Final Declaration
of the 22nd Ordinary General Assembly
of the Human Rights Association (IHD)
16 November 2025
The 22nd Ordinary General Assembly meeting with the theme of “peace” was held on 15-16 November 2025, in the Yılmaz Güney Stage hall of the Çankaya Municipality, with the participation of numerous representatives from democratic and political institutions, as well as members of the central and branch management boards and branch supreme council delegates.
In addition to our founding member and one of the former chair Hüsnü Öndül, those we lost in the struggle for human rights were commemorated.
The General Assembly meeting began with a salutation to the honourable struggle of the Saturday Mothers and Peace Mothers, who were seated on the Council. After the opening, the following assessments, opinions, suggestions and observations were voiced at the meeting regarding the current political developments and the field of human rights:
- For nearly forty years, the Human Rights Association (İHD) has been fighting for the peaceful and democratic resolution of the Kurdish issue, women’s and LGBTI+ rights, and against discrimination and genocide—areas where even politicians struggle to speak out—and has courageously spoken out and acted.
- The IHD has been assigned an important role and mission in the Peace and Democratic Society process, and activities have been organized with this awareness.
- Violations of rights such as the right to life, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to liberty and security of person, the right to a fair trial, and environmental rights have increased. Appointments of trustees continue to violate the right to vote and be elected and the will of the people; along with the deepening isolation system in prisons, all kinds of rights violations have increasingly turned prisons into places of torment for a growing number of prisoners. ECHR rulings are not being implemented; in an environment where national and international protection mechanisms have crumbled, human rights violations are expanding to encompass the entire society.
- Those tried in political cases such as the Kobani conspiracy case and the Gezi case continue to be intimidated, as does society at large.
- Detention, arrest, and trusteeship policies targeting opposition organizations and local administrations still continue.
- All living and non-living beings are under threat.
- Impunity policies are shielding perpetrators in cases such as the Ankara Train Station Massacre on 10 October, the Suruç Massacre, and similar cases.
It was recommended that the IHD should focus its activities on the following areas in the new process:
- Strengthening advocacy work as well as documentation and reporting efforts,
- Increasing the visibility and impact of activities,
- Strengthening solidarity and cooperation with democratic organizations in all fields,
- Focusing on oral history and memory work related to developments and struggles in the field of human rights,
- Taking urgent steps to identify and resolve problems in the institutional structure,
- Fighting the policy of impunity,
- Ensuring that those dismissed by decrees return to their jobs,
- Advising the state to abandon security-oriented policies,
- Monitoring the peace process and implementing policies that serve social peace,
- Working to ensure that mother tongue and cultural rights are constitutionally guaranteed,
- Promoting equal citizenship rights against the unitary state perception,
- Organizing efforts to make the Anti-Terrorism Law, the Penal Enforcement Law, and related regulations and circulars, which provide legal grounds for human rights violations, especially in prisons, more compatible with human rights,
- Increasing efforts to ensure that institutions active in both politics and the democratic sphere never back down from the existing peace process, break their negative habits, and support the peace process.
It was emphasised that work in this direction should be expedited.
HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION HEADQUARTERS