Belgian law firm Van Steenbrugge Advocaten (VSA), Belgium-based NGO Turkey Tribunal, and European judges association Magistrats Européens pour la Démocratie et les Libertés (MEDEL) announced that they submitted a dossier to the court’s prosecution office on Feb. 9.
“The fact that the ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights) and reputed International Institutions, of which Turkey is a member state, clearly condemn these crimes has not altered the criminal behavior of the perpetrators,” the VSA’s presentation to the ICC said. “Only an intervention by the ICC will be effective.”
The 4,000-page dossier compiles hundreds of witness testimonies detailing the state sponsored kidnappings, unlawful imprisonments, persecution and torture, which the incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime is said to have subjected over 200,000 people.
The persons implicated were alleged members of the Kurdish movement and primarily the opponents of the regime. The targeted opposition is led by U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah GĂĽlen, which was designated by Ankara a terrorist organization after Erdogan accused GĂĽlen and his supporters of masterminding the failed coup attempt in 2016. However, the network is not considered a terrorist group in the U.S. or the EU.
What followed next was a two-year long state of emergency and hundreds of thousands of arrests as well as dismissals of civil servants and employees in the private sector over suspected GĂĽlen links.
Between 2015 and 2021, Turkish authorities launched investigations into 2.2 million people over alleged membership in a terrorist organization, and 270,000 of these individuals were convicted. Both the European Court of Human Rights and U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that a large portion of the imprisonments and detentions were a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Though Turkey is not a member of the ICC, meaning the court prosecutors do not have any command over the cases of victims that lie within Turkey’s confines, the dossier includes crimes against humanity committed by Turkey beyond its borders and across 45 ICC member states.
In 29 of these states - including a number of European nations, most notably Belgium - essential services for Turkish civilians such as the issuance of ID papers were denied and passports withdrawn. There were 17 cases of enforced disappearances in which victims were abducted from Kenya, Cambodia, Gabon, Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Mongolia and Switzerland and brought to Turkey.
Additionally, over 70 GĂĽlen-linked schools were shut down in 13 member states, relating to the dismissal of hundreds of Turkish teachers.
The ICC presentation concluded that “the documented crimes against humanity must indeed be considered as part of an attack directed against a civilian population and consequently fall under the material jurisdiction of the Court.”
