Following its official launch in October 2021, the EU/Council of Europe Joint Project ‘Improving International Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters in Türkiye’ held several technical level meetings to advance the project’s capacity building and review activities, cooperating closely with the Ministry of Justice.
On 24 November 2021, representatives of the Directorate General for Foreign Relations and EU Affairs (DGFREU) and the Training Department of the Ministry of Justice, Justice Academy of Türkiye and Court of Cassation held a joint discussion on development of training materials and training methodology with the Council of Europe’s international and national experts as a first step in the project’s capacity development component. Overall, the project foresees preparation of training manuals to train the trainers and subsequently, conduct basic and advanced level training activities on international judicial cooperation for judges, prosecutors and staff of the Ministry of Justice throughout the duration of the project.
A separate meeting held on 25 November 2021 focused on the review of the inter-institutional cooperation mechanisms relating to exchange of information in the pre-Mutual Legal Assistance (pre-MLA) phase. The meeting, organised with support from the MoJ-DGFREU, brought together the representatives of the Department of Combating Cybercrime and Interpol-Europol Department, Directorate General of Security of the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and MASAK. The focus was on identifying information for the analysis of the current setup of inter-institutional cooperation mechanisms in Türkiye for the purposes of preparing guidelines for criminal justice officials on possible modalities for informal cooperation in criminal matters.
Preliminary findings and recommendations contained in the project’s draft review of current legislative framework pertaining to international judicial cooperation in criminal matters were the topic of the technical level roundtable held with the MoJ-DGFREU on 9 December 2021. Being the first of the two planned roundtables, this meeting aimed at explaining the recommendations for potential legislative amendments in line with the international standards in the field of MLA and extradition, and sought the initial feedback of MoJ-DGFREU in this regard.
This project is co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe, and is implemented by the Council of Europe.