Information Note on the Court’s case-law 43

June 2002

Sadak and Others v. Turkey (no. 2) - 25144/94, 26149/95, 26150/95 et al.

Judgment 11.6.2002 [Section IV]

Article 3 of Protocol No. 1

Stand for election

Termination of the mandate of Members of Parliament as a result of the dissolution of their party by the Constitutional Court: violation

Facts : The applicants were members of the Turkish Grand National Assembl y and a political party, the DEP (the Democracy Party - Demokrasi partisi ), which was founded in May 1993.  In November of that year, the Principal State Counsel at the Court of Cassation applied to the Constitutional Court to have the party dissolved. The application referred to statements made by various members of the DEP’s central committee and statements made by its former chairman at two meetings in other countries. In March 1994, the Grand National Assembly lifted the applicants’ parliamentary immuni ty at the request of the State Counsel at the competent Court of State Security. All the applicants were arrested and taken into custody as they left the parliament, except for two of them who remained within the building. In June 1994, the Constitutional Court made an order dissolving the DEP for terminating the integrity of the state and the unity of the nation and undermining all the applicants’ parliamentary mandates. In July 1994, the State Counsel filed submissions in which he accused the applicants of separatism and undermining the integrity of the state. The Court of State Security sentenced the applicants to prison sentences ranging from three to fifteen years.  The Court of Cassation quashed the convictions of two of the applicants and upheld the others.

Law : Article 3 of Protocol No.1 – This article enshrined a characteristic of an effective political democracy and played a major role in the Convention system.  It guaranteed the right of every individual to stand for election and, once elected, to exercise his or her mandate.  Interference with the freedom of expression of a member of the parliamentary opposition called for the strictest possible supervision under the Convention. In the instant case, the applicants had been automatically deprived of their parliamentary mandates following the dissolution of the DEP. That penalty had not been imposed as a result of the applicants’ political activities as individuals, but had been an automatic consequence of the dissolution of the party of which they were members. Since a constitutional amendment in 1995, only members of parliament whose words or deeds had caused the dissolution of a party had lost their parliamentary mandate. The measure concerned was an extremely harsh penalty: the DEP had been perm anently dissolved with immediate effect and the applicants, who had been members of that party, had been banned from carrying on political activities and had been unable to continue to exercise their mandates. Consequently, the penalty imposed could not be regarded as proportionate to any legitimate aim relied on. The measure was incompatible with the very essence of the right to stand for election and to hold parliamentary office, conferred on the applicants by Article 3 of Protocol No.1, and had infringed the unfettered discretion of the electorate which had elected them.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 41 – The Court awarded each of the applicants 50,000 euros for damage.  As regards costs and expenses, it awarded a total of 10,500 euros to seven applicants and a total of 9,000 euros to the remaining six applicants.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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