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(CN) — Turkey violated the basic freedoms of two young academics whose passports were canceled under emergency decrees following a 2016 coup attempt, Europe’s top rights court found on Tuesday.
The European Court of Human Rights noted that prolonged bans had upended the scholars’ long-term plans and ruled the cancellations an unlawful breach of their right to private life under Europe’s human rights protections.
Ali Deniz Gür, a sociologist admitted to a Ph.D. program at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and Yasin Bedir, a law researcher accepted to Nantes University in France, had secured scholarships in 2018 but never set foot on campus.
The men’s names appeared on official purge lists after they signed a 2016 “Academics for Peace” petition, calling for a return to peace talks and condemning the civilian toll of military operations against insurgents in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, which had destroyed neighborhoods and left civilians trapped under curfews.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan denounced the signatories, prosecutors opened investigations and universities began dismissals. The men lost their jobs and their passports were automatically blocked “without need for any further procedure.”
When the coup attempt rocked the country later in 2016, the state of emergency decrees gave the government sweeping powers to move against anyone it saw as an opponent. Scholars who had already been punished for signing the petition, including Gür and Bedir, were lumped into the same purge lists as suspected coup sympathizers.
Gür’s passport was canceled in May 2017 and Bedir’s in April 2018, with notes added to squelch any new applications. The measures derailed their plans to study abroad.
The Turkish government said the men were no longer victims because their passports were eventually restored. The judges disagreed, stressing that “the authorities did not acknowledge, explicitly or in substance, the existence of a violation” of their basic rights after being left without passports for so long, “nor did they grant the applicants redress for an infringement of the rights.”
The government also argued the passport bans were needed for national security during a state of emergency. But the judges noted that in neither Gür’s nor Bedir’s case did officials explain which group they were tied to or what they had done. Instead, the decrees swept them into mass lists of dismissed academics. The court said that approach lacked both legal basis and real necessity.
Both tried legal challenges at home. The Constitutional Court rejected their applications, saying they had not exhausted remedies but without clarifying what those were. Local administrative courts either dismissed their cases on procedural grounds or provided only partial relief. At one point, Bedir won a decision annulling his passport cancellation, but by then the academic year was lost. Eventually, in 2019 and 2020, the restrictions were lifted and new passports issued — but years too late.
The coup was one of modern Turkey’s most turbulent nights: On July 15, 2016, rogue soldiers rolled tanks into Ankara and Istanbul while fighter jets thundered overhead in a bid to overthrow the government. The plotters said they wanted to end corruption and restore order.
By dawn the putsch had failed, leaving hundreds dead and the country reeling. In its aftermath, the government declared a state of emergency and began ruling by decree. Tens of thousands of public employees were swept from their jobs on suspicion of links to banned groups.
Many people were accused of ties to Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic cleric in exile in the United States. Once an ally of Erdoğan, his movement had built a wide network of schools and held influence inside state institutions. The alliance collapsed in 2013 after prosecutors linked to Gülen brought corruption cases against government figures. Erdoğan branded the movement a terrorist organization. When the coup attempt came three years later, he blamed Gülen and his followers.
The judges ordered Turkey to pay each man €2,600 (about $3,000) in damages plus €1,000 for costs. Turkey can appeal to the Grand Chamber within three months; otherwise, the ruling will be final.
The Turkish government and the applicants’ representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.
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