JOINT STATEMENT
by the organizations that filed the annulment application
The Council of State annuls the designation of Turkey as a ‘safe third country’ for asylum seekers
By decision of the Plenary of the Council of State, the Joint Ministerial Decision designating Turkey as a safe third country for asylum seekers originating from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh has been annulled.
This decision concludes a legal process that began with the challenge of the initial, substantively similar decision (42799/3.6.2021) issued by the Minister of Migration and Asylum and the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. As we had pointed out, this decision left individuals – who flee their home countries in search of protection in a safe country – unprotected, undocumented, and vulnerable, despite the fact that all official reports and documentation record Turkey’s long-standing and systematic violations of human rights and the rule of law.
Specifically, the Council of State ruled that “from the case file accompanying the Joint Ministerial Decision 538595/12.12.2023 issued by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Migration and Asylum, titled ‘Designation of third countries as safe and compilation of a national list pursuant to Article 91 of Law 4939/2022 […]’ (Government Gazette B’ 7063), and particularly from the recommendation of the Director of the Asylum Service, it does not emerge that the criteria set out in Article 91 of Law 4939/2022 (Article 38 of Directive 2013/32/EU) were duly assessed for the designation of Turkey as a safe third country for the aforementioned categories of foreign nationals. This is because the recommendation and its attached Annex merely summarize the texts of the international sources considered, without specifically evaluating the information contained therein against the criteria set forth in the law, so as to substantiate the legal requirements for the designation.”
As early as 2021, we had pointed out that the recommendation of the Asylum Service – which the Plenary of the Council of State has now deemed insufficient – cited information that not only fails to support the judgement of the two Ministers designating Turkey as a safe third country but leads to precisely the opposite conclusion.
Therefore, as highlighted by the reasoning for annulment referenced in the Council of State’s decision, this is not a matter of providing more comprehensive documentation or addressing administrative shortcomings regarding Turkey’s designation as a safe third country. Rather, it is a matter of inadequate protection of human rights, as evidenced by the official sources cited, and further confirmed by recent developments in Turkey.
Moreover, in related decisions issued by the same Plenary of the Council of State concerning individual cases brought before it, it was ruled that, in any case, the competent authorities, “since it is evident from the case file that Turkey has generally suspended the readmission of applicants for international protection into its territory as of March 2020 … cannot reject applications for international protection as inadmissible on the grounds that Turkey is a safe third country.”
The above ruling reiterates the judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) dated 4 October 2024 in case C-134/23, following a preliminary ruling request submitted by the Plenary of the Council of State in its previous decision No. 177/2023 on the same matter. Based on that decision, and in line with the questions raised by the Council of State’s preliminary ruling, it was determined that a country may be generally designated on a list as a “safe third country,” even if, despite its legal obligation, the third country in question has suspended, on a general basis and without any prospect of change, the admission or readmission of such applicants to its territory. At the same time, however, the CJEU ruled that Member States cannot issue a decision rejecting a specific asylum application as inadmissible based on the concept of a “safe third country” when it has been established that the asylum seeker will not be allowed to enter the territory of the designated safe country.
Based on the above definitive ruling by the Council of State, which follows the earlier decision of the CJEU, a long-standing arbitrary and abusive practice by the Greek authorities is overturned. This practice involved the blanket rejection of asylum applications as inadmissible under the application of the “safe third country” concept. The ruling ends the denial of rights to thousands of asylum seekers by prohibiting their rejection when there is no possibility of readmission to Turkey, and mandates their individualised examination in accordance with the provisions of the law.
It should be noted that Turkey’s refusal to readmit applicants has now been confirmed in the most official manner through the European Commission’s annual reports on Turkey, the most recent of which was published on 30 October 2024.
The above decisions of the Council of State represent the obvious response of Justice to the long-standing and systematic violation of refugee rights, and an important step towards the protection of refugees both in our country and in the European Union, reducing the risk of illegal returns, social exclusion, economic destitution, homelessness, and even prolonged detention, which were caused by the application of the concept of the “safe third country”.
Finally, since shifting responsibility to other, unsafe countries for refugees is a facet of the EU’s deterrence policies, the Council of State, through its decision – just as the UK Supreme Court, which annulled a similar decision regarding the ‘transfer’ of asylum seekers to Rwanda – has reminded us that policies cannot be implemented outside the principles of law and the rule of law.
