One in three cases from Turkey
With 21,600 pending and unresolved applications before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Turkey ranks first in number of complaints and has moved into third place for the number of violations. Between 2002 and 2024, a total of 3,363 violation rulings were issued against Turkey.
Under the rule of the AKP, the justice system has suffered irreversible damage. Trust in the legal system in Turkey has collapsed due to the destruction wrought by the government.
According to international reports, Turkey has fallen to 117th place among 142 countries in the rule of law index. In the global rankings, Turkey now stands alongside countries like Angola, Niger, and Guatemala.
The arrest and subsequent detention of İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on 19 March further reinforced public mistrust in the judiciary. The European Court of Human Rights' statistics regarding Turkey once again laid bare the state of the justice system.
TURKEY AT THE TOP
By the end of 2024, the number of applications filed with the ECHR regarding 47 European countries, including Turkey, reached 60,350. The number of complaints concerning Turkey, making up 36 percent of all applications, was recorded at 21,600. With these pending and unresolved cases, Turkey emerged as the country with the highest number of applications.
ECHR data on yearly violations also reveals a striking picture. The highest number of violation rulings against Turkey under AKP governments was in 2009, with 341 decisions. The year 2007 also stands out, with 319 rulings, marking it as the second highest year for violations between 1995 and 2024. The total number of violation rulings against Turkey from 2002 to 2024 is calculated at 3,363.
The ECHR also shared the rates of violation rulings among concluded applications from 2012 to 2024. While the overall rate of violations among total rulings across the 47 member countries of the European Convention on Human Rights stood at 1.5 percent, this rate for Turkey alone was reported as 1.1 percent.
RULINGS BY YEAR
The number of violation rulings issued by the ECHR during the 2002–2024 period is as follows for selected years:
2002: 54
2007: 257
2012: 117
2017: 99
2022: 73
2024: 67
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Üç dosyadan biri Türkiye’den, published in BirGün newspaper on July 2, 2025.
