Selahattin Demirtaş v. Türkiye (no. 4)

Legal summary

July 2025

Selahattin Demirtaş v. Türkiye (no. 4) - 13609/20

Judgment 8.7.2025 [Section II]

Article 35

Article 35-3-a

Ratione materiae

Jurisdiction of Court to examine applicant’s complaints in context of present fresh application following Grand Chamber judgment in respect of him

Article 5

Article 5-4

Speediness of review

Period of slightly more than four years pending before Constitutional Court not deemed “speedy”, even given particular circumstances of case; applicant in present case not required to await outcome of proceedings before Constitutional Court before applying to Court (Article 35 § 1): violation

Article 5-1-c

Reasonable suspicion

Lack of reasonable suspicion with regard to applicant at time of his return to detention and during initial phase of his detention: violation

Article 5-3

Reasonableness of pre-trial detention

Lack of relevant and sufficient reasons for keeping the applicant in pre-trial detention for more than four years: violation

Article 18

Restrictions for unauthorised purposes

Pre-trial detention pursuing ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate: violation

Facts – The applicant is currently in prison. He was one of the co-chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a left-wing pro-Kurdish political party. From 22 July 2007 to 24 June 2018 he was a member of the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

The application concerned investigations and prosecutions in respect of the so-called “events of 6 to 8 October 2014”, which saw a large number of deaths and injuries, in a context of public disorder.

On 20 September 2019 the public prosecutor’s office applied to the Magistrate’s Court to have the applicant placed in pre-trial detention. He was suspected of being one of the instigators of many offences committed during the events in question. The Magistrate’s Court ordered the measure that same day.

The applicant, who had already been deprived of his liberty since 4 November 2016, was accordingly placed in pre-trial detention on 20 September 2019 on charges relating to the events of 6 to 8 October 2014. His applications to the Constitutional Court complaining about his return to pre-trial detention on 20 September 2019 were pending at the date of adoption of the present judgment. On 16 May 2024 the Assize Court found the applicant guilty on 11 counts and sentenced him to 42 years’ imprisonment.

Law –

Jurisdiction ratione materiae of the Court – The Court considered that the circumstances of the present case partly overlapped with those examined in the Grand Chamber’s judgment in Selahattin Demirtaş v. Turkey (no. 2) ([GC], no. 14305/17, 22 December 2020). The question whether the present application was based on the same facts as application no. 14305/17 could therefore affect its jurisdiction ratione materiae. Accordingly, the Court had to consider that issue of its own motion. At the outset, it acknowledged that although it could in certain situations indicate the specific remedy or other measure to be taken by the respondent State it still fell to the Committee of Ministers to evaluate the implementation of such measures under Article 46 § 2 of the Convention, unless the matter was referred to it by that body under Article 46 § 4. Nevertheless, the Court could take account of subsequent factual developments which were likely to have a bearing on its findings with regard to, inter alia, the potential responsibility of the respondent Government in respect of alleged violations of the Convention after 20 September 2019, the date of the applicant’s return to pre-trial detention, and 22 December 2020, the date of the Grand Chamber judgment.

On 2 September 2019 the domestic court had ordered the applicant’s release in the context of the criminal proceedings examined in the judgment of 22 December 2020. However, the applicant had remained in detention without interruption, first until 31 October 2019 in connection with a previous conviction, and then after that date pursuant to the pre-trial detention order of 20 September 2019 – the subject matter of the present case. Furthermore, in its judgment in application no. 14305/17, the Grand Chamber had found a violation of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention on account of the lack of reasonable suspicion that the applicant had committed an offence – without, however, examining the measure ordered on 20 September 2019 in connection with the present complaint. In addition, many decisions had been adopted and many appeals had been lodged with the domestic courts since 20 September 2019 (objections and individual applications to the Constitutional Court). In that regard, the applicant had relied on Article 5 § 1 and, for the period in question, on Articles 5 §§ 3 and 4, 10 and 18.

