63 percent of rights violations stem from lack of right to a fair trial: Top court

Duvar English

Some 308,672 individual petitions about human rights violations were made to Turkey's Constitutional Court since the personal application process was launched in 2012, the daily Birgün reported on May 10.

The mechanism of individual petitions to the Constitutional Court mandates that the person applying must have exhausted all other legal means to solve their problem, meaning that they've failed to find justice in lower courts. 

The top court ruled on 265,300 of these petitions, it reported, noting at least one rights violation in 14,204 of the applications, and ruling for an administrative dismissal on 12,318 applications.

An overwhelming 236,662 of the 308,672 petitions were ruled inadmissible by the court.

The right to a fair trial was the freedom that was violated the most often among the cases that were ruled on, with a violation being observed in 62.9 percent of the 14,204 applications where a right was compromised. 

Property rights were the second most commonly violated with 19.3 percent of rulings, followed by violations of the freedom of expression at 4.2 percent.

The largest number of individual petitions to the court were made in 2016, when a failed coup attempt prompted Ankara to lay off thousands of public workers with state of emergency decrees to "cleanse the government of coup plotters."

Protection of privacy, maltreatment and the right to freedom and safety were among the violations the top court recorded since 2012. 

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has increased its grip on the judiciary in recent years, firmly controlling courts presiding over political trials that have resulted in dozens of high-profile politicians, activists, and journalists being jailed on baseless charge.