Hasan Çalışkan and Others v. Turkey (13094/02)
| Date | 20080527 |
|---|---|
| Article | 2 |
| Decision | violation |
Violation of Article 2 (investigation)
Hasan Çalışkan and Others v. Turkey (no. 13094/02)
The applicants, Hasan Çalışkan, Refika Çalışkan and Kemal Çalışkan, are Turkish nationals who were born in 1952, 1948 and 1977 respectively and live in İzmir (Turkey).
The applicants’ complaints concerned the death in May 2000 of their son and brother, Mehmet Çalışkan, aged 21, while carrying out his military service. The criminal investigation, opened automatically on the very day of the death, led the authorities to conclude that the applicant had committed suicide by shooting himself with his service weapon. The applicants complained of the insufficiency and inadequacy of the criminal investigation into the presumed suicide of Mehmet Çalışkan. The exact circumstances of his death remain unexplained. They relied in particular on Article 2 (right to life).
The Court noted principally that the investigation had not been conducted stringently, in view of its imprecise conclusions, based on inconsistent experts’ reports, as regards the point of entry of the fatal bullet. It observed that it had not been possible to determine the point of entry of the bullet that killed Mehmet Çalışkan because pieces of his clothing originally placed under seal had disappeared, and that the investigating authorities had not reacted to the discrepancies in the experts’ reports. Considering that such negligence had prevented the origin of the fatal shot from being established with certainty, and since this was a material element that had to be established to dispel any doubts that the deceased’s family could reasonably have had concerning the suicide, the Court found unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 2 in respect of Mehmet Çalışkan on account of the lack of an effective investigation. It awarded the applicants jointly EUR 13,000 for non-pecuniary damage and EUR 2,500 for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in French.)