Accordingly, in so far as the applicant’s grievances in the present case concerned his continued detention after 20 September 2019, they had not previously been examined by the Court. In consequence, the “new issue” resulted from the alleged continuation of the violation found in the Court’s initial judgment. That being said, even if there were a “close temporal and substantive connection” between the applicant’s initial and subsequently continued detention from 4 November 2016 and his return to pre-trial detention on 20 September 2019 (see Selahattin Demirtaş (no. 2) [GC], § 440), it could not be said that the powers assigned to the Committee of Ministers by Article 46 were being encroached on where the Court had to deal with relevant new information in the context of a fresh application. If the Court were unable to examine facts after the date indicated, the measure in issue would escape all scrutiny under the Convention.

Conclusion: jurisdiction ratione materiae to examine the application in so far as it concerned the applicant’s pre-trial detention after 20 September 2019 (unanimously).

Compliance with Rule 47 of the Rules of Court – The Government had argued that the applicant had raised his complaints before the Court not in the application form but in the attached sheets. The Court observed that the applicant in his application form had described all the facts relating to his complaints and had indicated the alleged violations of the Convention clearly and in substance. In accordance with Rule 47 § 2 (b) of the Rules of Court, he had also supplemented that information by appending to the application form a 15-page document containing further details of the alleged violations of the Convention and relevant arguments. The applicant’s complaints had therefore been raised in accordance with Rule 47 § 1 of the Rules of Court. Nevertheless, as regards objections of inadmissibility based on a breach of Rule 47 of the Rules of Court, the Court reiterated that it alone had the power to apply that provision in the administration of the proceedings before it; the Contracting States could not rely on it as a ground of inadmissibility in raising an objection under Article 35 of the Convention. The Government’s arguments on those points therefore had to be dismissed.

Article 5 § 4:

The applicant’s complaints about the pre-trial detention order of 20 September 2019 were still pending before the Constitutional Court. Their examination had lasted for a period of slightly more than four years according to the criteria developed under Article 5 § 4. The Government had primarily pointed to that court’s considerable workload following the declaration of a state of emergency. The Court had previously stated that the excessive workload of the Constitutional Court could not be used as perpetual justification for excessively long procedures, as in the present case.

The Court was prepared to accept that the proceedings in question were relatively complex, from both a legal and a factual point of view, and that the special features of constitutional proceedings had to be taken into account in assessing compliance with the “speediness” requirement. Furthermore, the applicant had availed himself of the possibility afforded by the Turkish legal system of applying for his release on many occasions throughout his detention and had been able to lodge objections to the rejection decisions. In such a system, the Court could tolerate longer periods of review by the Constitutional Court, but that did not exempt the latter from its obligation under Article 5 § 4. In particular, four years was incomparably longer than the periods the Court had previously found – in the exceptional context of state-of-emergency cases – to be compatible with the requirements of Article 5 § 4. Moreover, even though the parties’ exchange of observations had ended on 9 June 2020, the Constitutional Court appeared to have remained inactive. The procedural delays in the present case were thus attributable to the authorities. Admittedly, the applicant had lodged two new applications in respect of the same facts, which might have prolonged the proceedings. However, the examination of those two applications also appeared to have been completed, in fact in 2022. The detention complained of by the applicant had followed his initial detention, which had begun on 4 November 2016 and in respect of which the Court had found a violation of Article 5 § 1, taken alone and in conjunction with Article 18 of the Convention. In such a context, the Court considered that a speedy judicial review by the Constitutional Court was an essential safeguard against any risk of arbitrariness in the applicant’s deprivation of liberty. Diligence of that kind would have also addressed the concerns expressed by the third-party interveners as to how effectively fundamental rights were protected at the national level, while helping to strengthen public confidence in the Constitutional Court’s ability to assume fully its role as guardian of Convention rights. Ultimately, the period in question could not be regarded as “speedy”, even in the light of the particular circumstances of the case.

The Court considered it neither necessary nor appropriate to revisit its well-established case-law according to which individual applications to the Constitutional Court – a means of challenging deprivations of liberty under Article 19 of the Constitution – were in principle an effective remedy for the purposes of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention. In the particular circumstances of the present case, however, since the individual application to the Constitutional Court had proved incapable of satisfying the speediness requirements of Article 5 § 4 of the Convention, the applicant had not been required to await the outcome of those proceedings before applying to the Strasbourg Court.

