Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
Turkish intelligence agents who abducted a teacher from Kosovo and subjected him to mistreatment during a forced transfer to Turkey have been shielded from prosecution, despite a formal complaint lodged by the victim.
Mustafa Erdem, a teacher and the general director of the Gülistan Education Institutions, who was abducted from Kosovo in March 2018 during a covert operation carried out by officers of the Turkish intelligence agency, Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MIT), filed a complaint on August 29, 2019, alleging torture and ill-treatment by Turkish agents that began immediately after he was forcibly boarded onto a plane bound for Turkey.
However, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office failed to take any meaningful steps to investigate the MIT agents implicated in the abduction and mistreatment, which was part of a broader campaign of transnational repression led by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against critics, dissidents and political opponents abroad.
Over the past decade the Erdogan government, leveraging its dominance in parliament, has passed several amendments to the intelligence law, granting full immunity to MIT and shielding the agency from any legal, legislative or executive oversight
The intelligence service has been run by Erdogan’s close confidants — first Hakan Fidan, a pro-Iran Islamist figure who served for 13 years, and later İbrahim Kalın, also an Islamist who previously worked as the president’s spokesperson and national security advisor. Erdogan has relied heavily on the spy agency to maintain a climate of fear in Turkey, harass critics and opponents abroad, pursue politically motivated criminal cases based on fabricated charges and conduct influence operations to manipulate the national agenda in favor of his government.
This Constitutional Court ruling shows how MIT agents are protected by the judiciary in a torture and kidnapping case:
Mustafa_Erdem_constitutional_Court_case
In his complaint Erdem detailed his brutal kidnapping and forced loading onto the plane, saying MIT agents used physical, verbal and psychological abuse during the flight. He said he was unlawfully detained by masked agents in Kosovo, where he was gagged and blindfolded and a sack put over his head.
One agent threatened him, saying, “Do what I say or I’ll stab you.” He alleged that he was insulted, forced to remain in a distressing position for a long time, photographed upon landing and that his photo was leaked to government media despite his not being charged with any crime.
The abuse continued after he was transferred to police custody. He was deprived of sleep and water, held in a crowded cell with the lights constantly kept on. Police threatened him into providing a scripted statement to the prosecutor during his deposition and to the judge during his arraignment. His attempts to report the torture allegations during medical visits were blocked by the police.
Erdem remained in detention for two days before he was allowed to see a lawyer and was formally arrested on April 11, after nearly two weeks of his ordeal in custody. It took him over a year to find the courage to overcome the trauma of the severe abuse inflicted by the police and MIT agents and finally file a complaint.
While the prosecutor did not pursue an investigation into any MIT agents named in the complaint, on September 11, 2019, he requested permission from the Istanbul Governor’s Office to open an investigation into the police officers accused of torturing the victim during detention. Under Turkish law, permission from senior officials is required to investigate civil servants.
As expected, on December 30, 2019, the governor denied permission to investigate any police officer involved in the alleged abuse and torture. The public prosecutor did not even appeal the governor’s decision in court and allowed the complaint to be dropped altogether. The victim filed a legal challenge to the governor’s decision, but the Istanbul Regional Administrative Court ruled against him.
His final domestic legal recourse was an application to the Constitutional Court, filed on November 2, 2020, claiming violations of his fundamental rights. However, on November 28, 2024, the court — widely viewed as packed with Erdogan loyalists — declared Erdem’s complaint inadmissible. It rejected his claims of mistreatment by public officials and violations of his liberty, security and property rights as well as poor detention conditions.
The Turkish judiciary’s refusal to hold MIT agents and police officers accountable starkly contrasts with the response of the Kosovar authorities, who prosecuted local officials complicit in the operation. The abduction of Erdem and five other Turkish nationals — Cihan Özkan, Kahraman Demirez, Hasan Hüseyin Günakan, Yusuf Karabina and Osman Karakaya — triggered a political crisis in Kosovo. The country’s prime minister, claiming he had not been informed beforehand, promptly dismissed the interior minister and the security chief.
Subsequent legal proceedings in Kosovo led to the indictment of senior officials, including the former heads of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, the Department for Citizenship, Asylum and Immigration and the Directorate for Migration and Foreigners. They were found guilty of abuse of office, and the verdict was upheld by the Special Department of the Court of Appeals on December 17, 2021.
In September 2020 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) concluded that the arrest, detention and forced transfer of the six Turkish nationals by Kosovar and Turkish agents constituted arbitrary detention and violated international human rights standards.
The abducted victims — five teachers and one doctor — are all affiliated with the Gülen movement, a group critical of President Erdogan on various issues, including widespread corruption in the administration and the government’s alleged support for radical jihadist groups in Turkey and abroad. Although they have no ties to terrorism, the Erdogan government has branded the movement as a terrorist organization, a political move often used by the government to smear legitimate critics and opponents.
The movement was founded in the 1960s by Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, who passed away in the US last year. Turkey repeatedly requested his extradition from the US on various charges, but the US Department of Justice concluded that there was no direct evidence linking Gülen to any criminal activity.
The Erdem case exemplifies the Erdogan regime’s broader pattern of impunity for human rights violations. Organizations such as Freedom House, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have condemned Turkey’s increasing use of extraterritorial renditions, which often involve allegations of incommunicado detention, mistreatment and denial of legal safeguards. Since 2016 Turkey has conducted over 100 such operations, frequently targeting democratically fragile countries whose officials are susceptible to bargaining with Turkey through bribery, corruption, economic incentives and arms sales.
Erdem’s complaint stated that Turkish officials routinely referred to abductees as “packages,” a dehumanizing term seemingly sanctioned by Turkish courts, including the Constitutional Court, as it was never scrutinized or challenged under human rights laws.
Erdem’s case is now likely to be brought before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), where previous rulings against Ankara have found violations of the prohibition of torture and the right to liberty and security as well as due process and fair trial guarantees. Turkey ranks among the top violators of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), an international treaty it has committed to uphold and implement.
However, with domestic legal avenues exhausted and an ECHR ruling likely years away, those responsible for some of Turkey’s gravest human rights abuses continue to operate with complete impunity.
