Turkey's top court head admits majority of rights violations stem from lack of right to a fair trial

Duvar English

Turkey's Constitutional Court President Zühtü Arslan has admitted that the majority of the rights violations stem from the lack of a right to a fair trial.

Arslan said that 52.1 percent of the violation rulings issued by the top court are caused by the right to a fair trial, laying out the grave situation that the country's judiciary is in.

"This tells us that there's a serious issue with fair trials and it needs to be solved," Arslan said in a swearing ceremony for a new judge on June 9.

"The main duty of the Constitutional Court is to protect basic rights and freedoms," he added.

Arslan added that they issued rulings on 93 percent of the cases that the court received in the past two years.

"Our court received some 43,000 applications in 2019, and we ruled on about 40,000 of them," he said.

Arslan said that the court received more individual applications than any of its international counterparts who employ the practice.

Implemented in 2010, the Constitutional Court defines individual applications as "an exceptional and subsidiary remedy that can be exercised following the exhaustion of other remedies by individuals whose fundamental rights and freedoms are violated as a result of a procedure, act or neglect of public authorities."

In an obvious contradiction to the thousands of human rights violations reported to his court each year, Court President Arslan defended universal equality.

"An approach that bars a person's right to breathe because of their [skin] color or faith can not build a noble global community," Arslan said, possibly in reference to the killing of black Minneapolis resident George Floyd by a police officer on May 25.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had also condemned Floyd's murder in a series of tweets following the incident.