European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 159

January 2013

Şükran Aydın and Others v. Turkey - 49197/06, 14871/09, 23196/07 et al.

Judgment 22.1.2013 [Section II]

Article 10

Article 10-1

Freedom of expression

Conviction for having spoken non-official language during election campaigns: violation

 

Article 46

Article 46-2

Execution of judgment

Measures of a general character

Respondent State required to reform the system of judicial discipline

 

Facts - The applicants, candidates in parliamentary and municipal elections, were convicted and sentenced to prison terms and fines for having spoken Kurdish during rallies, in breach of the statutory ban on using non-official languages in election campaigning. The courts finally decided to defer delivery of the judgments or to grant stays of execution, having regard to the applicants’ character and the circumstances of the cases.

Law - Article 10: The ban on using non-official languages in election campaigning had directly affected the applicants and had thus amounted to an interference with their freedom of expression. The case did not concern the use of an non-official language in the context of communications with public authorities or before official institutions, but a linguistic restriction imposed in their relations with other private individuals. Article 10 encompassed the freedom to receive and impart information and ideas in any language that allowed people to participate in the public exchange of all varieties of cultural, political and social information and ideas and in such contexts language as a medium of expression undoubtedly deserved protection under that provision. The relevant law at the time had contained a blanket prohibition on the use of any language other than the official language, Turkish, in election campaigning. Breaches of that provision had entailed criminal sanctions ranging from six months to one year and the payment of a fine. Moreover, the absolute nature of the ban had deprived the domestic courts of their power to exercise proper judicial scrutiny: they had not gone, in the applicants’ cases, beyond checking records and recordings of the election rallies. While States had discretion to determine their linguistic policies and were entitled to regulate the use of languages during election campaigns, a blanket ban on the use of unofficial languages coupled with criminal sanctions was not compatible with freedom of expression. Furthermore, Kurdish was the applicants’ mother tongue as well as the mother tongue of the population they had addressed. Some of the applicants had stressed that many people in the crowd, notably the elderly and women, did not understand Turkish. Free elections were inconceivable without the free circulation of political opinions and information. The right to impart one’s political views and ideas and the right of others to receive them would be meaningless if the possibility of using the language which could properly convey these views and ideas was diminished owing to the threat of criminal sanctions. Turkey was alone among the twenty-two Council of Europe States in respect of whom materials had been before the Court to make the use of minority languages by candidates speaking at election meetings subject to criminal penalties. The Court welcomed the fact that the impugned legislation had been subsequently amended. In those circumstances and notwithstanding the national authorities’ margin of appreciation, the ban in question had not met a pressing social need and could not be regarded as “necessary in a democratic society”.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 41: EUR 10,000 to each applicant in respect of non-pecuniary damage; claims in respect of pecuniary damage dismissed.

 

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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