Former ECtHR judge Rıza Türmen: Does the rule of law exist in Turkey?

Addressing Ankara Bar Association’s Tenth International Law Symposium, Former European Court of Human Rights judge Rıza Türmen, referring to the passing of a rights violation ruling by the Constitutional Court (CC) on journalists Mehmet Altan and Şahin Alpay, criticised the local court’s failure to comply with this ruling.
 
Türmen commented, “This ruling is final and this ruling must be complied with. If this ruling is not complied with, this is something incompatible with the rule of law. Above all, for a politician to come out and say this ruling is wrong is something that is wholly incompatible with the rule of law. Failure to comply with the ruling violates the right to a fair trial. A fair trial starts with notification of the offence and continues until the implementation of the judgment. But, there is another side to the affair. The late implementation of the judgment, the arbitrary extension of these people’s time in detention, that is their still remaining in detention even though the release order has been issued and the CC ruling has attained finality, gives cause to a separate violation. Their being deprived of their liberty is a separate cause of violation. It is a violation of Articles 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. No aspect of this is compliant. This cannot happen under the rule of law. Why was the right granted for individual application to the Constitutional Court? In that case, if only it had not been granted. It is a very fundamental issue in its entirety. Does the rule of law apply or not in Turkey? We are confronted by a problem that relates to this.”