Sub-sub-series 23 - Hamsa Çiçek

6 files

Materials pertaining to the case filed by Hamsa Çiçek on 8 November 1994 against the Republic of Turkey with the European Commission of Human Rights (application number 25704/94, referred to internally within the Kurdish Litigation Project as Case 133 and assigned to Françoise Hampson as lead) regarding the disappearances of her sons Tahsin Çiçek and Ali İhsan Çiçek and her grandson, Çayan Çiçek. Supplementary materials pertaining to this case are located at A44/43/6/24.
On 10 May 1994, approximately 100 soldiers from the Lice District Gendarmes Headquarters raided the applicant's village of Dernek, Diyarbakır Province. The soldiers went round the houses to wake villagers up, telling them to gather by the mosque and to bring their identity cards with them. When about 400 villagers gathered by the mosque, the soldiers collected the identity cards of the male villagers. The women and children were sent home, as a result of which they were not able to witness what happened next. According to what the applicant was told by the male villagers who were present, the soldiers carried out an identity check by calling out the villagers’ names one by one from a list. Thereafter, the soldiers gave back the villagers’ identity cards except for those of Ramazan Akyol, Fevzi Fidantek, Mehmet Özinekçi, Mehmet Demir and Ali İhsan Çiçek. These five villagers were told to stand aside. The identity card of Tahsin Çiçek was initially returned but he was immediately called back and sent to join the other five. The soldiers left the village, taking these six villagers into custody. Witnesses confirmed that the detainees were taken to Lice Regional Boarding School. It is alleged that Tahsin Çiçek, Ali İhsan Çiçek and Ramazan Akyol were ill-treated there. It appears that, on the second day of their custody, the soldiers separated Tahsin and Ali İhsan Çiçek from the other detainees saying that they were releasing the two brothers and would release the rest of them as well. On the following day, the other four villagers were released. When they returned home, they were surprised to find that Tahsin and Ali İhsan Çiçek had not come back although they had been released. After about 20 days subsequent to the detention of her sons, Hamsa Çiçek contacted a villager who had been released from the school where she believed her sons had been detained. Upon the applicant’s description of her sons, the villager affirmed that he had been detained with two brothers, who corresponded to her description. The applicant also met another villager released a month earlier from custody at the school. When the applicant described her sons and asked whether he had seen them, this villager confirmed that he had been detained with someone who resembled Tahsin. Hamsa Çiçek was told by witnesses that, on 27 May 1994, Tahsin's son Çayan (i.e. Hamsa's grandson) was taken away by security forces from the garden of their family house. Çayan, who was sixteen years old at the time of the events, was visually impaired. The Government state that the applicant’s sons and grandson were not taken into custody by the security forces and denied that an operation had been conducted in Dernek on 10 May 1994 by the security forces. The Government also maintained that there were strong grounds to believe that Tahsin and Ali Ihsan Çiçek had moved to Syria, where they had relatives.
On 6 February 2001, the European Court of Human Rights ruled by 6 votes to 1 that there had been a violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights in respect of the applicant’s sons and a violation of Article 13 in respect of the applicant, ruled unanimously that there had been violations of Article 5 in respect of the applicant’s sons and of Article 3 of the Convention in respect of the applicant, and ruled unanimously that there had been no violation of Article 3 in respect of the applicant’s sons , no violation of the Convention with regard to Çayan Çiçek, or of Article 14 taken together with Articles 2, 3, 5 and 13 of the Convention. The Government were ordered to pay Hamsa Çiçek £10,000 sterling in pecuniary damages, £40,000 sterling in non-pecuniary damages, and £10,000 in costs and expenses. The full judgment is available for viewing at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-59219

The files in this sub-sub-series are equivalent to Tabs 1 through 6 in the legal team’s filing system.