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Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused the country’s top human rights court of making “many mistakes” as a crisis in the judiciary system deepens.

“At this point, unfortunately, the constitutional court has made many mistakes one after the other. This seriously upsets us,” Erdoğan told journalists in comments reported on Friday.

The president’s comments, made to local press following a trip back from Uzbekistan, come amid a feud between the country’s top appeals court and its constitutional court, which rules on human rights. The dispute has amplified concerns about the country’s judiciary system and the rule of law. 

The constitutional court last month ruled that Can Atalay, who was elected in May as an opposition lawmaker, should be released because holding him in detention infringed his rights to “engage in political activities”. But the separate court of cassation on Wednesday told the lower courts not to heed the constitutional court’s ruling, and called on prosecutors to open a criminal probe into the decision. 

Erdoğan said: “The decision taken by the court of cassation can never be discarded or pushed aside.”

The row pits Turkey’s top appeals court for civil, criminal and administrative cases against the constitutional court, which has the final say on whether human rights have been violated by public authorities. The rift comes at a time of growing angst inside and outside the country about Turkey’s judiciary system as Erdoğan has tightened his grip on institutions since coming to power two decades ago. The government has also purged thousands of judges and prosecutors it claims were linked to a US-based cleric it blames for the 2016 coup attempt against Erdoğan.

Özgür Özel, leader of Turkey’s biggest opposition party, this week called the court of cassation’s move against the constitutional court a judicial “coup attempt”, saying “we will resist in the streets, we will resist in the squares, we will not surrender to this lawlessness”.

Turkey’s Union of Bar Associations said the move by the court of cassation was an “attempt to change the constitutional order”, adding that it marked “a turning point for a state of law”. The organisation has called for a criminal probe into members of the court of cassation who signed the complaint against the constitutional court and said they should resign. 

Atalay was indicted in the trials related to the Gezi Park demonstrations a decade ago that sparked a backlash from Erdoğan and his government. Last year, Atalay was sentenced to 18 years in prison for attempting to overthrow the government. He has protested his innocence.

Atalay applied to the court of cassation for release following his election as an MP for a small left-wing opposition party in the May 2023 election but was denied. The constitutional court ruled last month, however, that Atalay’s continued detention violated his “right to stand for elections and engage in political activities”. 

The court of cassation argued on Wednesday that the constitutional court did not have the authority to make a ruling on the issue and filed a criminal complaint against members who backed the ruling.

Kerem Altıparmak, a lawyer at the Ankara Bar Association, did not believe the row was “a legal misunderstanding or different interpretation of law by different higher courts”.

“There’s another motivation that we don’t know,” Altıparmak said.

He added that the consequences would probably stretch beyond the Atalay case and could further damage relations with the Council of Europe, a human rights body. The council has sharply criticised Turkey’s decision to ignore a European Court of Human Rights ruling to release another man accused of attempting to overthrow the government in the Gezi protests. 

Nacho Sánchez Amor, the European parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey, said the judicial dispute “opens an unprecedented institutional crisis and confirms all concerns about Turkey’s judiciary expressed for years”. The European Commission this week warned that Turkey was “backsliding” on judicial reform and its democratic institutions. 

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