File 7 - Sedat Aslantaş

7 items

Materials pertaining to the case filed by Sedat Aslantaş against the Republic of Turkey with the European Commission of Human Rights (application number 25658/94; referred to internally within the Kurdish Litigation Project as Case 109 and assigned to Bill Bowring as lead), including the submitted application and appendices, observations of the Turkish Government on the application (closed until 11 November 2073), correspondence from Bill Bowring and Kevin Boyle to the Commission and the Kurdish Human Rights Project, and the report of the Commssion on the case (closed until 1 November 2073).
Sedat Aslantaş was a lawyer who served as Deputy Secretary General of the Human Rights Association in Turkey. In these roles, Aslantaş undertook numerous civil liberties and human rights cases, including many in collaboration with the Kurdish Litigation Project that are present in this collection. On 27 May 1993, a press statement signed by Aslantaş and other members of the Democracy Platform human rights advocacy group was issued in Diyarbakır. The release strongly condemned killings, village burning, and evacuations carried out by state forces. As a result of the press release, Aslantaş and other members of the Democracy Platform were charged with violating Article 8 of the Turkish Anti-Terror Law, which prohibited written and spoken propaganda, meetings, assemblies and demonstrations aimed at undermining the territorial integrity of the Republic or the indivisible unity of the nation. Aslantaş also received telephoned threats telling him to give up his activities or be killed, and was continually followed by the police. As a result, Aslantaş went into hiding at the end of 1993, and made no appearance at a hearing of the case against the other Democracy Platform members held in Diyarbakır State Security court on 13 April 1994. On 12 May 1994, Aslantaş was arrested in Ankara and detained for 25 days. On 1 December 1994, Aslantaş was sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment and fined 150 Turkish lira because of a speech made at the 1992 Human Rights Association General Conference. Aslantaş was unable to attend the 1 December 1994 hearing as he was at another hearing outside Ankara. On 5 December 1994 while representing a client at Ankara State Security Court, Aslantaş was refused entry to the courtroom and arrested. Aslantaş remained in custody until 3 November 1995, when the sentence was converted to a fine of 101,825,000 lira.
On 1 March 1999, the Commission issued a report unanimously ruling that Aslantaş had been violated under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. On 2 October 2000, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe awarded Aslantaş £24,024.44 in pecuniary damages, 30,000 French francs in non-pecuniary damages, and £7,000 in legal fees and costs.
Materials from the main casefile are located at A44/43/1/9.

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