Taner Kılıç and Pırıl Erçoban, co-founders of our association, have been awarded the 2026 Human Rights Award of the German foundation PRO ASYL. The ceremony took place on 12 September 2026 at Haus am Dom in Frankfurt am Main.

The PRO ASYL Foundation, which has presented the award annually since 2006, honoured three people this year: Taner Kılıç, a lawyer and co-founder of the Association for Solidarity with Refugees (Mülteci-Der); Pırıl Erçoban, co-founder of our association and its executive director until 2024; and Giorgos Tsarbopoulos, who headed the UNHCR office in Greece from 2006 to 2015.

The foundation recognised the three human rights defenders for supporting asylum seekers directly, making violations at Europe’s borders and in immigration detention visible, and defending rule-of-law guarantees. As Halima Gutale, chair of the foundation’s board, put it: “You do not look away. You make visible what others would prefer to keep hidden.”

The work behind the award

Taner Kılıç has worked as a lawyer in İzmir on refugee rights for decades and is a co-founder of both Amnesty International’s Turkey section and Mülteci-Der.

Pırıl Erçoban has worked on asylum and migration rights for more than two decades. Since Mülteci-Der was founded in 2008 she has coordinated support for asylum seekers, documented abuses in immigration detention and deportation practice, and was among the first to warn that Europe was outsourcing its responsibility for refugee protection to Turkey.

“Not about law, but about political influence”

At the ceremony, both defenders criticised the European Union’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum.

Pırıl Erçoban: “With this EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, violations of rights are being cast into a legal framework.” She warned that a race over which country treats refugees worse must not be allowed to become the norm.

Taner Kılıç: “This Pact is not about law, it is about political influence. European asylum policy will strongly shape Turkey’s own policy as well.”

Giorgos Tsarbopoulos said that with the new system “Europe is creating an illusion of security and turning refugees into scapegoats even more than before.”

(Quotations translated from the German originals.)

Thank you

 For us its meaning goes beyond the work of our two founders: it makes visible everyone working for refugee rights in Turkey and in Europe. We thank the refugees and asylum seekers we have walked alongside, and our volunteers, colleagues and supporters, for carrying this struggle with us.