The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, at its 1537th meeting held on September 15-17, 2025, supervised the execution of the European Court’s judgments in the cases concerning Selahattin Demirtaş (No. 2) and related cases.
Recalling the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Committee stated that Demirtaş and other elected members of parliament had been detained without sufficient evidence, that these detentions were politically motivated and violated the rights to freedom of expression and political representation.
Decisions
The Deputies
1. recalled that, in these cases, the Court found that the applicants, elected members of the National Assembly at the relevant times, were detained in the absence of evidence to support a reasonable suspicion they had committed an offence (violations of Article 5 §§ 1 and 3) and that their arrests and pre-trial detention pursued an ulterior purpose (violations of Article 18 taken in conjunction with Article 5); that the lifting of the applicants’ parliamentary immunity and the way the criminal law was applied to penalise them for political speeches were not foreseeable and prescribed by law (Article 10) and that their consequent detention made it effectively impossible for them to take part in the activities of the National Assembly (violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1); further recalled that in the Yüksekdağ Şenoğlu and Others case the Court also found a violation of the right to a speedy decision on the lawfulness of detention on account of the use of stereotyped reasoning by the domestic court in denying access to the investigation file (Article 5 § 4);
As regards individual measures
2. recalling the Constitutional Court’s standing to review the applicants’ situation based on the Court’s findings and the Committee’s repeated decisions in this respect, expressed their great concern that the Constitutional Court has still not examined the applicants’ complaints;
3. noting that the Assize Court delivered its reasoned judgment on 25 June 2025, reiterated the Committee’s call on the authorities to provide an English translation of the relevant parts of the Assize Court’s reasoning, together with the authorities’ analysis, without further delay, to enable the Committee to assess how the judgment impacts the individual measures required;
4. strongly affirmed that, in the meantime, any continuation of the applicants’ pre-trial detention on grounds pertaining to the same factual context would entail a prolongation of the violation of their rights as well as a breach of the obligation on the respondent State to abide by the Court’s judgment in accordance with Article 46, paragraph 1, of the Convention; and exhorted, once again, the authorities to ensure the applicants’ immediate release, for example by exploring alternative measures to detention pending the proceedings before the Regional Appeal Court;
5. as regards the remaining applicants in the case of Yüksekdağ Şenoğlu and Others, requested the authorities to continue providing updated information on the developments regarding the criminal proceedings, bearing in mind that, in the absence of new evidence against them, the Court’s finding of a violation of Article 18 in conjunction with Article 5 would require the applicants to be acquitted in order to ensure restitutio in integrum;
As regards general measures
6. recalling the Court’s findings that the applicants’ detention pursued the ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate and the general measures therefore must be capable of strengthening freedom of political debate, pluralism, and the freedom of expression of all elected representatives, in particular safeguards protecting and respecting elected representatives of the opposition parties from unmerited criminal prosecutions and detention orders;
7. noted with regret that despite the Committee’s previous decisions to the contrary, the authorities continue to rely on the existing constitutional safeguards and legislative framework, and maintain that no additional measures are necessary to protect the freedom of political debate, pluralism and the freedom of expression of elected representatives in Türkiye;
8. while acknowledging the existence of positive examples of non-prosecution decisions, stressed that the number of investigation reports brought before Parliament by prosecution offices with requests to lift the immunity of parliamentarians appears to remain very high, which, together with the recent media reports on the detention of numerous elected mayors, suggests that the problem highlighted by the Court continues;
9. reiterated its call for concrete legislative or other measures capable of strengthening freedom of political debate, pluralism, and the freedom of expression of all elected representatives (including in particular safeguards protecting and respecting parliamentary immunity of elected representatives of the opposition parties); encouraged, in addition, the Turkish authorities to concentrate their efforts on awareness raising and in-house training for prosecutors and judges to ensure that they conduct a Convention-compliant assessment of the complaints before them concerning elected political representatives;
10. more generally, encouraged the authorities to further consider making use of the “National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Commission” and the “terror-free Türkiye initiative” and called on the authorities to engage with the Committee and the Secretariat with a view to making progress in implementing the individual and general measures of the present group of cases;
11. decided to resume examination of the individual measures at their 1545th meeting (December 2025) (DH) and the general measures at their DH meeting in March 2026.