Supplementary materials pertaining to the cases filed by Tahir Elçi, Nevzat Kaya, Şinasi Tur, Sabahattin Acar, Niyazi Çem, Mehmet Selim Kurbanoğlu, Meral Daniş Beştaş, Mesut Beştaş, Vedat Erten, Baki Demırhan, Arif Altinkalem, Gazanfer Abbasioğlu, Fuat Hayri Demır, and Hüsniye Ölmez on 21 December 1993 and by İmam Şahin and Arzu Şahin on 28 April 1994 (the applications were joined together on 9 September 1994) against the Republic of Turkey with the European Commission of Human Rights (application numbers 23145/93 and 25091/94, referred to internally within the Kurdish Litigation Project as Case 85 and assigned to Kevin Boyle and Françoise Hampson as leads, later succeeded by Timothy Otty and Philip Leach). Materials in this file include: correspondence between Tim Otty and Aisling Reidy, including drafts of Otty's proposed final submissions in the cases sent to Reidy for comments and thoughts; Otty's working notes on the cases; press releases from the Council of Europe and the Kurdish Human Rights Project; human rights reports submitted as appendices on behalf of the applicants; a chronology of domestic proceedings against the applicants prepared by Otty; and the further observations of the applicant submitted 5 March 1997. The verbatim record of the 2 December 1996 hearing in the cases is present but closed for access until 1 November 2073, as are translation of appendices submitted by the Turkish Government. Materials from the main casefile are located at A44/43/1/28.
The applicants, who were all Turkish lawyers, alleged that in November and December 1993 they were taken into detention by law enforcement officers on the pretext of involvement in criminal activities (being members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK)), but in reality because they had represented clients before the State Security Court and been involved in human rights work. Some of the applicants also claimed that they were tortured and otherwise ill-treated whilst in detention. Subsequent domestic proceedings against the applicants in Diyarbakır State Security Court resulted in the production of a global statement by the Diyarbakır provincial gendarmerie commander accusing each the applicants of various crimes aiding and abetting the PKK, primarily based upon the testimony of Abdülhakim Güven, a PKK confessor benefiting from the Remorse Law. Between 1994 and 1998, the hearings in the domestic proceedings showed constant adjournments and certain procedural decisions, with the case eventually being stalled due to the non-appearance of certain key witnesses.
Kevin Boyle and Françoise Hampson were the original legal representatives before the Court in this case. On 23 June 2000, they stood down in favour of Timothy Otty and Philip Leach of the Kurdish Human Rights Project.
On 13 November 2003, the European Court of Human Rights ruled:
- by 6 votes to 1, that there has been both a substantive and procedural violation of Article 3 of the Convention in the case of the applicants Tahir Elçi, Niyazi Çem, Meral Daniş Beştaş, Hüsniye Ölmez, Şinasi Tur, Sabahattin Acar, Mehmet Selim Kurbanoğlu, Mesut Beştaş and Vedat Erten;
- unanimously, that there has been a violation of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention in the case of each of the applicants;
- unanimously, that there has been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention in the case of the applicants Tahir Elçi, Şinasi Tur, Sabahattin Acar, Niyazi Çem and Mehmet Selim Kurbanoğlu;
- unanimously, that it is not necessary to examine separately the applicants' complaints under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1;
- unanimously, that there has been no violation of former Article 25 of the Convention.
The applicants were awarded varying figures totalling hundreds of thousands of euro in pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages and legal costs.
The full judgment is available for viewing at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-61442
