The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights state that companies have a responsibility to respect human rights and not to violate the rights of others. When companies suppress and silence human rights defenders through legal proceedings, they violate internationally recognized human rights such as freedom of expression, assembly, and demonstration.
The report “SLAPP: Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation in Environmental Disputes” analyses the judicial proceedings initiated by private sector actors in Turkey to intimidate and silence those who struggle for ecological rights and those who try to stop the destruction of nature, and presents the appearance of these SLAPP judicial proceedings in Turkey.
To enable this analysis, the research team first identified the environmental disputes that emerged between 2013 and 2022, and the means and methods of struggle used by environmental movements. Then, the pressures on the struggles carried out in the identified environmental disputes were examined, and judicial proceedings initiated by private sector actors against rights defenders were identified and analyzed. Simultaneously with the research, interviews were conducted with rights defenders who had been subjected to SLAPPs. Some of these interviews are available in video news format, while others are available as podcasts.
SLAPP Podcast Series (in Turkish)
SLAPP Video Series (in Turkish)
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