Solidarity With OTHERS published a report in January 2026 examining human rights developments affecting Türkiye’s Kurdish population between June 2020 and November 2025, including political prosecutions, municipal takeovers, restrictions on expression and a later shift towards conciliatory political language.
The report, From Crackdown to Calculated De-escalation: Human Rights Abuses Against Turkey’s Kurdish Population between 2020–2025, argues that the period followed a trajectory from sustained repression between 2020 and 2023 towards a more cautious and rhetorically conciliatory approach in 2024 and 2025. The authors conclude, however, that this change was not accompanied by reforms addressing the legal and institutional foundations of earlier practices.
The publication consolidates findings from the organisation’s Turkey Rights Monitor weekly bulletins. It supplements this monitoring with material from the United Nations, the Council of Europe, international human rights organisations, European Court of Human Rights judgments, Turkish court documents, official statements and legal decisions.
Its chapters examine developments year by year, covering the criminalisation of Kurdish political activity, the removal of elected mayors, restrictions on Kurdish media and culture, public-assembly bans, allegations of torture and ill-treatment, prison conditions and international responses.
Political representation and municipal government
The report identifies the replacement of elected mayors with government-appointed administrators, commonly known as trustees, as a central feature of the period.
According to the publication, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, won 65 municipalities in the 2019 local elections. By early 2021, trustees had been appointed to 48 of them following the removal of elected officeholders, generally on terrorism-related grounds.
The authors argue that this practice weakened local democratic representation in Kurdish-majority areas. They also describe administrative decisions affecting cultural expression, including the removal of bilingual public signs after municipalities passed into trustee administration.
The report says more than 5,000 HDP members and officials were imprisoned on terrorism-related charges during the period examined. It also discusses the 2021 proceedings seeking the HDP’s closure and political bans against more than 450 of its members.
Another major case covered is the Kobani trial, involving 108 politicians and activists in connection with protests held in 2014. The publication presents this and other mass proceedings as examples of the use of broadly framed terrorism allegations against lawful political activity. These characterisations are the report authors’ assessment of the cases.
The continued detention of former HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş is presented as an important test of Türkiye’s compliance with the European human rights system. In December 2020, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found that his detention pursued an improper political purpose and called for his immediate release.
The report says Turkish courts did not implement that judgment during the period covered. It also reviews the Council of Europe’s subsequent supervision of the case and wider international concerns about Türkiye’s compliance with binding European Court judgments.
Expression, culture and public assembly
The publication documents repeated investigations, arrests and prosecutions involving journalists reporting on Kurdish affairs. It says outlets including Mezopotamya Agency and JinNews faced police raids, access restrictions and repeated blocking of their websites.
Citing figures from late 2022, the report states that at least 69 journalists were then imprisoned in Türkiye, many in cases connected with reporting on Kurdish issues. It also describes prosecutions in which journalistic activity, social media posts or coverage of demonstrations was treated by the authorities as evidence of terrorist propaganda or organisational membership.
The authors further identify restrictions on Kurdish cultural expression, including bans affecting theatre performances and music, action against people using Kurdish in public or online, and the removal of Kurdish-language municipal signs.
Freedom of assembly is another recurring concern. According to the report, governors in several provinces repeatedly imposed broad bans on demonstrations and public gatherings. Van is cited as an example of a province where assembly bans were renewed continuously over several years.
The report describes police intervention at Newroz celebrations, women’s rights demonstrations, gatherings organised by relatives of disappeared people and protests involving Kurdish political parties. It records allegations of excessive force, detention and prosecution associated with some of these events.
Cases involving alleged torture and ill-treatment are also examined. Among those highlighted are the reported treatment of Kurdish villagers Osman Şiban and Servet Turgut in 2020. The report says Turgut later died and presents the case as illustrating concerns about effective investigation and accountability. The publication’s descriptions remain allegations unless otherwise established by a court or competent authority.
Rhetorical change without structural reform
The report identifies a gradual change in political language beginning in late 2023 and becoming more visible during 2024 and 2025. It says the number of overt violations recorded by its monitoring declined, while senior government and governing-alliance figures began publicly discussing dialogue and an end to the armed conflict.
In October 2024, Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahçeli called for engagement with Kurdish political actors and suggested that imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party founder Abdullah Öcalan could address parliament if he supported an end to the conflict.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan subsequently presented the goal of a “Türkiye without terror” as an opportunity to end the decades-long conflict. The report notes that, in June 2025, its weekly bulletin recorded no new Kurdish-related violation for the first time since the monitoring project began. This refers to incidents identified by the bulletin and does not establish that no violations occurred.
The authors nevertheless question whether this development represented a lasting change. They say the easing of rhetoric did not reverse earlier municipal interventions, end major political prosecutions or secure the release of figures including Demirtaş.
The report also argues that restrictive administrative and judicial practices increasingly affected other parts of the political opposition, including municipalities led by the Republican People’s Party. In the authors’ assessment, this indicated a change in political focus rather than a broader improvement in democratic safeguards.
The publication concludes that the apparent de-escalation should be assessed through measurable legal and institutional developments rather than political statements alone. It identifies compliance with international judgments, protection of elected local government, freedom for political and cultural expression, and accountability for alleged abuses as central tests of whether the change becomes a substantive rights-based process.