Information Note on the Court’s case-law 221
August-September 2018
Tuğluk and Others v. Turkey (dec.) - 30687/05 and 45630/05
Decision 4.9.2018 [Section II]
Article 10
Article 10-1
Freedom of expression
Lawyers temporarily barred from representing their terrorist client to avoid transmission of his statements: inadmissible
Facts – The applicants, who are lawyers, were temporarily barred by the judicial authorities from representing their client Abdullah Öcalan to ensure that they would not transmit their client’s statements to the press. Accounts of their visits were published in the following days in certain newspapers, where they were seen as conveying their client’s opinions on the current situation or as giving instructions to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).
Law – Article 10: Assuming that the impugned measure constituted an interference with the applicants’ freedom of expression, it was clearly prescribed by law and pursued the aim of the prevention of disorder or crime.
The Court had previously found in the cases of Öcalan v. Turkey [GC] (46221/99, 12 May 2005, Information Note 75) and Öcalan v. Turkey (no. 2) (24069/03 et al., 18 March 2014) that the rules on contacts with the outside world for lifers held in a high-security prison sought to restrict any links between the persons concerned and their criminal background, to minimise the risk of their maintaining personal contact with the structures of criminal organisations. The Court also regarded as well-founded the Government’s concerns that Abdullah Öcalan might make use of communications with the outside world to make contact with the members of the armed separatist movement of which he was the leader.
The role played by the applicants as lawyers and intermediaries between their client and the criminal courts imposed a certain number of obligations on their conduct. The press conferences held by the applicants after their visits to their client had not concerned his defence nor did they fall within the exercise of the right to inform the public about the functioning of the justice system, but rather could be seen as a means of conveying their client’s views on, among other things, the strategy to be adopted by his former armed organisation, the PKK. The measures taken by the national authorities had sought to prevent the applicants from exploiting their visits to their client in order to establish communication between him and his former armed organisation, and they had met a pressing social need, namely to prevent any violent or terrorist acts.
The imposition on the applicants of a temporary procedural measure had been proportionate to the aim pursued, especially as, while the length of the suspension of their client’s representation for a year and a half could not be seen as insignificant, it was nevertheless not excessive. This moderate sanction, which in fact had had no repercussion for the applicants’ professional activities vis-à-vis their clients other than Abdullah Öcalan, had constituted a non-disproportionate response to their actions, since their conduct had contravened the rules governing their office.
Conclusion: inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded).
(See also Morice v. France [GC], 29369/10, 23 April 2015, Information Note 184; and the Factsheet on Life imprisonment)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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