one of these lawsuits and decided on it as an example. It’s about a Turkish teacher who was arrested in 2016 after the coup attempt and was sentenced to a good six years in prison in 2017 as an alleged Gülen member.
The main reason for the conviction was that he was said to have used the ByLock app. But his lawyer says: “To this day, my client denies that he ever used the app.”
No insight into the documents
Nevertheless, no Turkish court, including the Turkish Constitutional Court, agreed with him. And this despite the fact that in all these years the man never had access to the documents that allegedly incriminated him. The public prosecutor’s office did not have to present the supposed evidence that it had apparently received from the Turkish secret service.
“The only way my client could have defended himself is to have been allowed to see this data,” explains his lawyer. This is now also the reason why the European Court of Human Rights is very clearly reprimanding the Turkish courts: criminal proceedings should not proceed like this. A defendant must be able to defend himself, otherwise the procedure would be unfair and violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
ECHR: Not blanket proof of terrorism
The Court certainly expressed understanding for the imposition of a state of emergency after the attempted coup in 2016. Nevertheless, the courts should not have simply concluded from the use of the app that someone was a terrorist.
And the verdict, which is almost 200 pages long, ends with a clear statement: Turkey must address these systemic problems and can no longer view the ByLock app as blanket evidence of terrorism.
However, the teacher will not receive financial compensation, which is otherwise often awarded. In this case, it would be enough for the man to be right, the majority of the judges decided.