On 13 April 2026, Lawyers for Lawyers attended the first hearing in the trial against human rights lawyer Ruken Gülağacı before Istanbul’s 23rd High Criminal Court. The court acquitted her and lifted the travel ban that had been imposed as a judicial control measure.
Background
Ruken Gülağacı is a human rights lawyer with approximately 15 years of experience. She was prosecuted for alleged membership of a terrorist organisation in connection with her participation in activities of the HalklarınDemokratik Kongresi (HDK, Peoples’ Democratic Congress). Her involvement with HDK included providing legal advice to individuals appearing before HDK’s justice commission and attending meetings and public assemblies organised by the Congress.
The evidence cited against her consists of: her name appearing on meeting attendance and invitation lists seized during a 2020 police raid on HDK’s offices; a photograph taken of her at a public general assembly held at the Istanbul Congress Center; and a text message exchanged with a parliamentarian in the course of following up on a complaint submitted to the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) by one of her detained clients. More than 6,000 individuals were named in the documents seized during the raid; approximately 60 were selected for prosecution, with no criteria for that selection made public.
Ruken Gülağacı was abroad at the time of the mass arrests on 18 February 2025 and was not detained upon her return to Türkiye on 24 March 2025. She became aware that a warrant for apprehension had been issued against her on 20 May 2025, while attending Kandıra Prison to meet with a client. She was detained and released the following day under judicial control measures, first consisting in a house arrest, which was lifted 45 days later, and including a travel ban.
The hearing on 13 April 2026
At the outset of the hearing, the Secretary General of the Istanbul Bar Association appeared in his institutional capacity, invoking Article 58 of the Advocacy Act and requesting the return of the case on the grounds that the proceedings concerned activities forming part of the exercise of the legal profession. The court declined to dismiss the case at that stage. In her defence, Ruken Gülağacı and her lawyers stated that her attendance at HDK activities was directly connected to her professional responsibilities, and specifically rejected the characterisation of the CPT-related text message as evidence of criminal conduct, arguing that facilitating communication on behalf of detained clients in relation to complaints submitted to international bodies forms part of a lawyer’s standard professional duties.
Defence lawyers challenged the evidentiary basis of the prosecution, noting that the case file contained only copies of documents with no originals. They invoked Articles 16 to 23 of the 1990 UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, as well as the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Legal Profession. Reference was also made to the European Court of Human Rights’ judgment in the Aysel Tugluk case, and to a substantial body of prior acquittal decisions in connected proceedings confirming the lawful character of HDK’s activities, raising concerns as to consistency with the right to a fair trial under Article 6 ECHR. The prosecutor requested the imposition of a penalty without providing reasoning.
The court acquitted Ruken Gülağacı and lifted the travel ban.
Lawyers for Lawyers welcomes this outcome. Prosecution based in part on attendance at meetings, presence at a public assembly, and correspondence related to a detained client’s complaint to an international body appear be inconsistent with the protection afforded to lawyers under the 1990 UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers and the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Legal Profession. Lawyers for Lawyers will continue to monitor the situation of lawyers in Türkiye.
