Freedom of assembly in Turkey and Greece

The subject of this study is one of the most powerful and most effective tools for pluralism, democracy, and opposition against the government: freedom of assembly. Being a collective use of the freedom of thought rights, freedom of assembly faces systematic interventions from governments steadily. State interventions on this right may range from simply breaching or changing the law, which is in the legal and visible field, to breaching other rights that affect freedom of assembly indirectly, building a certain negative perception in the society regarding the exercise of the right to freedom of assembly etc., which is in the non-legal and invisible field. In this study, it is questioned in which ways state intervenes in the freedom of assembly, what the factors affecting the realization of freedom of assembly are, and to what extent freedom of assembly is realized in Turkey. In this context, it is aimed to specify the gap between the purview of freedom of assembly stipulated by the law and the actual legal regime of the freedom of assembly, and determining the factors affecting the gap between these two. Greece, which shares political and legal institutions similar to Turkey, but presents a profoundly different political and democratic culture, has been frequently referred to throughout this study in order to assert the aforementioned factors more clearly with the help of comparative method.