File 99 - Ayşe Nur Zarakolu

9 items

Materials pertaining to cases filed by Ayşe Nur Zarakolu, owner of the Belge Publishing House and member of the İstanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association, against the Republic of Turkey with the European Commission of Human Rights.
Belge Publishing House was founded in 1977 and published a number of books on controversial issues in the fields of politics and economics both in Turkey and abroad which brought she and her husband into frequent conflict with Turkish press laws. Issues Zarakolu helped publicize in Turkey include the Armenian genocide and human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey. Imprisoned multiple times for her publications, she was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and her legacy continued to face legal challenge in Turkey after her death. She has received multiple awards and honours for her work and the Human Rights Association bestows the Ayşe Zarakolu Freedom of Thought prize in her honour.
The first case, filed on 29 July 1994 (application number 24761/94, referred to internally within the Kurdish Litigation Project as Case 108), regarded her 1 July 1993 conviction of ‘making propaganda against the indivisibility of the State contrary to Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Law’. In July 1991, Belge published a book by a Turkish sociologist entitles ‘The Republic Popular Party’s Program (1931) and the Kurdish Problem’, which led to Zarakolu’s indictment the following month. On 5 November 1993, Zarakolu was fined 41,666,666 Turkish lira and sentenced to five months’ imprisonment. The application sought to challenge the legitimacy of the convictions and proportionality of the penalty. On 3 August 1994, a majority decision of the Commission declared the application inadmissible due to the violation of the requirement to file within six months of the incident.
The second case, filed on 10 March 1995 (application number 26071/95, referred to internally within the Kurdish Litigation Project as Case 175 and assigned to Tim Otty as lead), stemmed from her publishing of a book, ‘Our Ferhat: Anatomy of a Murder’ about the murder of Ferhat Tepe, correspondent with the banned newspaper Özgür Gündem (see A44/43/1/30). The police banned the book on 12 October 1994 and confiscated the copies of the book found on Belge’s premises. Again, the application sought to challenge the legitimacy of the convictions and proportionality of the penalty. A third application (37933/97, filed 9 September 1997) was later joined to this case. Kevin Boyle and Françoise Hampson withdrew as legal representatives in the case on 23 June 2000.
Ayşe Nur Zarakolu passed away on 28 January 2002. Her heirs continued pursuing the applications. On 13 July 2004, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that there had been violations of Article 6 § 1 and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Zarakolu’s heirs were awarded €5,000 in moral damages and €2,500 in legal costs and expenses. The full judgment is available for viewing in French at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/?i=001-66451.
Notable materials available for access in the file include: 2 copies of the original application including appendices such as the statement of the applicant, copies of Turkish court documents and court decisions, and lists of books published by Belge which had been prohibited in Turkey; the application to the Commission of Ünsal Öztürk (see A44/43/1/49), another Turkish publisher whose works had been censored by the Turkish Government; a copy of the second, successful application; the applicant’s replies of 10 April 1997 to the observations of the Government; and Françoise Hampson’s letter of withdrawal as legal representative.

Correspondence from the European Commission of Human Rights, the Commission’s decisions on admissibility, and the observations and documents pertaining to the case submitted by the Turkish Government, are closed to access until 1 November 2073.

• Béarla

• Tuircis

• Fraincis