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Lawyers association closed down. Selcuk Kozagacli, a human rights lawyer and head of the Contemporary Lawyers Association, which was closed down under Turkey’s state of emergency, was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in the case. After the verdict, 39 heads of bar associations across Turkey condemned the “repeated violations of the right to a fair trial, of the criminal procedure code and of provisions of the law by the court.”
“Lawyers’ privileged communication with clients... effectively abolished”. “Lawyers’ privileged communication with their clients in pretrial detention for terrorism offenses has been effectively abolished as authorities are now permitted to record and monitor all such communications,” HRW said in the press release, adding: HRW drew attention to measures such as allowing courts to conduct hearings and issue verdicts without lawyers present, by ruling the lawyers have not provided reasons for their absence; to reject lawyers’ requests to hear witnesses because they deem the aim is to prolong the trial; and to deny defence lawyers the possibility of cross-examining some protected witnesses in person in court because their testimony is provided remotely and their voices altered or faces screened, all undermine equality of arms and the adversarial elements of trial proceedings.
38 TURKEY Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com