SECOND SECTION

PARTIAL DECISION

AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF

Applications nos. 14019/07, 46287/07, 19387/08 and 48053/08
by Ramazan KELOĞLAN, Gökhan YILDIRIM, Tarık KURULDAK and
Özgün ÖZDEMİR
against Turkey

The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 26 May 2009 as a Chamber composed of:

Françoise Tulkens, President,
Ireneu Cabral Barreto,
Danutė Jočienė,
Dragoljub Popović,
András Sajó,
Nona Tsotsoria,
Işıl Karakaş, judges,
Françoise Elens-Passos, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above applications lodged on 19 March 2007, 10 October 2007, 10 April 2008 and 25 September 2008,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS AND COMPLAINTS

The applicants are Turkish nationals and former military students. Their names, their dates of birth and the names of their representatives appear in the appendix.

The facts of the cases, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.

The applicants were expelled from military academies on different dates on the basis of the results of secret security investigations conducted by the Ministry of Defence about them and their families, except for the applicant in application no. 48053/08, whose expulsion was grounded on his alleged use of illicit drugs. The applicants subsequently lodged separate applications with the Supreme Military Administrative Court (“the SMAC”) against the Ministry of Defence for the annulment of their respective expulsions. During the trial of each action the Ministry of Defence submitted certain classified documents to the SMAC as evidence against the applicants, the contents of which were not disclosed to them.

The applicants mainly complain under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that the restriction on access to the documents submitted as evidence against them to the SMAC as justification of their respective expulsions constituted an infringement of their right to adversarial proceedings in conjunction with the principle of equality of arms. Mr Yıldırım (application no. 46287/07) also complains, without specifying any provisions of the Convention, that his expulsion from the military academy for unspecified reasons on the basis of the secret security investigation was unfair.

The details regarding the proceedings and the remaining complaints raised by the applicants appear in the table below:

Application no. and case name

Date of final decision delivered by the SMAC

Introduction date of the application

Other complaints raised by the applicants

14019/07

Keloğlan v. Turkey

15 November 2006

19 March 2007

- Article 6: Lack of independence and impartiality of the SMAC.

46287/07

Yıldırım v. Turkey

12 September 2007

10 October 2007

_

19387/08

Kuruldak v. Turkey

3 October 2007

10 Apri