Information Note on the Court’s case-law 36

November 2001

Tanrıkulu, Çetin and Kaya and Others v. Turkey (dec.) - 40150/98, 40153/98 and 40160/98

Decision 6.11.2001 [Section II]

Article 10

Article 10-1

Freedom to impart information

Circulation of newspaper prohibited in region where state of emergency has been declared: admissible

Article 34

Victim

Applications by newspaper readers following the dec ision of the authorities to prohibit the circulation of the newspaper in their region: inadmissible

The first applicant is one of the founders of the Human Rights Association in Diyarbakır. The second applicant and most of the applicants who lodged the thi rd application are journalists working for Ülkede Gündem , a daily Turkish-language newspaper with its headquarters in Istanbul. The other applicants are office employees who are regular readers of the daily in question. The applicants allege that on severa l occasions in October and November 1997 circulation of the daily was disrupted in the south-east of the country, a region subject to a state of emergency, due to repeated seizures of the newspaper by security forces. Some of the applicants lodged a crimin al complaint with the Diyarbakır public prosecutor on the ground that circulation of the newspaper had been disrupted. In February 1998 the Diyarbakır Administrative Council found that there was no case to answer, a decision which was upheld by the Supreme Administrative Court in March 2000. In November 1997, during the human rights award ceremony in the United States, the first applicant gave a speech on, among other things, the Kurdish problem. His speech provoked a fierce debate in the Turkish press. On 5 December 1997 Ülkede Gündem published an article, to which the first applicant had contributed, on the conference held in the United States. In a directive of 1 December 1997, the provincial governor’s office for the region subject to the state of emerge ncy prohibited the circulation of the daily in the region. In October 1998 Ülkede Gündem ceased operating.

Admissible under Article 10 with regard to the journalists on the daily: The journalist applicants prepared articles on the region in which circulat ion of the newspaper had been prohibited. Their job of diffusing information was directly concerned by the prohibition on circulation of their newspaper. Their main readers were in the region subject to the state of emergency and had no alternative means o f reading their articles than by reading the newspaper. The impugned measure thus had real repercussions on the manner in which those applicants exercised their journalistic profession and each of them could be considered to be a victim of an interference with the exercise of their right guaranteed by Article 10.

Inadmissible under Article 10 in respect of the first applicant and the other applicants: The first applicant’s argument was based essentially on the necessity of replying to criticism in the national press following the article published in the newspaper subject to t he prohibition measure. That measure had not, however, been motivated by the article in question. Furthermore, the applicant could have reacted through the medium of other newspapers or television. Accordingly, the applicant had not been prevented from inf orming the public of his ideas or his reactions.

With regard to the status of victim of the first applicant and the other applicants, who were office employees and mere readers of the newspaper, the Convention did not allow for an actio popularis . In respect of the possible exercise of their right of individual petition, those applicants, in their capacity as readers, had an adequate choice of means of receiving information and had not shown how the impugned prohibition had directly affected them. They could not therefore claim to be victims of the prohibition on circulation of the newspaper in their region: manifestly ill-founded.

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

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