Significant human rights violations in Turkey are found in the State Department's annual Human Rights Report 2021.
As stated under the anti-terrorism legislation passed in 2018, the government of Turkey has continued to restrict fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.
Since the 2016 coup attempt, authorities have fired or placed on forced leave tens of thousands of civil servants and state officials, including more than 60,000 police and military officers and more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors, arrested or imprisoned more than 95.000 citizens and closed more than 1,500 non-governmental organisations on terrorism-related grounds, mainly for alleged links to the Fethullah Gülen movement, whom the government has accused of masterminding the coup attempt and described as the leader of the "Fethullah Terrorist Organisation".
Major human rights issues included credible reports of: killings, suspicious deaths of people in custody, disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests and continued detention of tens of thousands of people, including opposition politicians and former parliamentarians, lawyers and journalists, human rights activists and US mission officials (for alleged links to "terrorist" groups or for expressing their views), political prisoners, including elected officials, and persons outside the country.
But problems relate to the use of child soldiers, severe restrictions on freedom of expression, the press and the Internet, including violence and threats of violence against journalists, media closures and the arrest or prosecution of journalists and others for criticism of government politicians or officials; censorship, website blocking and criminal defamation; severe restrictions on freedoms of assembly, association and circulation, including overly restrictive laws on government oversight of non-governmental and civil society organisations; some cases of refugee refoulement; severe government harassment of domestic human rights organisations; gender-based violence; crimes involving violence targeting members of ethnic/racial/ethnic minorities; crimes involving violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex people.
Limited measures
The Government took limited measures to investigate, prosecute and punish members of the security forces and other officials accused of human rights violations. Impunity in Turkey remained a problem. The government took limited measures to investigate allegations of high-level corruption.
Clashes between security forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party terrorist organization and its affiliates continued and resulted in the injury or death of security forces, terrorists and civilians. The Government did not release information on efforts to investigate or prosecute personnel for unlawful or unintentional civilian deaths linked to counter-terrorism operations.
Source: ERT
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