Conclusion: dismissal of preliminary objection for failure to exhaust domestic remedies, and violation (unanimously).

Article 5 §§ 1 (c) and 3:

For the purposes of these Articles, the period of pre-trial detention to be examined was slightly more than four years.

(a) Alleged lack of reasonable suspicion that the applicant had committed an offence (Article 5 § 1 (c)) – In the Court’s view, the charges against the applicant, who used to be the HDP’s co‑chair and who, in that capacity, had played an important role during the period under consideration, could not be examined in isolation from the specific context of the events in issue.

– Connection between the facts and the charges against the applicant – According to the applicant, his detention under the detention order of 20 September 2019 had been based solely on a criminal reclassification of the same facts as those previously examined by the Grand Chamber in its judgment of 22 December 2020. The Government had disputed this.

In its Selahattin Demirtaş (no. 2) [GC] judgment of 22 December 2020, the Grand Chamber of the Court had considered, in its analysis under Article 18 in conjunction with Article 5 § 1, that there had been “various factual elements and [a] close temporal and substantive connection” between the applicant’s detention on 4 November 2016 and that on 20 September 2019. The Court had further stated that it “[could not] disregard the fact that the applicant [had been] placed in pre-trial detention [on 20 September 2019] on the basis of a new legal classification of the ‘acts and incidents’ relating to the period of 6 to 8 October 2014 that had also formed part of the grounds relied on to justify the specific deprivation of liberty raised in his application, which [had] ended on 2 September 2019” (see above).

The Court observed that although the Government had argued that the pre-trial detention order of 20 September 2019 had not been based on the same facts, evidence and charges as those examined by the Court’s Grand Chamber in relation to the order of 4 November 2016, it was clear that there were close temporal and substantive connections – even if only partial – between those two detention orders.

While some of the facts and charges that had given rise to the measures of 4 November 2016 and 20 September 2019 were clearly connected, the court that had issued the order of 20 September 2019 had taken no account of the applicant’s argument as to that legal connection between the facts and their partial overlap.

In its above-cited judgment of 22 December 2020 [GC], delivered after the applicant’s placement in pre-trial detention on 20 September 2019, the Court’s Grand Chamber had found, regarding the applicant’s initial detention, that “[t]he acts of violence that [had taken] place between 6 and 8 October 2014, regrettable though they [had been], [could not] be seen as a direct consequence of the tweets in question [or] justify the applicant’s pre‑trial detention in relation to the offences in question”. It had similarly found, examining those elements and the other accusations against the applicant, that there had been no reasonable suspicion that he had committed the alleged offences.

In the Court’s view, the Grand Chamber’s finding in respect of the events of 6 to 8 October 2014 made it unnecessary, in principle, to examine whether there was a causal link between the facts relied on by the prosecution and the violence of 6 to 8 October 2014. The Grand Chamber had already concluded that there was no such link in its above-cited judgment.

Nevertheless, the Court considered it necessary to continue examining whether there was reasonable suspicion that the applicant had committed a fresh criminal offence, not known to the authorities at the time he had initially been detained. In other words, it had to ascertain whether there were new factual circumstances supported by credible evidence that could justify the applicant’s detention on 20 September 2019.

– The evidence adduced by the prosecution – The Government had cited a large body of evidence that they argued could justify the impugned measure. It included the evidence obtained before the applicant’s detention and examined in the Grand Chamber judgment; the evidence obtained before the applicant’s detention and not mentioned in the Grand Chamber judgment; and the evidence obtained after the applicant’s detention. Having examined the relevant parts of the various decisions adopted in connection with the applicant’s detention, the Court was not persuaded that they gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that the applicant had committed the offences in question.

