AKP submits motion: Murders of women and children and sexual offences to be excluded from amnesty scope

In the TBMM Justice Commission, deliberations continue on the 11th Judicial Reform Package, which includes a provision allowing convicts — for offences committed on or before 31 July 2023 — to transfer from closed prisons to open prisons, and from open prisons to supervised release, 3 years earlier than their scheduled dates. The package, which also contains this provision, is still being reviewed. The 11th Judicial Reform Package's deliberations are ongoing.

The regulation is expected to result in the release of 55,000 people initially, and up to 115,000 within a few months. Among those to be released will be individuals convicted of serious criminal offences.

The first 15 articles of the bill were approved by the commission yesterday.

However, in today's session, certain serious offences that had sparked fierce public debate — including femicide and sexual crimes among those eligible for the COVID sentence reduction — along with other grave crimes, are set to be excluded from the 11th Judicial Reform Package at the AKP's proposal.

The motion signed by the AKP was submitted to the commission during deliberations on Article 27 of the 11th Judicial Reform Package.

If the regulation is adopted in this form, those convicted of intentional homicide targeting lineal descendants and ancestors, siblings, spouses, ex-spouses, women, children, or persons physically or mentally unable to defend themselves, as well as those convicted of sexual assault and sexual abuse of a child, will be excluded from the scope of the regulation and will not benefit from the COVID sentence reduction.

"Covert amnesty" controversy: those convicted of terrorism offences and crimes against the constitutional order will also not benefit from the regulation that has sparked the "covert amnesty" debate.