“Protection of human rights can only be achieved if the victims of human rights violations have access to an effective remedy.” Yet this fundamental human right, enshrined in so many instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights, is being breached on a continuous basis in many member states. This fact underscores a serious enforcement gap that urgently needs to be addressed.

This week, researcher Juliana Cano Nieto is back in Turkey, witnessing the successes and challenges of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender human rights movement. Activists have achieved ever-increasing visibility; at the same time violence, particularly against Turkey's transgender communities, remains a fact of life.

Turkish authorities should prevent any repeat of the 2007 and 2008 ill-treatment of demonstrators in Istanbul by police on International Workers’ Day, May 1, 2009.

The killing of Ebru Soykan, a prominent transgender human rights activist, on March 10, 2009, shows a continuing climate of violence based on gender identity that authorities should urgently take steps to combat, Human Rights Watch said today.

News reports and members of a Turkish human rights group said that an assailant stabbed and killed Ebru, 28, in her home in the center of Istanbul.

A rising wave of police violence against the public in Turkey is linked to the Turkish government’s failure to hold abusive officers to account, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Greece systematically rounds up and detains Iraqi asylum seekers and other migrants in dirty, overcrowded conditions and forcibly and secretly expels them to Turkey.

The Dublin system fails to consider the legitimate interest asylum seekers have in choosing where to apply and unfairly allocates the burden of processing claims to the states on the EU's external frontiers.

With Croatia given a likely date for EU membership in the European Commission's 5 November progress report, it was not surprising that a Turkish journalist would ask Olli Rehn, the European enlargement commissioner, to give a date to Turkey, which became a candidate for EU membership the same year as Croatia.