On 20-21 July, Refugee Rights Turkey (RRT) held a two-day specialization seminar in Istanbul for lawyers focusing on deportation and immigration detention procedures in Turkey and applicable judicial remedies and case law of competent domestic courts as well as the ECtHR. The seminar was attended by over 50 lawyers representing 21 different bar associations and 3 NGOs from 22 different cities across Turkey. RRT had last hosted a national training of a similar scope in April this year.

In addition to RRT in-house legal experts, a distinguished lawyer from the ECtHR has also contributed to the event as trainer. Day 1 of the seminar started with a discussion of the Turkish domestic law and implementation framework governing deportation proceedings and immigration detention within the scope of the Law on Foreigners and International Protection and followed on with a discussion of ECtHR case law on risk of serious harm in connection with returns under Article 3 of ECHR and legality of immigration detention under Article 5 of ECHR. Day 2 of the seminar covered procedural and legal questions in relation to applications to ECtHR in deportation cases and the Court’s admissibility assessment, followed up with a case study exercise.

RRT had last hosted a national training event of a similar scope back on 27-28 April earlier this year, with the participation of 50 lawyers representing 19 different bar associations and 4 NGOs from across Turkey. The successive trainings in April and July were organized in the framework of a project implemented by RRT in association with American partner organization Refugee Solidarity Network (RSN) aiming to contribute to the strengthening of legal expertise among Turkish legal practitioners on immigration and asylum law.