PROJE HAKKINDA.

The case concerns the continued detention of the applicant Selahattin Demirtaş, a prominent Kurdish politician who was co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP, a left-wing pro-Kurdish political party) between 2014-2018, an elected member of the Turkish Grand National Assembly from 2007 until 2018 and a popular presidential candidate in the August 2014 and June 2018 elections. The applicant was placed in pre-trial detention on 4 November 2016. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ordered Turkey, on two occasions, to ensure that Mr. Demirtaş’s pre-trial detention “is ended at the earliest possible date” (see the Second Section, Application No. 14305/17, the judgment of 20 November 2018, para. 283) and to “take all necessary measures to secure the immediate release” of Mr. Demirtaş (see the Grand Chamber, Application No. 14305/17, the judgment of 22 December 2020, para. 442). The applicant, however, remained in detention. Drawing on their expertise as organisations specialising in international human rights law and working extensively on human rights and the judicial process in Turkey, the intervening NGOs -the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists- addressed in the intervention two core issues arising in the application: the nature and application of anti-terror criminal laws in Turkey and the implications for Articles 5(1), 10 and 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); and the effectiveness of the Constitutional Court, in particular in cases concerning the detention of government opponents.