– Conclusion – The Court observed that in the preliminary-proceedings report of 7 January 2021 the Assize Court, after examining the Grand Chamber judgment and the case file, had ordered that the applicant be kept in pre-trial detention. In that report, having noted the large number of charges against the applicant in relation to his initial detention of 4 November 2014, it had found that the detention ordered on 20 September 2019 had not fallen within the scope of the Grand Chamber judgment, pointing out that the proceedings pending before it concerned the applicant’s prior and subsequent activities in relation to the events of 6 to 8 October 2014.

In that regard, the Court made the following findings. Firstly, the acts that had triggered the suspicion of incitement to commit an offence, within the meaning of Article 214 § 1 of the Criminal Code and as examined in the above-cited Grand Chamber judgment, were the same as the acts that had given rise to the pre-trial detention of 20 September 2019. In addition, some of the evidence cited by the relevant authorities had previously been examined in that judgment and the remainder, whether obtained before or after the detention order of 20 September 2019, was insufficient to satisfy an objective observer that the applicant could have committed the offences for which he had been placed in pre-trial detention.

The Court attached weight to the Assize Court’s findings that the events of 6 to 8 October 2014 had taken place against a backdrop of tension. In such circumstances, it was crucially important for politicians, when expressing themselves in public, not to make remarks that could trigger violent social conflict. Moreover, given the terrorism situation prevailing in Türkiye for many years, a proven link between a legal political party and a terrorist organisation could be objectively regarded as a threat to democracy.

However, the Court observed, in particular, that the judicial authorities appeared to have ordered the applicant’s return to pre-trial detention on the basis of several assumptions, the principal one being that the Daesh attacks in Kobani had been part of a war between two terrorist organisations: Daesh and the PKK-linked PYD. They had held that, in principle, that war had had no reason to be of interest to Turkish citizens and that, if some had joined demonstrations and had committed acts of violence in response to the events in Kobani, it had been at the instigation of individuals such as the applicant. They had further considered that such acts had also served the ultimate aim of the PKK. Similarly, according to the Government, the applicant had been in a position to foresee that the civil war in Syria constituted a threat to national security in Türkiye and that, in the context of the armed conflict, the remarks in question risked provoking widespread acts of violence and disturbing public order in that country. The fact remained that in September and October 2014 Daesh had launched an offensive on the Syrian city of Kobani, and that military aggression had given rise to a surge of international solidarity along with numerous demonstrations. The demonstrations had been held at least in part to protest against the attack, even supposing that the PKK had sought to make them degenerate in order to harness international goodwill and thereby achieve its own goals. In so far as they had been peaceful, they could therefore be regarded as being protected by Article 11 of the Convention. In addition, the applicant had submitted that, as a significant figure in Turkish politics, he had worked to counter that aggression, without making any calls for violence; his party had posted the tweets in question with that aim in mind; he had indeed given the speeches referred to by the prosecution; and he had spoken with numerous officials involved in the armed conflict in Kobani during the Daesh siege. There was nothing in the case file to rebut those assertions.

In the Court’s view, the evidence as a whole adduced by the prosecution showed that the applicant, as co-chair of a pro-Kurdish political party, had spoken with the participants in the conflict – with the State authorities’ approval and in accordance with Law no. 6551 – and had called for Daesh to be prevented from entering Kobani. Nothing in the calls or speeches in question, which had encouraged people to demonstrate in order to express discontent at the situation in Kobani and to protest against the Government’s inaction in that regard, made it possible to conclude that they had amounted to incitement or instigation of acts of violence. The authorities appeared to have presented those calls to demonstrate as an instigation of insurrection and other serious offences (homicide, assault, etc.), without any evidence to that effect. Similarly, they seemed to reason that since acts of violence had occurred during the demonstrations, the calls for them to take place should be characterised as instigation of the resulting unrest. In the Court’s view, such an approach could demonstrate only a temporal link between the calls to demonstrate and the acts of violence in question. It could not reasonably form the basis for a reasonable suspicion, within the meaning of Article 5 § 1 (c) of the Convention, which would require relevant and convincing indications enabling a link to be established between the calls and the offences.

