European judges fault Turkey for rubber-stamping prison visit recordings

Turkish officials recorded family visits of a prisoner convicted of terrorism for a year without assessing his individual circumstances or balancing security needs against his family’s privacy, Europe’s human rights court found.(CN) — Family visits were no license to listen in, Europe’s human rights court ruled Tuesday, faulting Turkey for recording a prisoner’s conversations without showing why.The European Court of Human Rights found that monitoring Abdi Cengiz’s family visits at Ankara’s Sincan prison violated his privacy rights. Convicted of belonging to an armed terrorist organization, Cengiz sought recognition of the violation and compensation.In a decision issued in French, the court accepted that Turkish law authorized recording to maintain order and prevent crime. But officials imposed yearlong monitoring on entire prisoner categories without assessing Cengiz’s circumstances or weighing his family’s privacy.Of the judge that reviewed Cengiz’s complaint, the court wrote: “He merely checked whether the interference had a legal basis, without conducting a concrete, individualized assessment consistent with the requirements of the convention.”The judge also overlooked how long monitoring should last, although the law set no maximum. Turkey’s Constitutional Court dismissed the complaint with a standard formula. The court in Strasbourg found authorities had failed to safeguard Cengiz’s private conversations and family life against arbitrary intrusion.Hugues de Suremain, legal director, and Béranger Dominici, legal resources coordinator, both working on prisoners’ rights at the European Prison Litigation Network, stressed the importance of meaningful judicial scrutiny. Neither classifying prisoners as dangerous nor warning them about recording replaced individual assessment, they said. “This reinforces the limits imposed by the Convention on the state’s discretion in managing detention,” they wrote.Cengiz had once sat on Turkey’s highest criminal and civil appeals court. According to Turkish news coverage of his trial, he was accused of securing that position through a terrorist organization’s instructions, attending its meetings and using ByLock, an encrypted messaging app authorities associated with the group.He disputed witness testimony and denied using the app. He asked to be acquitted and released. Instead, he received an 11-year sentence in February 2019 for belonging to the organization.The Gülen movement built schools and other institutions around Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen. Turkey designated it a terrorist organization and blamed it for a failed 2016 military coup. Gülen, then living in Pennsylvania, denied involvement. Tens of thousands were arrested; Gülen died in 2024.The prison-recording law followed a 2020 Constitutional Court finding that surveillance lacked legal authorization. Parliament supplied that authority in June 2021. Sincan prison announced monitoring that August for prisoners convicted of terrorism or organized crime and those deemed dangerous.Cengiz demanded an end to recording and deletion of the recordings. He said questions about access and use went unanswered. After domestic challenges failed, he applied to the Strasbourg rights court in May 2022.De Suremain and Dominici linked the judgment to more than a decade of pressure on judicial independence, citing earlier family-visiting and disciplinary cases where courts endorsed prison decisions without adequately protecting prisoners. In August, the Strasbourg court also identified structural judicial independence problems in the separate case of imprisoned philanthropist Osman Kavala. He is serving a life sentence without parole on charges linked to antigovernment protests in 2013 and the failed 2016 coup.Turkey said monitoring had stopped and recordings were deleted. The court found neither acknowledgment nor redress and awarded 1,500 euros (about $1,680) for non-financial harm, rejecting the remaining compensation and costs claims.Cengiz’s representatives and the Turkish government did not respond to requests for comment.Either side has three months to request review by the court’s Grand Chamber, which accepts cases only exceptionally. If neither applies, or a request is rejected, the judgment becomes final. Turkey then has three months to pay.Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads