Item 52 - Case of Yağcı and Sargın v. Turkey (6/1994/453/533-534), Judgment

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Published judgment in the case of Nabi Yağcı and Nihat Sargin v. Turkey (application numbers 16419/90 and 16426/90, European Court of Human Rights case number 6/1994/453/533-534). Mr Yağcı, a journalist, and Mr Sargin, a doctor, were the general secretaries of the Turkish Workers' Party and the Turkish Communist Party respectively. At a press conference in Brussels in October 1987 they announced their intention of returning to Turkey to found the Turkish United Communist Party (TBKP) and develop its organisation and political action while staying within the law. On arrival at Ankara on 16 November 1987, they were arrested as they alighted from the plane and taken into police custody. On 4 December the public prosecutor's office applied to the Ankara National Security Court to have them placed in
detention pending trial. On 5 December a judge of that court made an order to that effect on the basis of strong evidence of guilt and after hearing the suspects. He charged them with leading an organisation whose aim was to establish the domination of a particular social class and disseminating propaganda to that end and with the intention of abolishing the rights guaranteed in the Constitution; inciting public hostility and hatred; and harming the reputation of the Republic of Turkey, its President, and its Government. Proceedings against the applicant took nearly five years before the pair were acquitted in June 1992.
On 8 June 1995, the Court:
i) dismissed unanimously the preliminary objection of lack of jurisdiction ratione temporis;
ii) dismissed unanimously the objection that domestic remedies were not exhausted;
iii) dismissed unanimously the objection based on loss of victim status;
iv) held by eight votes to one that there had been a breach of Article 5 paragraph 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights on account of the length of the applicants' detention;
v) held by eight votes to one that there has been a breach of Article 6 paragraph 1 of the Convention on account of the length of the criminal proceedings;
vi) by eight votes to one that the respondent State is to pay each of the applicants, within three months, 30,000 French francs in respect of non-pecuniary damage;
(vii) held unanimously that the respondent State is to pay the two applicants jointly, within three months, 38,000 French francs in respect of costs and expenses and 30,000 French francs in respect of lawyers' fees;
(viii) dismissed unanimously the remainder of the claim for just satisfaction.
This was not a Kurdish Litigation Project case. The full judgment is available for viewing at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/?i=001-57938

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