İFÖD continues its works under 5 fundamental programmes. These are Legal Support, Third Party Interventions, Trial Monitoring, Research and Capacity Building Programs, all of which are described in detail below:
- Legal Support: İFÖD was primarily founded to provide all means of legal support to citizens, civil society advocates, human rights defenders, journalists, students and Internet media on a pro bono basis within the scope of freedom of expression and primarily with regards to political speech cases that are in public interest. Within this context, the Association enables and widens access to justice for disadvantaged groups, financially or otherwise due to lack of expertise or knowledge or even capacity in the case of supported Internet media organisations.
- Third Party Interventions: The Association started to intervene to cases lodged before the European Court of Human Rights as a Third Party. Therefore, if its requests are accepted by the Court, İFÖD provides third party expert legal opinions to the European Court. For more information about the cases
Moreover, in early 2020 İFÖD started to lodge Rule 9.2 submissions to the Committee of Ministers in relation to decisions related to Turkey in the field of freedom of expression.
There are not many civil society organisations lodging Rule 9 submissions from Turkey and İFÖD will continue to lodge submissions to the Committee of Ministers in relation to cases supervised by the Committee. Priority will be given to “enhanced supervision cases” but İFÖD will also lodge submissions in relation to “standard supervision cases”. For more information about the cases
- Trial Monitoring: İFÖD has initiated a trial monitoring project in 2019, through which the Association monitors and reports the cases of a particular concern to the public which the Association does not provide legal support to. Currently, six further trials related to freedom of expression and freedom of the media are monitored as part of İFÖD’s trial monitoring programme. For more information
- Research and Monitoring: İFÖD is involved with extensive research and monitoring programme. Primarily, İFÖD has been involved with research into extensive Internet blocking activity from Turkey. Under its unique “Engelli Web” Project (which dates back to 2009) İFÖD has been monitoring, documenting and analysing Internet censorship involving websites, news providers and news content as well as social media accounts and content since the association started its Research and Monitoring programme in November 2018. For more information
- Capacity Building Programs: İFÖD primarily aims to raise local and national awareness on Internet freedom and freedom of expression. In this context, IFÖD has been implementing programs for young lawyers and law school students since September 2019.
However, due to Covid-19 restrictions, İFÖD has been continuing its programs online through the Zoom platform since July 2020. For more information