Britain and Turkey enjoy a “pleasing” relationship in judicial matters, an attaché to the Turkish Embassy in London has told Londra Gazete.
Reacting to Home Office figures that revealed nine Turkish nationals had been extradited to Turkey in the past five years, justice attaché Ömer Faruk Altıntaş said the two countries “generally work well together” on judicial matters.
“Our cooperation works on matters such as judicial aid, the transfer of convicted prisoners and wanted persons, and sentencing,” he said.
He added that Turkey generally made around 400 such requests from Britain each year and that extradition constituted only a small part of them.
TERROR OFFENCES
The figures revealed Turkey had made extradition requests for 29 Turkish citizens based in the UK. Of these, the vast majority are still working through the British court system prior to decision on whether to be sent to Turkey.
The Home Office confirmed they had made no requests to extradite individuals from Turkey on suspicion of terror offences.
But the Turkish Government appears to have rejected half of the few requests for extradition made in the opposite direction – by Britain for individuals in Turkey.
Figures from Turkish officials indicate that three of the six requests from the UK were turned down, while two were granted and one case was still working its way through the Turkish courts.
POLITICAL REFUSAL
But the history of extradition requests between Turkey and the UK reveals that extradition requests for individuals who have gained political notoriety tend to be delayed, if not turned down.
The most notorious case among these was Orhan Aslıtürk, formerly the mayor of Istanbul’s Şişli district, who left Turkey in 1998 with his wife Gülay Çokay after facing corruption charges. It took until 2011 for him to be extradited.
Another case was that of Deniz Akgül, who sought political asylum from the UK in 1994 on the basis that he had been tortured and mistreated while under arrest in Turkey.
Mr Akgül subsequently became a British citizen. But on a visit to his home village in 2010, he was briefly arrested based on the testimony of another PKK member. He was released and was able to return to Britain, but was later tried and sentenced to six years and three momnths imprisonment in absentia. Turkey subsequently requested his extradition in 2012.
Both the United Kingdom and Turkey are signatories of the European Convention on Extradition, a treaty drawn up in 1957 by the member states of the Council of Europe.