RRT publishes new report on “State-funded Legal Aid”

RRT publishes new report on progress made and continuing challenges in the extension of stata-funded legal aid services to asylum seekers and detained migrants in Turkey. The report, made available in Turkish and English, is based on RRT’s own field observations as well as consultations with bar association leaders around the country. It was finalized in January and published today.

In Turkey the state-funded legal aid scheme (Adli Yardım) is administered by provincial bar associations, which assign and pay local legal aid roster lawyers to take on cases. While Turkey’s migration and asylum legislation does acknowledge the possibility for foreign nationals to apply for legal aid services and a lot of progress made in recent years towards mobilizing the legal aid scheme to cater for asylum seekers and migrants, the relative number of legal aid assignments in asylum and migration cases remains limited. This report situates the ongoing challenges in the context of Turkey’s legal aid legislation and resourcing and articulates a series of recommendations addressed to key stakeholders.

RRT has long been identifying Turkey’s state-funded legal aid scheme as potentially a crucial access to justice mediator for asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants and supporting the provincial bar associations around Turkey to develop the relevant legal expertise. This report looks at the broader institutional and policy picture and aims to point out ways in which the legal aid system can be more effectively mobilized to help address the current dramatically short supply in Turkey of reliable legal representation for asylum seekers and other foreign nationals subject to expulsion proceedings.

This report was developed and published in the framework of a project implemented by RRT in partnership with American partner organization Refugee Solidarity Network (RSN) with the financial support of US State Department Bureau for Population Refugees and Migration (PRM). The report can be accessed online via the Publications section of our website. For free of charge print copies, you can contact us at [email protected].

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