01 JUNE 2022/TURKISH EMBASSY, LONDON

Dear Friends!

We are once again in front of the Turkish Embassy in London!

We would love to have come here for celebration of Turkey’s EU membership, or of an international success of a Turkish team. But we are here for a reason that shames us all: We are here to protest the human rights violations the Turkish regime has been perpetuating.

We are here to protect the most basic human rights of living free lives, freedom of travelling and the right to have a fair trial.

Today is the anniversary of enforced disappearance of Educationist Orhan Inandi.

On this day last year, Orhan Inandi was forced to get off his car and was forcefully dragged to a van. His wife Reydan Inandi alarmed the world.

Orhan Inandi’s students and many Kyrgyz citisens called for a stop to his possible extradition to Turkey. Believing that he was kept at the Turkish Embassy in Bishkek, many camped around the embassy, protesting and demanding his immediate release.

Some of you were with us in protesting exactly here, in front of the Turkish Embassy.

For more than a month neither the Kyrgyz nor the Turkish authorities said anything about whereabouts of Orhan Inandi despite all calls from the United Nations.

Only after 37 days, the Turkish President stated that the Turkish intelligence had brought him to Turkey.

The Kyrgyz Government, which had previously awarded Inandi with a medal of honour was also complicit in this crime.

Orhan Inandi was tortured. He was forced to become an informer. He declined. His right hand was kept in strappado. He has been in jail for a year now and his right hand is still not fully cured.

Turkey’s Erdogan Regime has already become a mafia regime.

Every other day we hear another story of torture coming from Turkey.

This government kidnapped more than 100 educationists from around the world.

More than that number have forcefully disappeared within Turkey.

Sunay Elmas, Ayhan Oran, Yusuf Bilge Tunc, Gulistan Doku, Hurmuz Diril, Mehmet Bal…

These are only a few of the people who has gone missing for months and even years.

The Turkish Government is doing nothing to find them.

Because the perpetrator is the government.

In Turkey pregnant women, breast feeding mothers, ill and elderly people are arrested every other day.

Innocent girls are tortured under the pretext of investigation.

None of these are acceptable.

We reject all of these illegalities.

Turkish courts are not upholding the country’s laws, constitution and international obligations.

Erdogan has openly declared that he does not recognize the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

In fact, the European Courts decisions on Selahattin Demirtas and Osman Kavala have not been implemented.

How? And why the democratic word does not do anything to stop this?

The compromises given to the dicta regime in Ankara invites for more illegalities.

Today, this regime is asking for extradition of journalists and academics who have sought asylum in Sweden and Finland in return for unblocking these countries’ NATO membership.

Europe: Erdogan takes this courage from the concessions you gave to him as the guardian of Europe’s borders against immigrants.

Our governments are complicit in Erdogan regime’s crimes.

You cannot become truly democratic in London while blinding yourself to the human rights violations in Turkey.

We are a bunch of people here in front of the Turkish embassy – what we are doing is in fact the responsibility of all human rights organizations, of all democratic institutions of the world.

We are asking immediate release of Orhan Inandi and all other victims of enforced disappearances all around the world.

We are asking information on the whereabouts of other missing people who have gone missing while under state custody.

We support the basic human right of living free from arbitrary detention and unnecessary state intervention into one’s life.

We support the right to a fair trial for Orhan Inandi and for all other inmates in Turkish prisons.

Dear Friends,

Thank you very much for being with us and supporting this cause today.

Thank you…

24 JUNE 2022/STRASBOURG, FRANCE

HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS COMMITTEE

Strasbourg protest was a joint protest among 24 organisations in Europe. The main goal of this protest was to let the European Court of Human Rights know that we are not holding back and not accepting them to blind their eyes to human rights abuses in Turkey.

Since 2016 European Court of Human Rights has barely decided cases on Turkey’s significant human rights violations. All the organisations there prepared a joint letter to the ECHR, and when the protest crowd reached the front ECHR, we wanted to give the joint letter to them and continue protesting till we went to the European council and council of Europe. A significant number of people, more than ten thousand, were there. They were all shouting and asking for justice.

The protest continued with a rally, where people who managed to escape from Turkey, family members of enforcedly disappeared people in Turkey, family members who died on the way from running from Turkey, and people who experienced prison and whose loved ones are in prison unjustly and more. They have asked to end this .

The mission of ECHR is to ‘raise the standards of protection of human rights and extending human rights jurisprudence throughout the community of the Convention States’. However, it has been evident since 2016 that Turkey has breached significant obligations under international law, including human rights. ECHR has stopped considering the cases, which was the point everyone raised at the protest.

The protest raised an issue and showed the ECHR, Council of Europe, and European Council that people are in tremendous suffering and justice needs to be addressed immediately.