Last June, the European Court of Human Rights communicated a set of eight cases involving journalists detained in Turkey. In October, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights filed written observations on those cases and a few others, which you can find here. Later that month, I filed my own observations, annexing my report on my 2016 Mission to Turkey. A coalition of leading free expression organizations also filed interventions, which you can find here.

As is normal procedure, the Court has given the Government of Turkey an opportunity to respond to the third-party interventions. The Court just announced an extension of time for the Government’s response, giving a new deadline of 5 December. Given the short timeframe for the pleadings, it would seem (and we should hope) that the Court is aiming to provide judgment in the early part of 2018. The eminent Turkish lawyer and academic Yaman Akdeniz tweeted this out pretty quickly after the Court’s press release:

This is moving at an expedited pace, to be sure. But of course, every day in prison, or, for those released, every day awaiting trail and the possibility of harsh (and frankly absurd) sentences brings new pain — for them, for their families and friends, for the revival of rule of law in Turkey.

*** Update: The Government filed its response to my intervention on December 4th. You can find it here.

 

 

Turkey in the ECtHR