At other law practices, inexperienced lawyers fresh out of law school have been obliged to step up to replace their more experienced colleagues languishing in jail.

"It is enough!" Umit Kocasakal, chairman of Istanbul bar told hundreds of lawyers, cheering his call to resistance.

"These attacks targeting the rights to defence and lawyers in a systematic and deliberate manner have reached a dimension that is not bearable," he said.

Earlier this month, nine of their colleagues were detained for "membership in a terrorist organisation" -- the banned Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary People's Liberation Front (DHKP-C). The lawyers concerned were defending several alleged members of the organisation.

They had also defended victims of prison and police violence such as Engin Ceber, a left-wing activist who died in prison in 2008 following torture; and Festus Okey, a Nigerian illegal immigrant who died in a police station in 2007.

"These lawyers have done incredible work on some human rights cases," Emma Sinclair-Webb of the Human Rights Watch said.

"No one else would have taken care of these cases. What attention would such cases get if they had not been there?"

The nine lawyers have joined 36 of their colleagues in detention, 33 of whom are being held over suspected links to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The other three are accused of involvement in a conspiracy against the Islamic-conservative government, according to the Diyarbakir bar in the southeast of the country.

With 45 colleagues now behind bars, lawyers rival their colleagues in the journalism profession when it comes to jailed members.

Turkey currently holds 46 journalists in prison, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which in December awarded the nation the title of the world's leading jailer of journalists.

The crackdowns have hit law firms defending far-left activists and Kurdish circles the hardest: some of them have been stripped of their entire staff. Others meanwhile have been forced to turn to inexperienced graduates, fresh out of college, to keep working.

In November 2011, the Asrin law firm, which defends Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, lost five of its six lawyers when they were arrested as part of a clampdown against Kurdish lawyers. A young lawyer who had worked there for two months was spared.

After the incident, the firm had to hire two more newly graduated lawyers to follow the case of Turkey's most prestigious prisoner.

"Actually I got my lawyer's licence the very same week my colleagues from Asrin were arrested," said Rezan Sarica, the 25-year old lawyer of Ocalan.

Before Asrin, he had worked a few months for another law firm.

"But there too, the lawyers were also arrested and the office was totally empty, which meant I had to handle everything," including pleading in front of a high criminal court only a week after entering the professional world, he said.

In addition to Ocalan's case, Sarica now has to defend his arrested colleagues.

"They are in prison because they are the lawyers of Ocalan. There is no respect for the rule of law and the defence right in this country."

Kocasakal is also worried about what the future holds for Turkey: "If we are all thrown into prison, who is going to defend you?"