Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at press conference during a NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025.
(Istanbul, June 25, 2026) – The arrest of at least 209 people in the Turkish capital, Ankara, ahead of the July 7-8, 2026 NATO summit there highlights Türkiye’s ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly, Human Rights Watch said today.
In raids overnight between June 22 and 23, the police arrested people including political activists, lawyers, an academic, and a journalist who is a prominent LGBT rights activist. The Ankara prosecutor’s office said on June 23 that the arrests were to “decipher the action and activities of terrorist organizations,” and linked those arrested to revolutionary leftist groups and to the Islamic State (ISIS) without providing details of any alleged crimes or criminal activity.
“The misuse of terrorism laws to conduct mass arrests and silence people in the run-up to a NATO summit flies in the face of the founding values of the alliance,” said Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately release those detained, and NATO should insist that peaceful expression and assembly must be permitted around the summit.”
The evening before the arrests, the Ankara governor’s office banned all public assemblies and demonstrations and activities such as distributing leaflets and displaying banners from midnight on June 28 to midnight on July 10.
The 13-day ban is being justified on grounds of security and public order for the NATO summit, as is the authorization of “preventative policing powers.” The arrests followed a few hours after the announcement of the ban, although the prosecutor’s office’s statement about the arrests made no explicit reference to the NATO summit or the ban.
The authorities issued an order barring any contact with the det
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