I have been practicing law for about 15 years and have worked on human rights for most of my career. I was particularly interested in freedom of expression and the repression of journalists. When I was a newly qualified lawyer, I was writing articles on human rights for many newspapers. One of them was Taraf newspaper. At that time, Taraf newspaper was a newspaper reported on critical political issues in the country and was known for its publications against military tutelage. For this reason, it has been subject to many judicial proceedings. In this context, I received an offer of attorneyship from them and for many years, I tried to protect the employees of Taraf newspaper against persecution. I filed hundreds of lawsuits and defended hundreds of journalists. Now, I am the Co-director of the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), the most important and largest organization for freedom of expression in Turkey.

I will tell you a funny but also tragic story. Journalist Deniz Yücel, who is also a German citizen, was arrested in 2017. He was held in prison for months without any justification and without an indictment. My numerous petitions for releasing him were always rejected with the same unlawful justifications. Months later, with the permission of my client, I submitted a petition to the court with the content about football. My aim was to expose the copy paste decisions made by the court without reading the objections. It was a risky undertaking, because if the court would realize this, they might have thought that I was making fun of the court and they could file a criminal complaint against me. Nevertheless, I had to take that risk, play this game, and make it public that the court did not read any objections. This would provide a good picture of the Turkish judiciary. I have never read a football article in my life, so I would google any article I could find on internet and present it.  Finally, without reading the petition, the court rejected the football article on the same grounds, considering it a release form. This incident is funny and tragic, but it revealed what the Turkish judicial system has become.

Yes, after the 2016 coup attempt, I undertook the attorneyship of many well-known intellectuals in Turkey who were targets of the government. I acted as the lawyer of journalists, who were directly exposed to the wrath of the political will. At that time, news about me appeared in many pro-government publications and articles were published about my activities as a lawyer. After these publications, I was sued and there was a tax inspection of my affairs and I had to pay a large number of fines. I was also subject to the judicial harassment, because I said in an interview I gave in 2017 that "The Turkish judiciary is not independent". I was sued for insulting the Turkish judiciary upon a complaint from President Erdoğan and sentenced to six months in prison. My case is now in the Constitutional Court and we are waiting for its decision.

Lawyers do very important work in detecting and reporting human rights violations. That is why lawyers see the greatest pressure in authoritarian regimes. Numerous lawyers are detained in Turkey due to their professional activities. Again, there are lawsuits against many lawyers and they experience tax problems that have political motives behind them. Here, I think the most important healing factor is the solidarity of international law institutions. Efforts to designate the issue of judicial independence in Turkey as a priority and to carry out the necessary legal reforms to end the shadow of political power hanging over the judiciary are also crucial. Of course, one of the important things is that, European lawyers come to Turkey to watch the hearings of their colleagues and publish reports, which will help to implement the rule of law.