Unclosed Files and Seeking Justice Abroad

When domestic remedies are blocked in the struggle for justice, what happens? Some give up; others carry their case across the border. The European Court of Human Rights, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and international rights organisations stand there as possible avenues of appeal. These mechanisms certainly do not always work miracles for applicants. But they are not useless either. To grasp why this matters, let us first look at the figures.

Strasbourg’s Heaviest Caseload

The European Court of Human Rights’ figures for 2025 lay bare a very important fact. As of 31 December 2025, 34.5 per cent of all cases awaiting a decision in Strasbourg were against Turkey. In other words, one in every three cases before the Court comes from Turkey. With 18,450 pending applications, Turkey is the country with the most cases awaiting judgment. With 66 violation judgments delivered in 2025, it also ranks third among the 25 countries with the most violations found, right behind Russia and Ukraine.

Nor is the content of these violations a matter of chance. The right to a fair trial and the right to liberty and security top the list. So the issue is not the odd mistake here and there but a systemic problem. Indeed, according to figures that surfaced in a parliamentary question, more than 80 per cent of the cases pending in Strasbourg are linked to the post-2016 state-of-emergency measures and dismissals from public service. A comparison makes the picture clearer. In the same period France had 703 pending applications, the United Kingdom 139 and Germany 127, while Turkey’s run to five figures.

Playing with Numbers

The government, of course, reads this picture differently and leans on a rhetorical line: “Of the 9,865 applications concluded in 2025, only 66 resulted in a violation, a rate of seven in a thousand.” Sounds reassuring, doesn’t it? But it is a numbers game. Of those 9,865 applications, 6,302 were rejected without even being examined on the merits, because domestic remedies had not been exhausted or the time limit had passed. The 66 violation judgments drawn from the remainder are in fact grouped judgments. A single judgment covers hundreds, even thousands, of similar cases at once. Indeed, those 66 judgments found violations in a total of 3,555 applications. The “seven in a thousand” line is a calculated distortion, carefully worded to shrink the truth.

Judgments That Remain on Paper

Are these judgments actually implemented? Mostly not. One of the best-known examples is Osman Kavala. In 2019 the ECtHR ruled that his detention was unjustified and called for his release. Turkey did not comply. Things went so far that the Council of Europe, which had used “infringement proceedings” only once in its history, against Azerbaijan, launched them against Turkey as well. The outcome did not change; Kavala is still in prison. This is the kind of example that feeds the belief that “international mechanisms don’t work”.

That belief may have some justification, but the value of ECtHR judgments should not be measured solely by whether prison doors open the next day.

Structural Judgments: More Than a Single Case

Some judgments matter because they point not to one person but to an entire system. The Grand Chamber’s Yalçınkaya judgment of 2023 is the most striking example. The Court held that convictions for membership of an organisation based on vague evidence violated the principle of legality in criminal law and the right to a fair trial. The judgment’s impact was not limited to a single case; it set a precedent for thousands of similar applications.

This line continued in 2026. In its Yasak v. Turkey judgment of 5 May, the Grand Chamber stressed the same principle once again. The Human Rights Association described the judgment as “structural”. You cannot punish a person unless it is clear, in advance and unambiguously, which conduct is a crime. Strasbourg has once again affirmed this principle, simple in appearance yet the backbone of any state governed by the rule of law, against the state and in favour of the victims.

Keeping Records Is a Form of Resistance

We can say that the heart of the matter lies in the act of keeping records. Even if an ECtHR application yields no result under today’s circumstances, it is highly valuable because it records a rights violation permanently and at international level. These records serve three functions:

First, they protect the individual. A person branded a “terrorist” now has, on file, an independent court’s stamp saying “you were right”. That stamp remains valid even years later.

Second, they limit the state’s reflex to tolerate unlawful acts unconditionally. Every violation judgment is entered into Turkey’s international record. The EU’s annual Turkey reports, Germany’s foreign-policy assessments and the international press often rely on these records.

Third, these records lay the groundwork for the future. A judgment not implemented today becomes the most solid document on the table tomorrow, in a process of reckoning. Periods of lawlessness do not last forever. When that day comes, the records kept will form the basis of the accountability to be demanded. That is why documenting is in itself a form of resistance and must never be neglected.

The Diaspora as a Bridge

Keeping such records alive is not, of course, the task of victims and their lawyers alone. Communities of Turkish origin in Europe have the potential to act as a concrete bridge. The most visible examples are the third-party interventions that rights organisations submit to the ECtHR. Organisations such as the Freedom of Expression Association, together with lawyers, academics and journalists in different European countries, provide material for debates in the parliaments of the countries where they live, for the Turkey sessions of the European Parliament and for international media coverage. In cases concerning Turkey they submit expert opinions to the Court and put the structural problems behind the files before Strasbourg.

It would be a serious mistake for those in Turkey to see this as the passivity of “waiting for help from outside”. It should be seen as an active strategy of solidarity. Carrying the victim’s voice to where the institutions able to hear it are located is, at heart, a valuable and useful step with a strong chance of producing concrete results.

An Investment for Everyone

How effective these solidarity initiatives are, going beyond isolated efforts and linking initiatives in different countries, depends largely on their being organised and sustained. After all, the lawlessness in Turkey is not Turkey’s problem alone. When the rule of law unravels in one country, the shock waves reach its neighbours. Authoritarian models spread, and problems such as migration and insecurity grow and end up on other countries’ doorsteps. For Europe, standing up for the rights struggle in Turkey is as much an investment in its own stability as it is a debt of conscience.

Even if the state tries to belittle them as “seven in a thousand”, each of those 18,000 files in Strasbourg carries the story of a name, of an injustice, into the future. Those files remain there, neither closed nor forgotten. Every unclosed file is waiting for the day when someone opens that page, says “there, it was on record”, and does what needs to be done.