Yuksel Kaya*
There is an old Turkish parable that captures the absurdity of arbitrary justice.
A thief breaks into a house, slips while climbing out of the window, and breaks his leg. Outraged, he takes the homeowner to court:
‘Your Honor,” he says, “I fell because the window frame was nailed badly. The homeowner is to blame.’
Judge Kadı Karakuş calls in the homeowner, who insists it was the carpenter’s fault. The carpenter blames a woman who distracted him as she passed by. The woman blames the barber who styled her hair too attractively.
In the end, the judge sentences the barber to death.
But when the executioner realizes the barber is too tall for the gallows, Karakuş orders:
‘Then bring the barber from the next town—and hang him instead!’
The story has long been told as a satire of injustice, where logic collapses and power replaces principle. Sadly, in today’s Turkey, Kadı Karakuş’s courtroom has become the republic itself.
A Week of Inverted Justice
In a country where wrong becomes right and victims are criminalized, last week once again exposed how Turkey’s judiciary has turned into an instrument of political control.
Between October 13–19, 2025, the so-called “justice system” delivered its own grotesque version of Karakuş’s verdicts:
- 109 people were detained for alleged links to the Hizmet (Gülen) Movement.
- Yusuf Bilge Tunç, missing since 2019, remains unaccounted for.
- Journalist Hakan Tosun was murdered in Istanbul.
- The torture complaint of former Lt. Gen. İlhan Talu was dismissed for “personnel shortages.”
- Yusuf Çağlayan, a 76-year-old paralyzed dementia patient, was sent to prison.
- Parliament’s ruling bloc, AKP and MHP, blocked an inquiry into the death of Rojin Kabaiş, a 21-year-old student found in Lake Van under suspicious circumstances.
All of these cases appear in the 278th Weekly Human Rights Report on Turkey by Solidarity with Others, a monitoring initiative documenting the steady collapse of the rule of law.[¹]
Arbitrary Detentions: The Perpetual State of Emergency
During the week, prosecutors issued at least 109 new arrest warrants for alleged Gülen-affiliated individuals.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) warned as early as 2020 that Turkey’s broad, systematic imprisonment of such suspects could amount to crimes against humanity.
Nine years later, Ankara continues to ignore the warning.
Enforced Disappearances: Vanished Without a Trace
The fate of Yusuf Bilge Tunç, who disappeared on August 6, 2019, remains a haunting emblem of Turkey’s “black holes.”
His case joins dozens of enforced disappearances since 2016, in which witnesses, camera footage, and official silence converge into impunity.
Freedom of Assembly: Students Demand Bread, Get Handcuffs
On October 15, nine students were detained in Istanbul’s Kadıköy district for demanding that state scholarships equal at least half the minimum wage and that student-loan debts be canceled.
Their chant—“Cut palace spending, not education!”—was met not with dialogue but with detention.
Freedom of Expression: Thought Under Siege
- October 14: Environmental journalist Hakan Tosun (50) was killed in Esenyurt after repeated threats.
- The same day, academic Emrah Gülsunar was arrested for a social-media poll asking whether foreign help to end a dictatorship could ever be justified. He explained the question concerned Venezuela, not Turkey.
- October 17: Influencer Bekir Aslan (“Basel”) received a 1 year 6 month prison sentence for “terror propaganda” based on three tweets.
- October 18: Turkey’s broadcast regulator, RTÜK, announced legal action against YouTube “street-interview” channels for “spreading pessimism.”
Each of these episodes underlines the same truth: in Erdoğan’s Turkey, reality itself has become a crime scene.
Judicial Independence: A Court Without a Conscience
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on October 14 that Turkey unlawfully detained 137 people after the 2016 coup attempt, awarding €3,000 to each.
It also notified Ankara that 4,800 similar petitions—modeled on the landmark Yalçınkaya v. Turkey decision—are now under review, bringing the total to 10,800.
Meanwhile, the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) punished imam Yusuf Kılıç a second time for refusing to mobilize worshippers for an Erdoğan campaign rally—despite a court ruling in his favor.
The message is clear: Turkey’s judges no longer interpret the law; they execute the will of power.
Minority Rights: Kurdish and Alevi Voices Silenced
- Kurdish politician Aysel Tuğluk won her ECHR case on October 15, the court declaring her detention politically motivated and ordering €17,500 in compensation.
- The next day, a DEM Party office in Mersin was stoned by attackers, echoing Turkey’s long history of unpunished political violence.
- Ahmet Canpolat, head of Germany’s Dersim Cultural and History Center, was detained 11 hours at Istanbul Airport and deported—apparently for researching the 1937-38 Dersim Massacre.
Torture, Prisons, and the Elderly Behind Bars
Prosecutors rejected torture claims by İlhan Talu, a former general, citing “staff shortages.”
On the same day, authorities sent Yusuf Çağlayan (76)—partially paralyzed and suffering dementia—to prison over alleged Gülen ties.
This is not justice; it is bureaucratized cruelty.
Gender-Based Rights: Legislating Discrimination
The Turkish government is preparing a “judicial reform” that would criminalize any public depiction or promotion of LGBTQ identities or same-sex ceremonies, punishable by up to four years in prison.
Meanwhile, parliament’s ruling bloc blocked a motion to investigate Rojin Kabaiş’s death, even after new DNA findings suggested sexual assault and a cover-up.
Kadı Karakuş Returns
In the end, the 16th-century caricature of Judge Karakuş feels less like satire and more like prophecy.
When the rule of law dies, anyone can be the next barber hanged for another man’s crime.
For Turkey, week 278 is not just another entry in a human-rights report—it is a mirror held up to a nation where justice, once sacred, has become the loudest joke in the room.
*Turkish Belgian. President of Solidarity With OTHERS
References
[1] Solidarity with Others – Weekly Human Rights Report, Issue 278
[2] solidaritywithothers.com
[3] turkeyrightsmonitor.com
