Sub-sub-series 27 - Ülkü Ekinci

12 files

Materials pertaining to the case filed by Ülkü Ekinci on 4 May 1995 against the Republic of Turkey with the European Commission of Human Rights (application number 27602/95, referred to internally within the Kurdish Litigation Project as Case 186 and assigned to Bill Bowring as lead) regarding the murder of her husband, Yusuf Ekinci, on 24 February 1994. Supplementary materials pertaining to this case are located at A44/43/6/34.
Yusuf Ekinci was born in Lice and was a member of a well-known family of Kurdish origin. He was a practising lawyer and a member of the Ankara Bar. During his studies, he worked for the Turkish Workers Party (Türkiye İşçi Partisi) and was a member of the Eastern Revolutionary Cultural Grouping (Doğu Devrimci Kültür Ocakları). On that latter account, he was arrested in May 1971. He spent six months in prison but was finally acquitted. Following his acquittal, he took no further active part in politics.
On 24 February 1994, at about 6.30 p.m., Yusuf Ekinci left his office in the central part of Ankara to drive in his private car to his home located in a different part of the town. Before he left his office, he spoke to several persons including Ülkü Ekinci who had telephoned him at about 5 p.m. He gave his office assistant a lift. As Yusuf had just enough petrol to get home, he dropped his assistant off somewhere on the way. When Yusuf Ekinci failed to return home, Ülkü Ekinci and the office assistant inquired at local hospitals and police stations in the course of the evening but were unable to obtain any information about his whereabouts. As Ülkü was concerned that her husband had met with the same fate as Behçet Cantürk from Lice – who had disappeared a month previously and whose body had been found soon after – she telephoned around midnight Mehmet Kahraman, the State Minister responsible for Human Rights and a friend of the family, and asked him for help. The first thing Mr Kahraman said was: "This cannot have been done to Yusuf ...", which frightened the applicant even more.
On 25 February 1994, at about 2 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. respectively, Ülkü Ekinci received two anonymous telephone calls. No one spoke on the other end of the line. During the second call, Ülkü could hear the sound of typewriters. At about 9.30 a.m. the telephone rang again. When Ülkü answered, a woman said, "I am the depths of hell", and then put the receiver down. Later that day, at about 12.30 p.m., road workers found the body of Yusuf Ekinci along a highway in Gölbaşı on the outskirts of Ankara. They informed the police. Yusuf Ekinci had been shot and killed. His car was found at a distance of 1 to 2 kilometres from the place where his body was found. The petrol tank was empty. On the same day, the Gölbaşı public prosecutor opened a criminal investigation into the death of Yusuf Ekinci. An autopsy on Yusuf Ekinci was carried out on 26 February 1994. In the autopsy report, 11 bullet entry wounds, 7 bullet exit wounds and 1 bullet graze wound were recorded.
On 16 July 2002, the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously that there was no violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights as regards the applicant's allegation that her husband was killed in circumstances engaging the responsibility of agents of the respondent State, and that there had been no violation of Article 3, and ruled by 6 votes to 1 that there had been a violation of Article 2 of the Convention on account of the failure of the authorities of the respondent State to conduct an adequate and effective investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of the applicant's husband, and that there had been a violation of Article 13 of the Convention. The Government were ordered to pay Ülkü Ekinci €15,950 in non-pecuniary damages and £5,200.85 sterling in costs and expenses. The full judgment is available for viewing at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-60614.

The files in this sub-sub-series are equivalent to Tabs 1 through 6 and 10 through 12 in the legal team’s filing system. Tabs 7, 8, and 9 were not created.