Stealth law extends Turkish restrictions on citizens' freedom of movement

The Turkish government’s steps to provide a legal basis for reissuing passports cancelled after a coup attempt are in fact a continuation of repressive practices implemented during a post-coup state of emergency, Ali Yıldız, a lawyer who established the Arrested Lawyers Initiative, said on Wednesday.

The Turkish government dismissed 125,678 individuals from public service and imposed various sanctions on 300 scholarship students and nearly 6,000 private security guards under the emergency rule, which was declared after the failed putsch in 2016 and ended last year. The authorities said those dismissed had links to illegal organisations, including the Gülen religious movement, which it blames for organising the coup attempt.

Almost all government decrees issued during that period included identical provisions, commanding the cancellations of the passports of people dismissed from public service, Yıldız said on Verfassungsblog, a website that reports on constitutional matters. 

The “relevant ministries and institutions shall immediately notify the relevant passport unit. Upon this notification, the relevant passport units shall cancel their passports,” said the decrees. 

They also commanded the cancellation of passports belonging to the spouses of people dismissed from public service. 

Now, although the government has begun removing the restrictions on some of the hundreds of thousands of people whose passports were cancelled, those who lost their passports after being dismissed are still barred from travelling.

“Although Turkey’s interior ministry revoked the restrictions on 155,350 individuals at the end of the state of emergency, there are still 125,678 individuals who have been dismissed and who are subject to the international travel ban,” Yıldız said. 

Including the spouses of those people and their children under 18 as well as the spouses and minor children of those who have been declared as fugitives, more than 300,000 people are still being deprived of the freedom to leave the country as a result of these administrative decisions, he said. 

The Turkish government’s practice violates basic rights and freedoms cited in international conventions and Turkey’s constitution, the lawyer said. 

Turkey’s Constitutional Court in July annulled a regulation which allowed the government to cancel the passports, but the court failed to publish its judgement until Oct. 31, giving the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) time to devise a new law which was adopted by the parliament on Oct. 24.

The new law has produced almost identical results to the one that the court annulled, Yıldız said. The law allows the Interior Ministry to re-issue cancelled passports, but the final decision is based on research to be conducted for each application by law enforcement units. 

“There are no other criteria to be applied to the evaluation,” Yıldız said. 

A circular published under the new law on Dec. 4 said that the applications would be evaluated by the Passports Administrative Decision Commissions. Those bodies consist of the provincial Police Directorates' anti-terror, intelligence and organised crime departments. 

If an application is refused, the applicant shall first appeal the decision before a commission established in the General Directorate of Security, and only after that can they file a case with the Administrative Court.