When a Bar Association Is Put on Trial for Speaking About the Right to Life

In January 2026, in a courtroom on the outskirts of Istanbul, something unusual took place. The President of the Istanbul Bar Association and several members of its governing board stood before a criminal court. They were not accused of corruption, nor of professional misconduct. They were there because their Bar had spoken.

The statement at the heart of the case was neither long nor rhetorical. It recalled that journalists in conflict zones are protected under international law, that the right to life is non-negotiable, and that deaths must be subject to effective investigation. In most legal systems, such language would sound almost routine-part of the vocabulary of rights that bar associations use when they speak about the law.
Here, it became the basis for criminal charges.

UIA-IROL mandated us to observe the proceedings. Observation is, by nature, a modest role. One does not plead, one does not advise, one does not intervene. One watches. Yet sometimes, watching reveals more than participating.

The Distance of the Court
The hearings were held in Silivri, a high-security courthouse complex far from central Istanbul. The journey itself imposed a rhythm: early departures, long drives, security checkpoints, the quiet awareness that one was leaving the familiar city for a space designed for serious matters of state.
Distance can be practical. It can also be symbolic.
A courtroom far from the city inevitably feels different from a courthouse embedded in daily civic life.
And yet, despite the distance, the courtroom was not empty. Lawyers filled the seats. Representatives of bar associations from different countries arrived, quietly, without display. Their presence was not protest but attention. The legal profession, by instinct, understands the difference.

What Was Really on Trial
Formally, the charges concerned alleged terrorist propaganda and misleading information. Substantively, the debate revolved around words—how they were interpreted, how they might be perceived, what they might imply.
But beneath the legal categories lay a broader question, one that was never explicitly on the docket but hovered over every hearing:
What happens when the institutional voice of a bar association becomes the object of criminal scrutiny?
Bar associations occupy a peculiar space. They are not political parties, yet they cannot be indifferent to public affairs when fundamental rights are involved. They are not NGOs, yet they speak the language of rights. They are professional bodies, yet their mandate is inseparable from the public interest in justice.
When such an institution speaks about the right to life, is it entering politics—or simply performing its function?
Different legal cultures answer differently. That diversity is normal. The criminalisation of that speech, however, is something else.

The Tone of the Defence
What marked these hearings was the tone adopted by the defendants. There was little theatrical indignation, little personal drama. Instead, there was a steady return to principle.
The President of the Bar, Professor İbrahim Kaboğlu, summarised it in a sentence that carried both simplicity and weight:
“The bar is not there to evade the law, but to make it effective.”
It is a statement that sounds almost self-evident—until a courtroom must consider it.
Several board members spoke in similar terms. They did not present themselves as activists, nor as dissidents. They spoke as lawyers describing what they believed their mandate required of them. The defence of rights, they suggested, is not an optional posture for a bar association. It is part of its institutional DNA.
One sensed that, for them, the real risk was not conviction but self-censorship. A bar that hesitates to speak about the right to life begins, quietly, to narrow its own role.

The Acquittal
On 9 January 2026, the court acquitted all defendants.
Relief was immediate and genuine. An acquittal matters. It restores reputations, it closes one chapter, it affirms that certain lines have not been crossed—at least not this time.
Yet an acquittal does not rewind time. Months of investigation, indictment, preparation, and exposure had already taken place. The prosecution has since filed an appeal, reminding everyone that legal uncertainty can outlive a first judgment.
In that sense, the case is not entirely over. Nor is its meaning confined to its procedural outcome.

The Quiet Impact on the Profession
For lawyers watching from abroad, the case inevitably prompts reflection.
The independence of the legal profession is rarely lost in one dramatic moment. More often, it is tested through smaller frictions: a case here, a pressure there, a doubt about how far one can go. Each instance may seem limited; together, they shape the climate in which lawyers operate.
The Istanbul case does not stand for the collapse of the rule of law. That would be too simple, and untrue. It stands, rather, for how delicate the balance can be between institutional speech and criminal liability when rights and security narratives intersect.
Lawyers, perhaps more than others, understand that law is not only a set of rules but a culture. And cultures evolve through precedents—legal, but also symbolic.

A Measured Irony
There is a mild irony in expecting bar leaders to be cautious about speaking on the right to life. Of course they weigh their words; the profession trains them to do so. But asking them to hesitate before recalling fundamental legal principles is another matter.
A bar president’s role is not designed for comfort. It is designed for responsibility. The expectation that such responsibility might be exercised quietly, or not at all, misunderstands the nature of the office.
The Istanbul hearings made this tension visible without turning it into spectacle.

Why Observation Matters
The strong international presence during the hearings was not a show of force. It was a reminder that the legal profession is, in many respects, a transnational community. Lawyers recognise in other lawyers’ situations echoes of their own potential vulnerabilities.
Observation is one of the profession’s most understated tools. It does not accuse, it does not praise. It simply ensures that proceedings do not unfold in isolation.
In a world where legal systems remain sovereign but principles are shared, that quiet attention has value.

The Istanbul case will not define the future of the legal profession. But it will be remembered as a moment when a bar association’s voice, raised on the right to life, met the machinery of criminal justice.
The acquittal closes the immediate chapter. The underlying questions remain open, as they often do in matters touching the rule of law.
And perhaps that is the final lesson: the rule of law is not only written in judgments. It is also written in the space a society leaves for its lawyers—and their institutions—to speak when law and conscience converge.

Martin Pradel and Aleksandra Penkowska, on behalf of UIA-IROL
Notes from a UIA-IROL observation mission in Istanbul