Turkey Frees Journalist Altan After European Rights Court Ruling

Journalist and writer Ahmet Altan arrested by Turkish police in 2019 in Istanbul. Top Turkish court on Wednesday released him a day after European Court of Human Rights demanded Altan’s release. (AFP)
Journalist and writer Ahmet Altan arrested by Turkish police in 2019 in Istanbul. Top Turkish court on Wednesday released him a day after European Court of Human Rights demanded Altan’s release. (AFP)
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Turkey Frees Journalist Altan After European Rights Court Ruling

Journalist and writer Ahmet Altan arrested by Turkish police in 2019 in Istanbul. Top Turkish court on Wednesday released him a day after European Court of Human Rights demanded Altan’s release. (AFP)
Journalist and writer Ahmet Altan arrested by Turkish police in 2019 in Istanbul. Top Turkish court on Wednesday released him a day after European Court of Human Rights demanded Altan’s release. (AFP)

A Turkish court on Wednesday ordered the release of journalist and novelist Ahmet Altan after over four years in prison for involving in a failed 2016 coup attempt that he had always denied.

The Court of Cassation ruling came a day after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) demanded the 71-year-old’s freedom in a verdict that accused Turkey of violating his civil rights.

Altan’s lawyer Figen Calikusu told AFP that the writer was released from the Silivri prison on Istanbul’s western outskirts a few hours after the verdict was announced.

The award-winning novelist and newspaper editor was jailed after writing politically-sensitive articles and columns critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and supporting Kurdish rights.

The 71-year-old was arrested shortly after the putsch attempt as part of a purge of media organizations and accused of supporting the uprising by “disseminating subliminal messages to the public.”

He was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for trying to overthrow the government — a ruling that was later quashed by Turkey’s top court, AFP reported.

But the case was re-examined and he was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison for “knowingly supporting a terrorist organization” that was involved in the 2016 coup attempt.

“Very happy to hear Turkey’s Court of Cassation has just ordered the release of novelist Ahmet Altan after more than 4.5 years in jail,” the European Parliament’s Turkey rapporteur Nacho Sanchez Amor tweeted
.
“Will be even happier after seeing him enjoying fully his freedom and all charges dropped. Hope all other (ECHR) rulings will be applied too.”

The Court of Cassation ruling came as Erdogan mounts a charm offensive aimed at mending torn relations with the European Union and building a new rapport with the US administration of President Joe Biden.

EU leaders highlighted Turkey’s deteriorating human rights record during a summit in Ankara last week. Biden’s White House has also made human rights a much bigger issue in US-Turkish relations than it had been in the former administration of Donald Trump. Turkish officials argue that the courts are independent and not swayed by politics or Erdogan’s whims.

But critics accuse Erdogan of stacking them with supporters during the sweeping purges that followed the coup attempt.

Western observers have thus been watching the case of Altan and some other famous prisoners for signs of Turkey’s diplomatic intentions and future political course.

Perhaps the most celebrated case involves civil society leader Osman Kavala — in custody without a conviction for nearly four years and re-arrested after being cleared of all charges in 2019.

Altan was also briefly freed and cleared of all charges before being almost immediately rearrested in 2019.

The Court of Cassation ruling on Wednesday overturned his conviction in the 2019 case related to charges of “assisting a terrorist organization.”

He had turned to the ECHR for help in 2017 after calling the charges against him “grotesque.”

The Strasbourg-based rights court on Tuesday found “no evidence that the actions of the applicant had been part of a plan to overthrow the government.”

It ordered Turkey to immediately release him and pay him 16,000 euros ($19,000) in damages for violating his rights to freedom of expression.

“Deprivation of liberty, in particular continued detention, must be based on reasonable suspicion,” the ECHR ruling said.

The ECHR “found that the applicant’s criticisms of the president’s political approach could not be seen as an indication that he had had prior knowledge of the attempted coup,” it added.



European Court Rules Against Greece over Migrant’s Illegal Deportation

FILE - Migrants walk to enter Greece from Türkiye by crossing the Maritsa river (Evros river in Greek) near the Pazarkule border gate in Edirne, Türkiye, March 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel, File)
FILE - Migrants walk to enter Greece from Türkiye by crossing the Maritsa river (Evros river in Greek) near the Pazarkule border gate in Edirne, Türkiye, March 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel, File)
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European Court Rules Against Greece over Migrant’s Illegal Deportation

FILE - Migrants walk to enter Greece from Türkiye by crossing the Maritsa river (Evros river in Greek) near the Pazarkule border gate in Edirne, Türkiye, March 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel, File)
FILE - Migrants walk to enter Greece from Türkiye by crossing the Maritsa river (Evros river in Greek) near the Pazarkule border gate in Edirne, Türkiye, March 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel, File)

The European Court of Human Rights, in a landmark ruling Tuesday, found that Greece had illegally deported a woman back to neighboring Türkiye and described the use of summary expulsions or “pushbacks” as systematic.
The decision at the court in Strasbourg, France could impact how Europe handles migrants at its borders, at a time when Greece and several European Union member states are seeking tougher immigration controls, The Associated Press reported.
A Turkish woman — identified only by her initials A.R.E. — was awarded damages of 20,000 euros ($21,000) after the court ruled that she had been improperly expelled in 2019 after crossing the Greek-Turkish border, having been presented no opportunity to make an asylum claim.
“The court considered that there were strong indications to suggest that there had existed, at the time of the events alleged, a systematic practice of ‘pushbacks’ of third-country nationals by the Greek authorities, from the Evros region (on the Greek border) to Türkiye,” the decision said.
Citing a lack of evidence, the court rejected a second claim made by an Afghan man, who said he had been illegally returned to Türkiye from the Greek island of Samos in 2020 when he was 15.
Greek government representatives at the hearings had denied the allegations, challenging the authenticity of the evidence presented and arguing that Greece's border policies comply with international law.
The UN refugee agency has urged Greece to more thoroughly investigate multiple pushback allegations, while several major human rights groups have described the alleged irregular deportations as a systematic practice.
Greece’s National Transparency Authority, a publicly-funded corruption watchdog, said that it found no evidence to support the pushback allegations following a four-month investigation in 2022.
The European Court of Human Rights is an international court based in Strasbourg, France, that adjudicates human rights violations by 46 member states of the Council of Europe, a body older than the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community.