Human rights violations continue in Turkey during pandemic

Civil society is under attack in Turkey, and the space for civil society actors and human rights defenders is shrinking. Beyond the immediate impact on activists who are judicially or otherwise persecuted, the Turkish authorities’ actions are also having a chilling effect on actors who up until now have escaped the crackdown.

Turkey has been extending its persecution of journalists, writers and others for having exercised peacefully their right to freedom of expression and opinion. Many other human rights violations committed by the Turkish authorities since the state of emergency was declared.

Prosecutions and campaigns of harassment against opposition politicians, prominent members of civil society, independent journalists, and critics of Turkey’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy continued throughout this year.

The assault on human rights and the rule of law presided over by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continued even during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the COVID-19 crisis threatened the economy and the government’s political standing during the year, authorities apparently sought to manipulate official health statistics and launched criminal investigations against medical professionals who released independent information about the outbreak or criticized the official response.

Hundreds of ordinary people were also arrested for their social media posts related to the coronavirus.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has ruled Turkey since 2002. After initially passing some liberalizing reforms, the AKP government showed growing contempt for political rights and civil liberties, and it has pursued a dramatic and wide-ranging crackdown on perceived opponents since an attempted coup in 2016.

Constitutional changes adopted in 2017 concentrated power in the hands of the president. While Erdogan continues to exert tremendous power in Turkish politics, opposition victories in 2019 municipal elections and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the already shaky economy have given the government new incentives to suppress dissent and limit public discourse.