MEDEL issued a statement on the death of the Turkish Lawyer Ebru Timtik. You can find it below:
The death of Ebru Timtik, after 238 days of hunger strike, adds one more life to the many that have already been quashed since the upheaval of democracy in Turkey, and confirms that all members of the Turkish legal community (judges, lawyers, academics) who keep working to defend the rule of law remain “enemies” to fight without mercy.
Ebru Timtik was sentenced to more than 13 years of prison for alleged membership in a terrorist organization, simply on the basis of her professional activity. She never stopped to fight against this injustice, claiming her right to have a fair trial, a fundamental guarantee that is now denied to Turkish citizens.
Since the 2016 events, MEDEL repeatedly strongly raised the attention on the gross systemic violations of fundamental rights in Turkey, and on the absence of effective internal remedies, that call for adequate interim measures by the ECHR.
The epilogue of the persecution of Ebru Timtik, with the refusal of the Istanbul Court and of the Turkish Constitutional Court to order her temporary release, once again provides hard evidence of the arbitrariness of the power that replaced democracy in Turkey.
A tragedy like that of Ebru Timtik no longer allows the European institutions, and the international community as a whole, to remain indifferent or silent face to the consequences of the disappearance of the rule of law in Turkey.
September 4th, 2020