Buran v. Turkey (984/02)

Date	20080617
Article	10
Decision	violation

Violation of Article 10

Buran v. Turkey (no. 984/02)

The applicant, Hasan Buran, is a Turkish national who was born in 1960 and lives in Malatya (Turkey).

At the relevant time he was the proprietor of the weekly newspaper Fırat’ta Yaşam (“Fırat Life”) published in Gaziantep (Turkey). The applicant complained of the seizure of unsold copies of issue no. 97 of the newspaper on 19 March 2001 by the Turkish authorities, who considered that three articles appearing in that issue incited others to hatred and hostility. The articles in question contained very severe criticism of the regime in place, advocated the freedom and cultural rights of Kurds, and contained harsh criticism of the manner in which the Government had handled prison riots. The author also paid tribute to three people who had been sentenced to death – apparently for murder – and executed. The applicant relied on Article 10 (freedom of expression).

In the Court’s view, although the comments published had a hostile tone they did not incite to violence or armed resistance or uprising and did not amount to hate speech. The Court also considered that the seizure of unsold copies of the newspaper did not meet a “pressing social need”. Consequently, the Court held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 10 and found that a finding of a violation constituted in itself just satisfaction in respect of non-pecuniary damage (The judgment is available only in French.)