Albayrak v. Turkey (38406/97)

Date	20080131
Article	10
Decision	violation

Violation of Article 10

No violation of Article 14

Albayrak v. Turkey (no. 38406/97)

The applicant, Mehmet Emin Albayrak, is a Turkish national who was born in 1967 and lives in Istanbul. He started to work as a judge in Adana in February 1993.

The case concerned the applicant’s complaint about disciplinary proceedings brought against him in 1995 for, among other things, reading the alleged PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party) legal publication Özgür Ülke and watching Med TV, an alleged PKK-controlled television channel. As a result he was transferred to another jurisdiction. He ultimately resigned from his post in 2001 and now works as a lawyer. He also alleged that he had been discriminated against on account of his Kurdish origin. He relied on Articles 10 (freedom of expression) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination).

The Court found, in particular, that there was no reference in the case file to suggest that the applicant’s conduct had not been impartial and that the Turkish authorities had attached considerable importance to the fact that the applicant had followed or attempted to follow PKK-associated media. It therefore considered that the interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression had not been based on sufficient reasons and had not been “necessary in a democratic society” and held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 10. It further found no evidence to prove that the applicant had been discriminated against on account of his ethnic origin and held unanimously that there had been no violation of Article 14. The Court awarded the applicant EUR 5,000 in respect of pecuniary damage and EUR 1,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage. (The judgment is available only in English.)