The sixth Open Court Day was held at the Gaziantep Courthouse on 1 April 2022 for Faculty of Law students of Gaziantep University and Hasan Kalyoncu University, with the aim of increasing their knowledge regarding the functioning of the criminal justice system and citizen’s rights. A group of 29 third and fourth year law students visited the Gaziantep Courthouse, where they were informed of the day-to-day activities of a courthouse and the role of the judges and prosecutors in the criminal justice system by the chief prosecutor and several other prosecutors and judges.

University students were briefed about the roles of the prosecutors from different bureaus and judges from all levels of criminal courts and they had the chance to visit different units of the courthouse, such as courtrooms, forensic interview rooms, prosecutor offices, in addition to receiving presentations on National Judiciary Informatics and Audio-Visual Information Systems. At the end of the day, an online meeting was held with a lawyer from European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in which the students were informed about the ECtHR, its structure, function and judgments and had their questions answered. The activity will be followed by other open court days in different provinces of Turkey.

This activity was organised under the EU/CoE Joint Project “Strengthening the Criminal Justice System and the Capacity of Justice Professionals on Prevention of the European Convention on Human Rights Violations in Turkey”.