Turkish judicial practices on international protection, removal and administrative detention in connection with the safe third country concept

Whether Turkey should be deemed as a “safe third country” for asylum seekers in Europe is a legal conundrum that deserves heighthened attention with the adoption of the EU-Turkey Statement of March 2016 and EU-Turkey Readmission Agreement. I aspire to contribute to this discussion through an analysis of Turkish judicial practices on international protection, removal and administrative detention procedures, including their interaction with international and European framework and jurisprudence. One purpose of the dissertation is to display the protection challenges that the safe third country concept creates through the example of Turkey. The position defended in the thesis is that Turkish judicial practices or any other component of safe third country assessment such as administrative practices or normative framework should be evaluated from this perspective, by keeping in mind the inherent problems of the safe third country concept. In the assessment of Turkey’s position as a safe third country for EU states, state of judiciary is a crucial factor. Judiciary acts as the ultimate safeguard for protection of rights and guiding administrative practices through interpretation of normative framework. Thus the second aim of this thesis is to analyze the problematic legal issues in Turkish judicial practices relevant to international protection, removal and administrative detention, based on an empirical study of decisions of Turkish courts. The empirical method in the qualitative analysis of Turkish jurisprudence is supported with a comparative analysis of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, Court of Justice of the EU as well as the domestic jurisprudence of EU states.