Impunity in Turkey Today

Immunity may be caused or facilitated by many systematic factors, including the lack of appropriate legal mechanisms and the failure of states to react to, and investigate serious human rights violations. As used in this report, “serious human rights violations” encompass grave breaches of internationally protected human rights that are crimes under international law and/or that require States to penalise, such as torture, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution. Under international law, States are under an obligation to “combat impunity as a matter of justice for the victims, as a deterrent with respect to future human rights violations and in order to uphold the rule of law and public trust in the justice system.”