{"id":848,"date":"2010-01-28T12:20:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/?p=848"},"modified":"2010-01-28T12:20:04","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T09:20:04","slug":"bianet-censorship-costs-turkey-43000-euro-at-echr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/?p=848","title":{"rendered":"Bianet: Censorship Costs Turkey 43,000 Euro at ECHR"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bianet: Censorship Costs Turkey 43,000 Euro at ECHR – Bianet<\/a>: “Censorship Costs Turkey 43,000 Euro at ECHR<\/p>\n

The European Court of Human Rights sentenced Turkey to a \u20ac 36,000 compensation fine for closing five newspapers because of their focus on the Kurdish question. Aziz \u00d6zer, who had been silenced for describing prison operations as ‘barbaric attacks’ receives \u20ac 3,423 in compensation.<\/p>\n

Erol \u00d6NDERO\u011eLU, hukuk@bianet.org
\nStrabourg – B\u0130A News Center
\n28 January 2010, Thursday<\/p>\n

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) sentenced Turkey to a total fine of slightly more than \u20ac 43,400 in compensation in two cases concerned with one-month bans of five newspapers and the punishment of criticism related to prison operations respectively.<\/p>\n

The applicants were journalists from G\u00fcndem, Yedinci G\u00fcn, Haftaya Bak\u0131\u015f, Ya\u015famda Demokasi and Ger\u00e7ek Demokrasi newspapers and owner and editor-in-chief of the monthly Yeni D\u00fcnya \u0130\u00e7in \u00c7agr\u0131 (‘Call for a new world’) magazine Aziz \u00d6zer.<\/p>\n

Turkey protects Anti-Terror Act, ECHR bases conviction on it<\/p>\n

The 20 applicants claim a violation of freedom of expression and that Turkey did not fulfil the responsibilities evolving from the European Convention on Human Rights. In both cases the ECHR unanimously decreed on 26 January that a violation of article 10 on freedom of expression had occurred.<\/p>\n

Istanbul High Criminal Courts had suspended the publication of the five newspapers mentioned above for one month each between October and December 2007. The bans were issued on charges of ‘spreading propaganda for the PKK’, the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and were based on article 6\/2 last paragraph of the Anti-Terror Law (TMY).<\/p>\n

The ECHR once more handed down a sentence referring to article 6\/2 last paragraph of the TMY, which provides the possibility to silence newspapers for up to one month. Against the opinion of 10th President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the Constitutional Court did not perceive the TMY as contrary to the Constitution.<\/p>\n

ECHR: Such penalties are redundant in democratic societies<\/p>\n

The courts did not leave it with the publication bans. Furthermore, newspaper executives L\u00fctfi \u00dcrper, Ali Turgay, H\u00fcseyin Aykol and H\u00fcseyin Bekta\u015f were facing imprisonment in the trials opened against them.<\/p>\n

\u00d6zer was tried before the Beyo\u011flu (Istanbul) High Criminal Court for criticizing prison operations carried out in December 2000, leaving almost 30 inmates dead. In the magazine’s February issue in 2001, the journalist described the operations as ‘barbaric attacks’. On 20 February 2001, the Beyo\u011flu Magistrate Criminal Court seized that month’s issue of the magazine.<\/p>\n

‘In order to determine interferences with the right to freedom of expression and to decide whether these are compatible with the Convention, it was not sufficient for them to be prescribed by law and to pursue legitimate aims. They also needed to be ‘necessary’ in a democratic society’, the ECHR reasoned the decision.<\/p>\n

ECHR: publication ban means censorship<\/p>\n

Regarding the full publication ban imposed on the newspapers, the ECHR declared: ‘This went beyond any necessary restraint and amounted to censorship’. Concerning the publications in \u00d6zer’s magazine about the prison operations, the ECHR indicated that they were ‘of great interest to public opinion’. The court stated that ‘the limits of permissible criticism are wider with regard to the government than in relation to private citizens’.<\/p>\n

The ECHR awarded \u20ac 1,800 in compensation for non-pecuniary damage to each newspaper employee, together with \u20ac2000 for cost and expenses. In the case of \u00d6zer, Turkey was sentenced to reimburse the magazine owner for the fine he paid, namely \u20ac423. Additionally, the court awarded \u00d6zer \u20ac 3000 in compensation for non-pecuniary damage and another \u20ac 2000 for cost and expense.<\/p>\n

On 20 October 2009, the ECHR handed down another heavy compensation fine to Turkey regarding 26 employees of \u00dclkede \u00d6zg\u00fcr G\u00fcndem, G\u00fcndem, G\u00fcncel and Ger\u00e7ek Demokrasi newspapers. (E\u00d6\/VK)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bianet: Censorship Costs Turkey 43,000 Euro at ECHR – Bianet: “Censorship Costs Turkey 43,000 Euro at ECHR The European Court of Human Rights sentenced Turkey to a \u20ac 36,000 compensation fine for closing five newspapers because of their focus on the Kurdish question. Aziz \u00d6zer, who had been silenced for describing prison operations as ‘barbaric attacks’ receives \u20ac 3,423 in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,53,46,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-echr","category-freedom-of-expression","category-turkiye"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7wjA8-dG","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}