The Government of Turkey, with a declaration to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe has withdrawn its derogation to Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights it had made with respect to the provinces under emergency rule.

At the beginning of the 1990’ies, when combating terrorism was a major concern, the Government of Turkey, on 6 August 1990 had derogated the implementation of Article 5, which, inter alia, regulates the detention periods.

Within the framework of the current efforts to harmonize national legislation with the European human rights system, the detention periods have been limited to four days maximum. Thereby, full compliance of Turkish legislation with the jurisprudence of the ECHR has been achieved in this field and the legal grounds behind the derogation ceased to exist.

The withdrawal of our derogation is indicative of the progress achieved in the democratisation of our country and promotion of human rights.