the public. Therefore, only high profile cases, cases that are accepted by the ECtHR, and data from the
Ministry of Justice are available for analysis.
According to data from the Ministry of Justice, the ratio of suspects, defined by people against whom
some form of judicial procedure was started, increased significantly in 2013 and has maintained the
high ratio of 6,7.3 This group of people includes protesters who are detained and referred to the
prosecutor, those who are not detained but called to give testimony, and those against whom a criminal
complaint was lodged.
RATIO OF SUSPECTS UNDER ASSEMBLY LAW TO ALL
SUSPECTS
8
7
6,8
6,3
6
6,7
5
4,3
4
3
2,6
2
1
0
2011
2012
2013
2014
SHARE IN TOTAL NUMBER OF SUSPECTS %
2015
This stark increase could be explained by the adoption of new laws giving broader authorities to civil
servants in deploying police units to assemblies, banning certain actions from being performed at
assemblies, and giving the security forces more power to ‘remove’ protesters from the scene, strip
search suspects, use firearms
at lower thresholds of threat
35000
NR OF SUSPECTS UNDER 2911 BY YEAR
etc.
31268
30000
25965
25000
26151
20000
15000
16283
17137
10000
5000
0
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
Similarly, the number of
people taken into custody, and
therefore entered into the
justice system, for their
participation in assemblies or
violation of the Law on
Assemblies multiplied twofold
from 2011 to 2015. The
number of suspects detained
under Law on Assemblies was
31,268 in 2015, and this number is projected to have increased in 2016.
From the media scans, of the 2088 people who were taken into custody, 147 were established to have
been arrested by the court, on charges of violation the Law on Assemblies. It is not known if
investigations are continuing on those who were released by the court, or whether those arrested by
the court were found guilty at the end of the judicial process. Similarly, it is not known if there were
any other form of punishment for attending an assembly, such as being fired or demoted from one’s
The peak in 2013 could be explained by the Gezi Park protests, which took place from May 2013 – August 2014
and was spread to all provinces in Turkey.
3
12