Executive Summary

1. In August 2021, The Institute for Diplomacy and Economy (instituDE) published its report1 “Human Rights Violations in Turkey Rising to the Level of Crimes Against Humanity: Case of Gulen Group”. This report aims to elicit and analyze the outrageous acts and/or omissions of the Turkish authorities against individuals –whom they claim are affiliated with, connected to, or members of the Gülen Group– within the legal purview of crime against humanity.

2. Article 7(1) of Rome Statute states that the attack constituting crimes against humanity against the civilian population must be ‘widespread’ or ‘systematic’. The ‘widespread’ element/requirement/standard is determined by the scale of the acts (such as the number of the victims) whereas the ‘systematic’ element / requirement / standard connotes a pattern of control, direction or intensity by the de facto and de jure authorities of a certain state or other organizations. The term ‘population’ suggests that the attack is directed against a relatively large group of people who share distinctive features which identify them as targets of the attack. A prototypical example of a civilian population would be a particular national, ethnic or religious group.

3. As for the widespread criteria, the massive and frequent violations carried out collectively by public authorities with considerable seriousness and directed against a large number and multiplicity of individuals who are allegedly affiliated with the Gülen Group can fairly be asserted to have met this requirement. It is here worthwhile to note that the targeted Gülenists are victimized not because of their individual attributes but rather due to their alleged affiliation with the Gülen Group.

4. As pointed out in the opinion of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention2 3, the aforementioned features of the illegal acts, and their considerable consequences on a large number and variety of individuals establish a dangerous pattern which underpins the widespread character of the illegal acts and thereby leads to their legal qualification as crimes against humanity.

5. This submission highlights the ongoing systematic actions and omissions by Turkish authorities against the so-called members of the Gulen Group, framed as crimes against humanity. It demonstrates the violations of recommendations that even Türkiye has supported.

6. In particular, the submission focuses on abductions and enforced disappearances and associated practice of torture and persecution suffered by Gülen Group members as a form of crimes against humanity and highlights the crimes’ systematic and widerspread character as evidenced by various cases indicated below.

Full text of the report