The deportation of Mehmet Çakas, who was sentenced in Germany to 2 years and 10 months on charges of PKK membership, was prohibited today by a ruling of the Lüneburg Administrative Court. The court held that deportation would be unacceptable from a human-rights standpoint under Article 60 (5) of the German Residency Act. There was great joy in the courtroom when the decision was announced.
Monday’s hearing drew significant public attention. Cansu Özdemir, foreign policy spokesperson of the Left Party’s Bundestag group, members of the Lüneburg Left Party municipal council, NGO representatives, and members of the media were present. All seats in the courtroom were filled.
‘Right to hope’ and changed conditions
Çakas’s lawyers, Cornelia Ganten-Lange and Carsten Gericke, stated that conditions had fundamentally changed since their client’s initial asylum rejection. They emphasized that a new case has been opened in Turkey seeking aggravated life imprisonment for Çakas, a sentence that violates Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The European Court of Human Rights’ rulings against Turkey for violating the “right to hope” in the cases of Abdullah Öcalan and the “Gurban Group” were also cited in the court’s reasoning.
Joy in the courtroom
When the decision was announced, the courtroom erupted in joy. Observers congratulated Mehmet Çakas and his lawyers. Çakas’s potential deportation had long been debated, as it would have become the first case of a Kurdish activist convicted under §129b of the Criminal Code being extradited to Turkey.
A long struggle
During the summer, protests were held in numerous German cities against Çakas’s deportation. After the court first suspended the deportation in July, a second planned deportation on 28 August was also blocked by the court the day before.
With today’s ruling by the Lüneburg Administrative Court, the deportation of Mehmet Çakas to Turkey has been definitively halted from a legal standpoint.