In addition, the Court could not overlook the fact that the applicant, who had been provisionally released on 2 September 2019 in relation to similar charges, had been arrested again some five years after the events of 6 to 8 October 2014 and the opening of the criminal investigation in 2014. It did not appear from the case file that the judicial authorities that had dealt with the matter just after those events had classified the calls to demonstrate against Daesh made by the applicant and other HDP officials as instigation of the offences subsequently included in the prosecution file. Similarly, it had not been argued that in the judgments convicting demonstrators of violence committed during those events, the relevant assize courts had identified any connection capable of forming the basis of the offences of which the prosecutor’s office had accused the applicant five years after those acts. Admittedly, the Government had submitted that the considerable lapse of time between the circumstances giving rise to the suspicion and the applicant’s detention could be explained by the fact that new evidence had come to light establishing a causal link between the commission of numerous offences and the applicant’s acts. However, as stated above, those elements did not make it possible to demonstrate any willingness or intention on the applicant’s part to cause the peaceful demonstrations to degenerate into acts of rebellion, let alone to instigate the commission of acts of violence.

As regards the applicant’s exchanges with participants in the Kobani conflict, the prosecutor’s office appeared to maintain that the interviews in question, the existence of which had been established by witness statements, constituted evidence capable of showing that the applicant had acted on the instructions of the PKK. The case file did not, however, contain sufficient elements to satisfy an objective observer that there had been reasonable suspicion to justify the deprivation of liberty during the period under consideration.

Ultimately, the Court considered that none of the decisions to place or keep the applicant in pre-trial detention during the initial phase of that custody had contained evidence capable of establishing a sufficient connection between his actions – primarily his political speeches and his interviews during the armed clashes in Kobani in October 2014 – and the offences in question, for which he had been deprived of his liberty. The Government had not demonstrated that the evidence available to the domestic courts at the time of the applicant’s detention on 20 September 2019, and during the initial phase of that custody, had met the standard of “reasonable suspicion” required by Article 5. The Court concluded that there had been a lack of reasonable suspicion that the applicant had committed an offence during the period under consideration.

Conclusion: violation (six votes to one).

(b) Alleged lack of reasoning in the decisions on the pre-trial detention and its duration (Article 5 § 3) – The Court examined whether the national authorities had been able to provide relevant and sufficient reasons for the applicant’s continued detention. Having already found that the evidence adduced did not allow it to conclude that there had been a reasonable suspicion against the applicant at the time of his detention on 20 September 2019 and during the initial phase of his custody and that there had therefore been no reasonable suspicion that he had committed an offence, it was unnecessary to examine whether the authorities had satisfied their obligation to provide relevant and sufficient reasons during that initial period of the applicant’s detention.

With regard to the subsequent decisions to extend the pre-trial detention, the Court observed, in particular, that in the preliminary-proceedings report of 7 January 2021 the Assize Court had considered that there was a flight risk and a risk of pressure being brought to bear on the witnesses and victims. It had further declared that other judicial-supervision measures, such as a ban on leaving the country, would be insufficient in the light of the nature of the investigation and the state of the evidence. The Assize Court had provided those reasons when it had decided to keep the applicant in pre-trial detention until his conviction in May 2024.

The applicant had been in detention since 4 November 2016. For most of that time, he had been held on charges relating to the events of 6 to 8 October 2014, among other things. The Grand Chamber had previously found the suspicion of public incitement to commit an offence in relation to those events to be insufficient in its judgment of 22 December 2020. The applicant had subsequently been placed in pre-trial detention again, this time for instigation of offences in connection with those same events – five years after they had taken place. In the Court’s view, in such circumstances, the applicant’s continued pre-trial detention for more than four years could be justified only by particularly compelling grounds. That had clearly not been the case, for the following reasons.

No convincing reason had been provided as to how a person placed in pre-trial detention since November 2016 could have tampered with evidence in criminal proceedings initiated following an investigation opened in 2014. Furthermore, the additional investigative measures carried out after September 2019 had mainly been aimed at obtaining witness statements; the authorities had taken steps to protect, or even anonymise, the identity of the witnesses concerned. In addition, the flight risk relied on by the domestic courts – which had been based, in particular, on an interview given by the applicant several years before his detention and on the alleged flight of other co‑defendants – appeared hypothetical, was not supported by an individualised assessment and was based on old, circumstantial evidence. Accordingly, in the Court’s view, those reasons could hardly meet the standards of rigour and concreteness required by Article 5 § 3.

