KS v Secretary of State for the Home Department: HDP supporter's asylum appeal dismissed on credibility

A Turkish national of Kurdish ethnicity who claimed he had been detained, abducted and pressured to inform on the People's Democratic Party has had his protection appeal dismissed on all grounds, the First-tier Tribunal holding that the cumulative inconsistencies in his account were material and unresolved.

In KS v Secretary of State for the Home Department (PA/70173/2025), heard at Hatton Cross on 19 August 2026 and promulgated on 28 August 2026, Judge Watson dismissed the appeal on asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights grounds. The appellant, now 21, represented himself. An anonymity order was made under rule 13(1)(b) of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014, extending to family members and friends.

The judge made a vulnerable witness direction of her own motion, having regard to the Joint Presidential Guidance Note 2010 No 2 and to the fact that the appellant's evidence spanned events said to have occurred when he was 17. The respondent did not object. Questions were to be put singly and breaks were offered. The decision records expressly that such a direction is a case management measure directed at obtaining the appellant's best evidence and is not itself a finding on credibility.

A procedural point of wider interest arose over the appellant's witness statement. It had been prepared and then translated, but the judge could not establish whether the translation had been produced by an interpreter or by an online tool, and the appellant confirmed he could not verify the English text. The court-appointed interpreter read the statement to him at the hearing, one amendment was made, and the statement was then adopted.

Where the account was found wanting

Applying the two-stage test under section 32 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 as explained in JCK (s.32 NABA 2022) Botswana [2024] UKUT 00100, and the structured credibility approach in KB & AH (credibility-structured approach) Pakistan [2017] UKUT 00491 (IAC), the judge accepted that a Convention reason was in principle engaged and that identity, nationality and ethnicity were agreed. It was also agreed that sufficiency of protection and internal relocation would not avail the respondent if the account were credible.

The account did not survive scrutiny. The screening interview attributed the fear of return to ethnic and religious discrimination, with the political claim emerging some eight months later at the substantive interview. The appellant's evidence that masked men who held him for three days were state agents rested on inference rather than knowledge. He obtained a replacement passport in June 2024 while purportedly in hiding and being actively sought, which the judge could not reconcile with the claim. His evidence about who arranged and funded the journey shifted between the screening interview, where he said he had paid £17,000 from his own savings, and his oral evidence, and was found to be evasive.

A photograph relied on to evidence an ankle injury appeared to show a cast on the opposite limb, though no adverse inference was drawn from that alone. A supporting statement from a friend could confirm injury but not causation, and its weight was reduced by the absence of any means of verifying the maker's identity. The failure to claim in France was treated as a section 8 factor and no more.

Turning to risk, the judge held that the appellant's accepted profile as a low-level supporter with no membership, no senior role, no online activity and no perceived PKK link fell outside the indicators in IA and Others (Risk Guidelines - Separatist) Turkey CG [2003] UKIAT 00034 and the October 2023 country policy note. IK (Returnees - Records - IFA) Turkey CG [2004] UKIAT 00312 confirmed that a returns and record-keeping system does not without more create risk.

The Article 8 claim, advanced on private life established during a precarious period, attracted little weight under section 117B, and the Kamara threshold for very significant obstacles to integration was not met. A recorded date of birth one year out was held immaterial, the assessment having proceeded on the earlier year throughout.