The Council of Europe Project on “Protection of Rights of Refugees and Migrants in Turkey” organized a kick-off meeting to launch HELP/UNHCR online course “Asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights” in Ankara, Turkey, on 6 July 2018.

The online course will be implemented for a group of 136 participants, composed mainly of experts and lawyers of the Directorate General for Migration Management (DGMM) from central and provincial units, within the Project funded by the Human Rights Trust Fund and  the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by the Council of Europe using the Council of Europe’s Programme on Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP). The implementation of the course will be completed by 9 September 2018.

The objective of the course is to strengthen the capacity of the staff of DGMM to develop a better understanding of the rights attributed to the asylum seekers and foreigners in general. Targeting the implementation of the online course for around 300 DGMM staff in total, the Project will organize a second kick-off meeting in September for a second group of participants.

The event started with opening speeches from Michael Ingledow, Head of Ankara Programme Office, Council of Europe and Gizem Gözalici, Vice Head of Migration Policies and Projects Department, Ministry of Interior, Directorate General of Migration Management.

During the event, apart from the presentation of HELP, its methodology and HELP online courses by Seran Karatari Köstü, judge and senior project officer of the Council of Europe, participants also benefited from the presentation on refugee and migrant protection under the European Convention on Human Rights by Flip Schüller, Immigration and Asylum Lawyer and member of the HELP/UNHCR working group on Asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights Course. Dr. Neva Övünç Öztürk from Ankara University Law Faculty made an evaluation of refugees in the light of the ECtHR judgments and Dr. A. Elif Ulusu Karataş from Law Faculty, İstanbul University made an evaluation of the Refugees in the scope of the Turkish International Private and Procedural Law (Act No. 5718).

The participants are provided with practical information related to implementation of the course and interaction with their future tutors. The dedicated pages to the course with national legal adaptation were introduced to the participants by Gamze Gül Çakir Kiliç, Lawyer, HELP National Tutor, the Directorate General for Migration Management, and the participants’ tasks during the implementation process were clarified.

The HELP/UNHCR online course on “Asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights” is available in English and in Turkish in the HELP e-learning platform to any user – upon the creation of an account.