Yalçın Küçük (No. 3) v. Turkey (71353/01)

Date	20080422
Article	10
Decision	violation

Violation of Article 10

Yalçın Küçük (No. 3) v. Turkey (no.71353/01)

The applicant, Yalçın Küçük, is a Turkish national who was born in 1938 and lives in Gebze (Turkey). He is a university professor and a writer.

The applicant was prosecuted on account of various speeches and articles he had written concerning the Kurdish question. On 4 November 1999 Ankara State Security Court found him guilty of inciting hatred and hostility, of emitting separatist propaganda and of assisting an armed group. He was given a prison sentence of six years and six months and ordered to pay a fine. Relying on Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial) and Article 10 (freedom of expression), he complained that the proceedings had been unfair and that his right to freedom of expression had been breached.

The Court considered that the grounds adopted by the Turkish courts could not be regarded in themselves as sufficient to justify interference with the applicant’s right to freedom of expression. While certain comments in the offending articles and speeches sought to justify separatism, which thus made them hostile in tone, taken as a whole they did not, however, advocate the use of violence, armed resistance or an uprising, and did not constitute hate speech, which in the Court’s was the essential factor to be taken into consideration. The Court found that the applicant’s conviction had been disproportionate to the aims pursued and, accordingly, was not “necessary in a democratic society”. The Court held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 10 and that it did not need to examine the complaints submitted under Article 6. It awarded Mr Küçük EUR 3,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage. (The judgment is available only in French.)