Moreover, and in particular, even assuming that the risks examined above had been properly established and had continued to apply, the domestic judicial authorities had failed to consider the possibility of alternatives to pre-trial detention and to explain why such measures could not have been implemented in the present case and could not have prevented the risk of perversion of the course of justice – thus demonstrating that pre-trial detention had been a last resort. Under Article 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, for example, the domestic courts had had the option of placing the applicant under judicial supervision instead of ordering his continued detention. And Article 100 § 1 of that Code required the court first to consider measures less severe than a deprivation of liberty. That had not occurred in the present case, in breach of domestic law. In short, the reasons given by the domestic courts in their decisions concerning the applicant’s pre-trial detention did not suggest that that measure had been applied – in the light of the applicant’s situation – as a last resort, as required by domestic law.

There had not, therefore, been relevant and sufficient reasons for keeping the applicant in pre-trial detention for more than four years. Accordingly, it was not necessary to examine the complaint under the other aspects of Article 5 § 3.

Conclusion: violation (six votes to one).

Article 5 § 4:

Neither the applicant nor his lawyers, all of whom had been unjustifiably prevented from accessing the investigation file, had had the opportunity to properly contest the reasons given for the applicant’s pre-trial detention.

Conclusion: violation (six votes to one).

Article 18 in conjunction with Article 5 § 1:

According to the applicant, his pre-trial detention on 20 September 2019 had pursued the ulterior purpose identified by the Court in its judgment of 22 December 2020 in relation to his initial detention from 4 November 2014, namely to silence him on account of his role in Turkish politics.

In the Court’s view, the applicant’s case could not be regarded as an isolated incident. It had to be assessed in the context of the detention of other political opponents, human-rights defenders and journalists who had been detained and charged to a large extent with manifestly exaggerated criminal offences. The Court considered that the present case fell within that overall context, since the combination of the relevant case-specific facts was analogous to that found in previous judgments against the country in question, where evidence of an ulterior purpose followed from a juxtaposition of the absence of suspicion with contextual factors.

– First, an analysis of the applicant’s detention from 20 September 2019 under Article 18 could not in the present case be divorced from the Grand Chamber’s finding that his initial detention had been in breach of Article 18 in conjunction with Article 5 (see Selahattin Demirtaş (no. 2) [GC]). In particular, when the Grand Chamber had examined the issue of compliance with Article 18 in that judgment, it had considered not only the applicant’s pre-trial detention between 4 November 2016 and 7 December 2018, but also the circumstances surrounding his return to pre‑trial detention on 20 September 2019 – the subject matter of the present application. The Grand Chamber had notably found that, in view of the applicant’s immediate return to pre-trial detention on 20 September 2019 and the speech given by the Turkish President the next day, the domestic authorities had not appeared to be especially interested in the applicant’s suspected involvement in an offence allegedly committed between 6 and 8 October 2014, some five years previously, but rather in keeping him detained, thereby preventing him from carrying out his political activities.

In that regard, the Court’s conclusions as to the reasonableness of the suspicion against the applicant in the present case corroborated the Grand Chamber’s reasoning. In particular, as previously stated, despite the clear connection between some of the facts and charges that had led to the measure of 4 November 2016 – as examined in the above-cited Grand Chamber judgment – and to that of 20 September 2019, the authorities which had ordered the applicant’s second placement in pre-trial detention had provided no legal justification based on the findings of the above-cited Grand Chamber judgment for the reclassification of the offences attributed to him, from “incitement” to commit an offence to its “instigation”. Similarly, although the applicant had been accused of serious offences, their essential constituent elements could not reasonably be deemed to have been made out in the light of the existing evidence.

