Turkish State Acknowledges Violation of Zehra Doğan’s Rights

Français | English

Fol­low­ing a peti­tion addressed to the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which had exam­ined a file brought to its atten­tion, the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment has acknowl­edged that jour­nal­ist Zehra Doğan’s pre­sump­tion of inno­cence had been vio­lat­ed and said it would pay her an indem­ni­ty in the amount of 1 350€.

The mat­ter — brought before the ECHR at the request of jour­nal­ist and artist Zehra Doğan’s lawyers — was decid­ed on March 17 2022  in a peti­tion call­ing on Turkey to pay an indem­ni­ty. In this case, the Turk­ish State admit­ted that, indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced for “pro­pa­gan­da for a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion” could not be described as  “ter­ror­ists” or as “mem­bers of an ille­gal orga­ni­za­tion”, as such, if that charge had been dropped in the pro­ceed­ings, and that pen­i­ten­tiary admin­is­tra­tions and judges exe­cut­ing the sen­tences,  by fol­low­ing the oppo­site tack, fol­lowed prac­tices “vio­lat­ing the pre­sump­tion of innocence.”

This is a legal argu­ment based on plain log­ic as well as on the prin­ci­ple of the indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion of sentences.

This touch­es on an extreme­ly com­mon prob­lem inside Turk­ish pris­ons. And most of the judg­ments devoid of evi­dence for such, “evok­ing” the belong­ing to an “orga­ni­za­tion” and thus, “ter­ror­ism” accord­ing to the Turk­ish State, lead to impris­on­ments in secu­ri­ty cell blocks, with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of ben­e­fit­ing of the right of trans­fer to a more “open” prison.

In 2015–2016, Zehra Doğan, one of the founders and edi­tors of the fem­i­nist press Agency JINHA cov­ered events in a Nusay­bin under cur­few. The agency was banned and shut down by a Law-decree at the end of Octo­ber 2016. As for Zehra, she was arrest­ed on July 23 2016, put on tri­al, con­demned and impris­oned for “pro­pa­gan­da”. She was lib­er­at­ed on Feb­ru­ary 24 2019 from the women’s high secu­ri­ty prison of Tar­sus, hav­ing com­plet­ed her sen­tence of close to 2 years, 9 months and 22 days.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the peri­od of Zehra Doğan’s impris­on­ment, her rights such as that of “trans­fer to an open prison” were blocked under var­i­ous pre­tences. Zehra Doğan was asked to sub­mit a writ­ten request indi­cat­ing that “she had left the ille­gal orga­ni­za­tion, and was there­fore no longer a mem­ber” and that “she wished to leave the block of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers”. Which amounts to ask­ing some­one who is not a mem­ber of any orga­ni­za­tion what­so­ev­er to “leave the orga­ni­za­tion” of which she is not a mem­ber, in order to exer­cise her rights. Her lawyer Olguner Olgun solicit­ed the ECHR on this basis, while under­lin­ing that these gen­er­al­ized prac­tices in Turk­ish pris­ons, amount to vio­la­tions of the pre­sump­tion of innocence.

The ECHR con­veyed the recog­ni­tion of this vio­la­tion of rights to the gov­ern­ment of the Repub­lic of Turkey. In a “uni­lat­er­al dec­la­ra­tion”, the gov­ern­ment request­ed the lift­ing of the peti­tion while announc­ing it admit­ted the vio­la­tion of the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, and that an amount of  1 350€ would be paid to Zehra Doğan as an indem­ni­ty. The journalist’s lawyers com­ment­ed on the mod­est amount of the indem­ni­ty. Zehra and her lawyers also under­lined the fact that “it would be more effi­cient for the Court to reach a deci­sion resolv­ing the sys­tem­at­ic vio­la­tions to the Euro­pean Con­ven­tion of human rights in Turkey”.

For its part, the ECHR unan­i­mous­ly resolved that since the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment had acknowl­edge the “vio­la­tion”, there was no need to exam­ine the peti­tion any fur­ther, although it did declare that “the indem­ni­ty offered by the gov­ern­ment  for the vio­la­tion of rights detailed in the Con­ven­tion was not suf­fi­cient”.

Accord­ing to lawyer Olguner Olgun, although the gov­ern­ment thus avoid­ed the estab­lish­ment of con­strain­ing jurispru­dence, nonethe­less, the ECHR deci­sion con­sti­tutes a guide for pen­i­ten­tiary admin­is­tra­tions and judi­cia­ry author­i­ties in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. “We would have pre­ferred that a deci­sion be reached by the ECHR that would have fun­da­men­tal­ly changed restric­tive and ille­gal prac­tices from all judi­cia­ry author­i­ties, requir­ing per­haps legal arrange­ments.” He insist­ed: “This case is not an iso­lat­ed or unique prob­lem, in the regime of exe­cu­tions of sen­tences, but a sys­tem­at­ic and struc­tur­al ille­gal­i­ty, applied in a gen­er­al way across pris­ons. But by accept­ing and noti­fy­ing through a “uni­lat­er­al dec­la­ra­tion” that the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence had been vio­lat­ed and announc­ing the pay­ment of an indem­ni­ty, the gov­ern­ment fore­stalled the pos­si­bil­i­ty a tech­ni­cal­ly con­strain­ing jurispru­dence might result from a judge­ment. How­ev­er, we still think that the   dec­la­ra­tion of accep­tance of the gov­ern­ment as well as the ECHR deci­sion on this basis, will serve as guides for pen­i­ten­tiary admin­is­tra­tions and judi­cia­ry author­i­ties, in sim­i­lar situations.”

Appeals to the ECHR whose judge­ments are com­pelling for mem­bers of the Coun­cil of Europe — of which Turkey is one — are con­stant­ly side­stepped by the regime using legal quib­bling to do so, as is the case here by fore­stalling the final­iza­tion of the judge­ment in order to avoid its influ­ence on jurispru­dence. In oth­er cas­es, when there is a peti­tion for a lib­er­a­tion, Turkey does not com­ply, argu­ing that oth­er accu­sa­tions are still pend­ing, as is the case for Sela­hat­tin Demirtaş.

For exam­ple, retroac­tive­ly, Zehra Doğan’s case could apply in the Özgür Gün­dem case, still ongo­ing, and in which the accused have seen their files split off into sep­a­rate accu­sa­tions, dur­ing hear­ings and tri­als, as is the case for Aslı Erdoğan. None of the impris­on­ments in gaols of sin­is­ter rep­u­ta­tion have been avoided.

A façade of Law is thus put for­ward in the worst of auto­craties, who always insist on pre­sent­ing a “demo­c­ra­t­ic” face over their ruins of per­ma­nent injus­tice.

Photo: a snapshot taken at the Zehra Doğan exhibition in Angers, January 2018. 

Translation from French by Renée Lucie Bourges

Sup­port Kedis­tan, MAKE A CONTRIBUTION.

We maintain the “Kedistan tool” as well as its archives. We are fiercely committed to it remaining free of charge, devoid of advertising and with ease of consultation for our readers, even if this has a financial costs, covered up till now by financial contributions (all the authors at Kedistan work on a volunteer basis).

You may use and share Kedistan’s articles and translations, specifying the source and adding a link in order to respect the writer(s) and translator(s) work. Thank you.

KEDISTAN

Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.