French regional newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace reported on the “Justice for All” gathering held outside the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on 25 June 2025.
The demonstration, organised by the Peaceful Actions Platform for the fourth consecutive year, called on the Council of Europe to ensure that Türkiye complies with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. The newspaper noted that a previous gathering in October 2024 had attracted nearly 3,000 participants.
The coverage focused particularly on the European Court’s 2023 judgment in Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Türkiye. The case concerned the conviction of a teacher whose alleged use of the encrypted ByLock messaging application was treated by the Turkish courts as evidence of membership of an armed terrorist organisation.
Rumi Unal, a former Turkish diplomat living as a refugee in Paris, told the newspaper that arrests based on alleged ByLock use had continued after the judgment. He also described concerns about pressure on people associated with the Gülen movement both inside and outside Türkiye. These statements were attributed to Unal and were not presented by the newspaper as independently established findings.
The article also examined the Gülen-linked community’s presence in Alsace and the continuing difficulties faced by opposition groups from Türkiye in working together abroad. By covering the gathering, the regional newspaper brought its demands concerning the implementation of European human rights judgments to a wider local audience.