Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No:
UI-2025-002005

First-tier Tribunal No:
PA/52130/2020
IA/01723/2021

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 12th of September 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KAMARA

Between

HG
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms K Staunton, counsel instructed by Virgo Solicitors Ltd
For the Respondent: Ms A Ahmed, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 3 September 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity. No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
Introduction
1. The appellant has been granted permission to appeal the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dismissing his appeal following a hearing which took place on 3 February 2025.
Anonymity
2. An anonymity direction was made previously and is maintained because this appeal concerns a protection claim.
Factual Background
3. The appellant is a national of Turkey now aged twenty-seven. He arrived in the United Kingdom clandestinely, aged 14, during April 2013 and sought asylum shortly thereafter. That application was refused and his appeal against that decision was struck out in February 2014 and his appeal rights exhausted later the same month. The appellant was subsequently granted discretionary leave to remain from 8 July 2014 until 29 March 2016. His applications to extend his leave were unsuccessful and his appeal against a decision dated 7 December 2016 was dismissed following a hearing on 23 June 2017.
4. The appellant made further asylum submissions on 4 December 2017. That claim was refused by the Secretary of State in a decision dated 12 October 2020, with reliance placed on the 2017 findings of the First-tier Tribunal.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal
5. The First-tier Tribunal concluded that the appellant was not at risk on the basis of his Kurdish ethnicity; that he was not at risk on the basis of political opinion; that there as no reason to disturb the findings of the previous judge; the appellant was not at risk of Articles 2 and 3 mistreatment owing to having lost his home owing to the 2023 earthquake and that his removal to Turkey would not amount to a disproportionate interference with his Article 8 rights.
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal
6. The first ground of appeal was that the judge’s assessment of the appellant’s credibility was flawed in the following respects:

a)applying an erroneous approach to the plausibility of the Appellant’s explanation for the delay in providing the police and court documents;
b) applying an erroneous approach to his assessment of the expert reports of Mr. Jenkins dated 20 October 2024 and 21 November 2024;
c) failing to take into account the police and court documents and/or to give his reasons for attaching no weight to the police and court documents;
d) failing to consider the evidence in the round.
7. The second ground was that the judge failed to correctly apply the Country Guidance case of IA & Others (Risk-Guidelines Separatist) Turkey CG [2003] UKIAT 00034.
8. Permission to appeal was granted on the basis sought, with the judge granting permission making the following remarks.

2.The appellant submitted an expert report about the documents. This is briefly considered in paragraphs 45 and 46, where the judge found that the expert’s view that there was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the documents and that they were in the expected format and style was of no assistance because all the expert could say was that the documents appear to be authentic.
3. Whilst the expert’s opinion about how the documents appeared was clearly not determinative (the appearance of authenticity does not, of course, mean that a document is in fact authentic) it is arguable that the appearance of authenticity is not irrelevant to the question of whether a document is authentic. It is therefore arguable that the expert’s opinion on how the document appeared could not rationally be given no weight (or treated as being of no assistance).

4. I do not restrict the grounds that can be pursued as there is a considerable overlap between them.
9. The respondent filed a Rule 24 response dated 5 August 2025, in which the appeal was opposed, with detailed comments being made in respect of both grounds.
The error of law hearing
10. The matter comes before the Upper Tribunal to determine whether the decision contains an error of law and, if it is so concluded, to either re-make the decision or remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal to do so. A bundle was submitted by the appellant containing, inter alia, the core documents in the appeal, including the appellant’s and respondent’s bundles before the First-tier Tribunal.
11. The hearing was attended by representatives for both parties as above. Both representatives made submissions and the conclusions below reflect those arguments and submissions where necessary.
Discussion
12. In support of his further submissions, the appellant relied upon the following items. A warrant for his arrest issued by the Gaziantep 1st Serious Crimes Court on 4 April 2013. That document was considered by Gareth Jenkins, an expert on Turkey in a report at p666 of the consolidated bundle, with the conclusion that there was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the document. Two further documents relied upon by the appellant were an arrest warrant issued by the Gaziantep Court of First Instance and a Search and Arrest decision by the Public Prosecutor in Nurdagi. The same expert provided a report regarding these two documents which appears at page 710 of the consolidated bundle. In short, the expert found that the arrest warrant contained an inconsistency in relation to the penal code section referred to in that document which meant that the expert could not say it was authentic but that there were no such anomalies in the second document.
13. The judge rightly took the previous decision as a starting point [30-37], applying Devaseelan. It is also not in dispute that the judge was entitled to treat the additional documents obtained by the appellant with circumspection given that they predated the appeal before the first judge.
14. Despite the detailed expert reports provided, the judge did not grapple with the substance of the reports because the judge rejected the appellant’s explanation for the delay in providing the documents in question.
15. At [48] the judge noted the appellant’s explanation for the delay, that the appellant’s mother was illiterate and it was only subsequently that the appellant’s father returned to the family home and saw the documents. At [49] the judge found that this explanation was ‘entirely incredible.’ There are no reasons provided as to why the judge found this explanation to lack credibility.
16. At this point, I am guided by what Neuberger LJ stated in MAH (Egypt)[2023] EWCA Civ 216):