– Second, the Court also considered it crucial that some five years had elapsed between the events giving rise to the applicant’s initial detention and his return to pre-trial detention on 20 September 2019. The Court took note of elements in support of the third-party interveners’ submissions, which emphasised the overall context of repression targeting various groups opposed to government policy in Türkiye and consisting in reclassifying substantially identical facts as new offences in order to justify repressive measures.

– Third, the applicant and the third-party interveners, referring to international materials, had emphasised, in particular, the control exercised by the executive over the justice system. The applicant had especially drawn the Court’s attention to two speeches given on 9 and 23 December 2020 by the country’s President. The Court was of the view that the judicial decisions in the applicant’s favour cited by the Government admittedly showed that it would be excessive to call into question the independence of the entire domestic justice system. It could not be said that the judiciary acted on the executive’s instructions either. In that connection, the Court could also accept the Government’s argument that statements made by high-ranking officials of the country, long after the issuance of the detention order of 20 September 2019, could not in themselves constitute evidence of an ulterior purpose behind the applicant’s pre-trial detention.

However, the speeches in question and the timeline of the case, taken together, were of some relevance. The Court referred to the findings of the Venice Commission as to judicial independence. In that regard, it could not overlook the fact that when the speeches of 9 and 23 December 2020 had been given, the applicant, who had been in pre-trial detention for more than a year in relation to the present case and for more than two years in relation to the matter examined by the Grand Chamber – which was potentially partly connected to the facts of the present case – had still not been officially charged by the prosecutor’s office. It was on 30 December 2020 that the prosecutor’s office had filed its bill of indictment – that is, shortly after the above-mentioned speeches.

– Fourth, in the above-cited bill of indictment, the public prosecutor’s office had made reference to a number of political speeches given by the applicant between 2013 and 2019 on various topical issues as co-chair of a political party. It had not, however, indicated how they were relevant to its accusations, which lent further support to the applicant’s argument. In the Court’s view, the inclusion of such elements undermined the prosecution’s credibility and could be considered as confirming the applicant’s assertion that the measures taken against him pursued an ulterior purpose, namely that of limiting freedom of political debate.

Considered as a whole, those circumstances thus showed that the measures taken by the authorities had been based on inadequate reasoning and had pursued an ulterior purpose, namely that of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate, which was at the very core of the concept of a democratic society. The restriction of the applicant’s liberty from 20 September 2019 onwards had therefore been imposed for purposes other than those prescribed by Article 5.

Conclusion: violation (six votes to one).

Article 46: The applicant had pointed out that the Grand Chamber had ordered his immediate release in its judgment of 22 December 2020. He had argued that the authorities had disregarded that obligation by extending his detention on the basis of the same facts, under new legal classifications. He had submitted that the proceedings should be terminated and their effects erased. He had also asked the Court, in particular, to indicate general measures.

The Court observed that the applicant’s conviction and imprisonment by the Assize Court on 16 May 2024 had implied a change in the legal basis for his deprivation of liberty. It now fell within the scope of Article 5 § 1 (a) of the Convention, concerning detention after a lawful conviction, and was therefore no longer directly linked to the subject matter of the present case, which primarily concerned the lawfulness of and justification for the applicant’s prior pre-trial detention. Moreover, that decision had not yet become final, since an appeal still lay against it. In accordance with Article 46 § 2 of the Convention, the Committee of Ministers was responsible for supervising the execution of the judgment of 22 December 2020, a procedure which was still ongoing before that body. Accordingly, and having regard to the developments in the applicant’s situation, the Court considered that it was not for it to indicate individual or general measures at that stage.

The Court also found, unanimously, that there was no need to examine separately the merits of the complaint under Article 10.

Article 41: EUR 3,245 in respect of pecuniary damage; EUR 32,500 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.

(See Kavala v. Turkey, 28749/18, 10 December 2019, Legal Summary; Selahattin Demirtaş v. Turkey (no. 2) [GC], 14305/17, 22 December 2020, Legal Summary; Kavala v. Türkiye (infringement proceedings) [GC], 28749/18, 11 July 2022, Legal Summary; Yüksekdağ Şenoğlu and Others v. Türkiye, 14332/17 et al., 8 November 2022)

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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