EuroMed Rights, the Human Rights Association (İHD), and the Capacity Development Association (KAGED/İHOP) are jointly implementing the project Empowering Civil Society to Fight Impunity, with a specific focus on accountability, impunity, and violations of the right to personal security in Türkiye.
This mapping study — the second of its kind — builds on the first edition by updating and expanding the list of civil society organizations (CSOs) in Turkey and Europe working on impunity, accountability, and the conditions in places of deprivation of liberty. While preserving the main thematic framework of the first mapping, this edition introduces a more detailed thematic tagging system to make organizations easier to locate and cross-reference. Trade unions, bars and professional associations are excluded from the scope; instead, the focus is on the most prominent and active CSOs within the thematic areas addressed.
By identifying key CSOs at both local and international levels, the study aims to deepen understanding of current trends and initiatives in these three fields, inform the inception phase of the project, and strengthen partners’ collective capacity to empower civil society to challenge impunity. It also includes a mapping of relationships between local and international organizations, highlighting cooperation through joint projects, funding, capacity building, advocacy before the ECtHR or UN, and other collaborative actions. Rather than offering an exhaustive account of linkages, this mapping presents illustrative examples that make visible the forms and patterns of cooperation.
The report is structured around three main sections:
- Impunity – presenting the problem in relation to severe human rights violations and listing CSOs engaged in dedicated anti-impunity work.
- Accountability – exploring its close and mutually reinforcing relationship with impunity, with a focus on rights and freedoms essential for ensuring accountability, including freedoms of assembly, association, expression, participation, and access to information. This also encompasses organizations working on accountability in specific thematic fields such as women’s rights, LGBTQI+ rights, child rights, disability rights, and environmental justice, where restrictions on civic space directly undermine broader accountability efforts.
- Places of Deprivation of Liberty – providing an overview of the situation in prisons and removal centres, alongside the presentation of CSOs focusing on prisons and removal centrers.