Photo: The Law Society in England Wales and Lawyers for Lawyers have expressed alarm following the detention of lawyers Semra Demir, Kürşat Bafra and Doğa İncesu of the Progressive Lawyers Association (ÇHD) in Türkiye.
Human rights defenders, including lawyers, journalists, trade union members, environmental activists and academics, have been detained in Türkiye in the lead-up to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit that will be attended by Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, US president Donald Trump, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, German chancellor Friedrich Merz, British prime minister Keir Starmer, French president Emmanuel Macron, and others this coming July 6-8, 2026.
225 arrested in lead-up to NATO summit
Human Rights Watch has noted: “On June 26, the Ankara Public Prosecutor’s office announced that of a total of 225 people arrested on June 23, courts sent 178 to pretrial detention and placed 34 under house arrest pending investigation. The prosecutor’s office released 6 others. The status of the others is unclear.”
Human Rights Watch says those detained include a journalist, an LGBTQ+ activist (Yildiz Tar), two lawyers, an academic (associate professor Emel Memis) and fourteen members (also reported as 42 volunteers) of a nature conservation organization focused on reforestation (along with Nevzat Ozer, a representative of the organization).
Deutsche Welle has reported that those detained include “human rights and environmental activists, and journalists”.
Turkish Minute also reports that the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA) in Turkey says that “the detainees included journalists, academics, lawyers, trade union members [possibly related to the Doruk Mining workers and the Independent Mine Workers’ Union], teachers, students and civil society representatives.”
The Stockholm Center for Freedom has highlighted three attorneys (Semra Demir, Kürşat Bafra and Doğa İncesu of the Progressive Lawyers Association) are being held.
Calls for their release
In response to those arrests, Amnesty International has stated: “The blanket ban on all protests in Ankara must be lifted and everyone arbitrarily detained in prison or under house arrest in connection with the NATO summit must be released. This ban is an excessive and unjustifiable attack on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression. Authorities must enable and protect the right to protest and end the use of vague and overly broad national security concerns to detain people without evidence of wrongdoing. In addition, NATO’s decision to deny accreditation to some journalists and media outlets from Türkiye is a blow to media freedom. We call on NATO to reverse its stance and enable those who have been excluded to cover the event.”
The situation for HRDs in Türkiye
Amnesty International has additionally documented that in Türkiye in 2025: “Baseless investigations, prosecutions and convictions of human rights defenders, journalists, opposition politicians and others intensified. …The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association were arbitrarily restricted. Law enforcement officials used less lethal weapons against peaceful protesters, causing numerous injuries. …Victims of human rights violations, including alleged torture and other ill-treatment by state officials, continued to face a culture of impunity.”
In its annual Freedom in the World report, Freedom House gave Türkiye a score of 32/100 and listed the country as “not free”.
Canada- Türkiye relations
With Prime Minister Carney in Türkiye, CTV News reports: “Canada is aiming to co-announce around 10 founding nations for a global defence bank at next week’s NATO summit in Turkey, the lead Canadian negotiator told Reuters on Thursday [July 2]. …The bank’s purpose is to bolster the defense of allied nations by raising up to £100 billion (US$133 billion) in cheap finance [for military spending and weapons purchases].”
Defense News also recently reported: “Between 2019 and January 2024, Canada imposed restrictions on arms sales to Turkey and cancelled a number of export permits, creating a de-facto weapons embargo.”
That embargo was lifted in January 2024.
Defense News adds: “When asked about whether the embargo [on arms sales to Türkiye] was politically worth it, [Canadian Secretary of State for Defense Procurement Stephen] Fuhr [in Turkey for the SAHA Expo 2026 arms show] stressed that he was elected in 2025 and stated that Canada is focused on the future.”
In late-May 2026, Global Affairs Canada released its 2025 Annual Report on Strategic Goods and Technologies Pursuant to Section 27 of the Export and Import Permits Act. That report notes that the seventh largest amount of military exports from Canada in 2025 went to Türkiye totalling $60,760,039.44.
Photo: Türkiye at the CANSEC arms fair in Ottawa, May 27-28, 2026.
Transnational repression
On June 26, the Stockholm Center for Freedom also noted: “The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has listed Turkey among the world’s top 10 perpetrators of transnational repression, while an accompanying report detailed alleged Turkish intelligence operations and attacks targeting journalists living in exile and people linked to the faith-based Gülen movement abroad.”
This past March, The Globe and Mail reported: “Canada and the rest of the democratic world are facing a ‘tsunami’ of transnational and digital repression with the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S., the arrival of artificial intelligence and a softening of attitudes on human rights, according to … the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.”
That article adds: “[Ronald Deibert, professor of political science and founder of the Citizen Lab] said the Prime Minister appears to be soft-pedalling human rights as he focuses on boosting economic and trade ties to countries such as China and India.”
We continue to follow this with concern.
