Item 21 - Report on the hearings before the European Court of Human Rights in the cases of Çakıcı v. Turkey and Tanrıkulu v. Turkey

12pp

Françoise Hampson's report (3pp) written for other members of the Kurdish Litigation Project summarising the proceedings and fallout from the 24-25 March 1999 hearings in Strasbourg in the Çakıcı and Tanrıkulu cases. Hampson notes: that the Court turned down their request for use of an interpreter; that the Turkish Government is still using non-exhaustion of domestic remedies as a preliminary objection consistently against all Kurdish applications because of what happened in the Aytekin case despite the Commission delegate arguing to the Government that that case was 'a freakish exception on its facts and that the general pattern was that remedies do not work' (Hampson reminds her fellow lawyers to be prepared to argue the remedies point in their rights of reply); that the Government vigorously objected to the hourly rate claimed by the lawyers in southeast Turkey (Hampson argued that the issue of costs only became relevant to to the Government once they had already been found to have violated the Convention); and that the Court has abandoned the prior practice of having a transcript of proceeding. Attached are Hampson's handwritten notes written while drafting the report (9pp).

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