The President of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Marko Bošnjak, held a press conference on 31 January 2025 and presented the results of the Court’s activities and statistics for 2024. As of 31/12/2024, the total number of applications pending before the Court is 60,350.The country with the highest number of applications is Turkey, with 21,613. More than a third (% 35.8) of the total number of applications is against Turkey. Turkey is followed by Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Greece. Almost three quarters of the Court’s pending applications concern these five States.
ECHR Rulings in 2024
The Court ruled on 1102 cases in 2024. The country on which the most decisions were announced was Russia, with 302 cases, all of which involved at least one violation. Ukraine followed with 158 cases. There was at least one violation in 153 cases. Turkey is the third country with 73 cases. There was at least one human rights violation in 67 cases. The ECHR ruled on 5 cases concerning the Netherlands in 2024. In 3 cases there was at least one violation. In 2 cases the Court found no violations. The number of pending applications concerning the Netherlands is 186 in 2024.
Applications from Turkey on the rise in recent years”
Turkey also had the highest number of pending applications in 2022 and 2023. While the total number of applications from Turkey has tended to rise rapidly in recent years, the number of applications declared inadmissible or struck out has fallen.
What is the reason for the increase in applications from Turkey?
Most of the pending applications are related to the coup attempt of 15 July 2016. After 15 July 2016, there were massive arrests by the Turkish government, accusing the Gülen movement of being a terrorist organization called FETÖ.
Turkish Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said in his speech on 12 July 2024 that since 2016, legal proceedings have been initiated against 705,172 people linked to FETÖ. Minister Tunç also said that 120,000 people had been dismissed from the public sector since 2016.
The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights made a judgment in the case of Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Türkiye in 2023. According to the decision there had been violations of the right to a fair trial, to no punishment without law and to freedom of association. The ECHR also ruled that the problems that had led to the findings of violations were systemic in nature and that Türkiye had to take general measures. At the time, there were some 8,500 similar applications on the Court’s docket.
Despite the ECHR decision, the Turkish court handed down the same sentence of six years and three months to Yalçınkaya.
Sources:
https://www.echr.coe.int/w/press-conference-2025-1
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/echr/viz/Analysis_statistics/Overview
https://www.echr.coe.int/w/grand-chamber-judgment-concerning-turkiye
