Non-refoulement principle in the light of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights

In order to reduce the severe consequences of wars on humanity, to restore equality between women and men and nations, and to protect the innate values of people, the developments in the field of human rights that started with the 1945 Charter of the United Nations were tried to be continued with many international and regional conventions and documents. The fundamental rights and freedoms that have been tried to be ensured by these international conventions have not progressed at the same pace with the developments brought by the age and new human tragedies have emerged. In the 21st century we are living in, our biggest problem is the phenomenon of immigration created by internationally displaced people who have been forced to leave their own homelands. This is something that affects all countries in the world. We think that every country owes a debt to humanity in terms of bringing humane solutions and putting them into practice. When we look at our historical past, we think that it is our debt to humanity to do our best as the heirs of a civilization which tries to fulfill the requirements of refugee law for the establishment of rights and justice and embraces everyone regardless of their nationality, religious belief and language they speak. According to the data of the United Nations, it is seen that as of July 2019, there are over 250 million immigrants in the world and approximately 67 million of them have gained refugee status. According to Turkey's current data, when we take into consideration that it hosts non-contract displaced people with a number approaching 3.6 million with refugee status and when we consider in the individual applications made to European Court of Human Rights, there are a large number of decisions against Turkey, so we think it will be beneficial to study this issue. When we look at the content of the decision of European Court of Human Rights against Turkey, it is mentioned that in the application process for protection in Turkey of persons have been displaced in the sense of international law, they are not granted the right to apply to the effective legal remedies and their right to information is restricted and they live in reception and accommodation centres in conditions that are not suitable for human dignity. When we evaluate together the data we obtained during our study, in applications made by Turkey for protection, where people have a certain intensity of justified fears that they will be tortured or ill-treated, we would like to state that we think it should follow an application towards the acceptance of their applications and at the point of justification of the application and the risk of torture or ill-treatment if persons are sent back, the necessary research should be carried out personally without waiting for the preparation of the parties. In this sense, in the first place, in order to understand the subject better, internationally displaced persons and their denominations given in international conventions are discussed in our study. Afterwards, we tried to reveal how the principle of non-refoulement, which is the starting point of our study, is understood and interpreted in international and regional conventions. The interpretation and implementation of this principle in other states countries and in our own domestic law and how it has changed over the course of history has been concretized through the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights.