A regional appeals court in Turkey ruled to uphold the baseless convictions of Taner Kılıç, İdil Eser, Özlem Dalkıran and Günal Kurşun, four of the 11 human rights defenders in the Büyükada case.
In many cases these appeals decisions can take up to a year. The Büyükada first appeal decision took less than four months. This is unusually fast.
The decision does not contain the detailed reasoning expected from appeals courts and reads as a rubber stamp of the trial verdict. With this appeal court ruling, a crucial first opportunity to correct the wrong done in the trial verdict was sadly lost.
Now, all four will take their appeals to the Court of Cassation, the highest appeal court in Turkey. We will continue to urge for their convictions to be overturned.