SECOND SECTION

DECISION

Application no . 39813/04 Naciye AKYÃœZ against Turkey

The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 24 November 2015 as a Committee composed of:

Paul Lemmens, President, Ksenija Turković, Jon Fridrik Kjølbro, judges, and Abel Campos, Deputy Section Registrar ,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

The applicant, Mrs Naciye Akyüz, is a Turkish national, who was born in 1926 and lives in Ankara. She was represented before the Court by Ms Demir, a lawyer practising in Ankara.

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

On 23 October 1996 the applicant initiated compensation proceedings before the Ankara Commercial Court against a private company. On 8 May 2002 the first instance court partially accepted the applicant ’ s claims and awarded her a certain amount of compensation. On 17 March 2003 and 21 January 2004 the applicant ’ s appeal and rectification requests were rejected respectively by the Court of Cassation. This decision was notified to the applicant on 3 March 2004.

COMPLAINTS

The applicant alleged under Article 6 of the Convention that the domestic proceedings lasted for an unreasonably long time. She further complained about the outcome of the proceedings, stating that domestic courts erred in the assessment of the facts and evidence.

THE LAW

Relying on Article 6 of the Convention, the applicant complained about the length and the fairness of the proceedings.

As to the length of the proceedings, t he Court observes that the applicant asserted that the length of the proceedings had been incompatible with the principle of the “reasonable time” requirement in accordance with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. The Court held that the Compensation Commission established by Law no. 6384, insofar as it is a priori accessible and capable of offering reasonable prospects of redress for complaints concerning the length of proceedings, constituted a remedy which applicants were required to exhaust for the purposes of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention (see Turgut and others v. Turkey (dec.), no. 4860/09, 26 March 2013). Accordingly, the applicant should avail herself of the new remedy offered by Law no. 6384.

It follows that this complaint must be rejected under Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies.

As to the complaint concerning the fairness of the proceedings, the Court finds that in the present case, the domestic courts ’ decisions were given on the basis of domestic law and the particular circumstances of the case. There is no element which might lead it to conclude that the domestic courts acted in an arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable manner in establishing the facts or interpreting the domestic law (see, among many other authorities , Vidal v. Belgium , 22 April 1992, § 32, Series A no. 235-B, and Edwards v. the United Kingdom , 16 December 1992, § 34, Series A no. 247-B). The Court therefore holds that this complaint is of a fourth instance nature and rejects it as being manifestly ill-founded.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 17 December 2015 .

Abel Campos Paul Lemmens              Deputy Registrar President