Two prisoners on hunger strike for the right to a fair trial

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It has been more than a month since prisoners Sibel Balaç and Gökhan Yıldırım went on an indefinite hunger strike for a fair trial.

They demand the release of the prisoners arrested based on "digital evidence" and suspicious anonymous witness statements and ill prisoners and an end to the violations of rights in Turkey's prisons.

While Sibel Balaç has been on hunger strike for 38 days as of today (January 27), Gökhan Yıldırım has been on hunger strike for 32 days.

'My brother demands a fair trial'

Held in the Tekirdağ No. 1 Type F Prison in northwestern Turkey, Gökhan Yıldırım, as per a ruling dated 2018, has been sentenced to 46 years, 4 months in prison on charges of "being a member of an armed terrorist organization", "aggravated plunder", "deliberate injury", "violation of dwelling immunity", "damage to property", "threat", "damage to public property", "forgery of official documents" and "purchasing unregistered weapons and bullets." He is also given an administrative fine of 158,000 lira.

His elder brother Erkan Yıldırım says that 16 of the 17 witnesses, based on which Yıldırım was sentenced to prison, said at court that they did not know him. Erkan Yıldırım states that his brother waged a legal struggle for six years and as he could receive no results in this way, he went on hunger strike. "My brother's demand is to be fairly tried," he adds.

'Her health condition is not good'

Sibel Balaç, a teacher for people with mental disabilities, resigned in 2018, saying that she was "subjected to exile and mobbing". In the same year, she attended the "I want my job back" protests held in Ankara's Yüksel Street by the civil servants, teachers and academics discharged from public service by Statutory Decrees following the coup attempt in 2016.

Balaç was detained along with the protestors on Yüksel Street on December 10, 2018 and arrested by the court on December 18.

Arrested in Sincan Prison in the capital city of Ankara, she has been sentenced to 8 years, 1 month and 15 days in prison.

Her mother Nuray Balaç says that her daughter has illnesses and she cannot access treatment: "Her health condition is not good."

Violations of right to a fair trial in Turkey

The Constitutional Court has recently shared the statistics about individual applications and review of norms for the period of 2012-2021.

When the distribution of the top court rulings by violations of rights and freedoms in this time period is considered, it is seen that "the right to a fair trial" is on the top of the list with 20,084 rulings, which accounted for 76.8 percent of all rulings of rights violations. It is followed by the "violation of the right to property" with 11.4 percent, by the "violation of the right to privacy and family life" with 2.6 percent and by the "violation of freedom of expression" with 2.5 percent. (AS/SD)