‘29. Inherent probability, which may be helpful in many domestic cases, can be a dangerous, even a wholly inappropriate, factor to rely on in some asylum cases. Much of the evidence will be referable to societies with customs and circumstances which are very different from those of which the members of the fact-finding tribunal have any (even second-hand) experience. Indeed, it is likely that the country which an asylumseeker has left will be suffering from the sort of problems and dislocations with which the overwhelming majority of residents of this country will be wholly unfamiliar
17. In summary, I am satisfied that the judge failed to provide adequate reasons for rejecting the explanation given by the appellant.
18. I now turn to the judge’s assessment of the expert reports of Mr Jenkins. At [46] the judge stated that he was ‘not assisted’ by the expert’s reports on the documents for the following reasons;

Mr Jenkins can only give evidence to the effect that the documents appear to be authentic. He cannot give evidence as to whether they record the authority’s attempt to arrest the appellant.
19. Firstly, it was for the judge to decide whether the documents recorded the authority’s attempt to arrest the appellant rather than the expert. Secondly, the judge has seemingly placed no weight on the view of Mr Jenkins that there ‘was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the documents.’ Lastly, the reasons given by the judge for not being assisted by the reports are inadequate.
20. The judge also attached ‘no weight’ to the above mentioned documents. No reasons are provided other than that the documents were produced after the previous hearing. Nowhere has the judge considered the documents in the context of the appellant’s claim or determined whether or not they are consistent with his account or could be reliable.
21. Lastly, there is merit in the fourth complaint in ground one, that there was a failure by the judge to consider all the evidence in the round. Instead, the judge considered the evidence separately and attached no weight to the reports or the documents and I find that this evidences an absence of anxious scrutiny. It follows that all aspects of the first ground are made out.
22. There is further merit in the second ground. In applying the Country Guidance case of IA & Others, the judge considered the appellant’s ethnicity and that he was a draft evader but made no mention of an important factor, namely whether the appellant had family connections with a separatist organisation. This is a material error owing to the fact that the appellant’s cousin was recognised as a refugee following a successful appeal on the basis that he supported opposition political organisations and was accused of assisting the PKK.
23. It is important to mention that the judge rejected the respondent’s submission that the appellant was not related to his cousin [55].
24. In addition, the judge did not undertake a holistic view of the factors from IA, in that he separately considered the issues of ethnicity and draft evasion and failed completely to consider the appellant would be put at risk owing to his cousin’s activities and record.
25. I conclude that there has been an absence of anxious scrutiny and that the errors made are material to the outcome of the appellant’s appeal. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is unsafe and is set aside with no preserved findings.
26. I canvassed the views of the parties as to the venue of any remaking and both were of the view that the matter ought to be remitted if there were no preserved findings of fact. Applying AEB [2022] EWCA Civ 1512 and Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 00046 (IAC), I carefully considered whether to retain the matter for remaking in the Upper Tribunal, in line with the general principle set out in statement 7 of the Senior President’s Practice Statements. I took into consideration the history of this case, the nature and extent of the findings to be made as well as the fact that the nature of the errors of law in this case meant that the appellant was deprived of an adequate consideration of his protection appeal. I further consider that it would be unfair for either party to be unable to avail themselves of the two-tier decision-making process and therefore remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.

Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did involve the making of an error on a point of law.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside.
The appeal is remitted, de novo, to the First-tier Tribunal to be reheard by any other judge.

T Kamara

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

3 September 2025