DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE GÖLCÜKLÜ

( Translation )

I regret that I am unable to agree with the Court’s conclusion that there has been a violation of Article 13 of the Convention (see point 4 of the operative provisions of the judgment).

Here are my reasons for disagreeing with that conclusion:

1. Firstly, the parts of the judgment setting out the procedure and summarising the circumstances of the case contain significant gaps concerning the dates when certain procedural steps were taken; the omission of those dates makes it difficult to have a precise understanding of the case for the purposes of examining the complaint under Article 13. The missing information includes: the date the public prosecutor issued his decision that he had no jurisdiction, the date the relevant administrative council decided not to pursue the case for want of sufficient evidence substantiating the complaints and, lastly, the date the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the administrative council’s decision.

Each of those dates was relevant for determining with certainty whether the applicant had been denied a domestic remedy, in breach of Article 13.

2. The only information provided on the subject in the instant case is, firstly, that the applicant lodged her application with the European Commission of Human Rights on 2 May 1994, through the route that has become customary in this type of case – namely the Diyarbakır Human Rights Association, a firm of British lawyers in London, and Strasbourg – without taking any steps to air her grievances before the national authorities. The Commission then delivered its admissibility decision on 23 May 1996, the Government only becoming aware of the case when the application was communicated to them. The fact of the matter is that the applicant at no stage cooperated with the authorities dealing with the case and was of no assistance to them.

3. I reluctantly agree with the Court’s decision to dismiss the Government’s preliminary objection that domestic remedies have not been exhausted, but have difficulty in accepting a finding of a violation of Article 13 in a case in which the applicant took no steps, not even minor ones, before the national courts to have the violations which she alleged remedied. In that connection, I also refer to the dissenting opinion which I delivered jointly with Judge Matscher in Mentes and Others v. Turkey (judgment of 28 November 1997, Reports 1997-VIII), a case similar to the instant one, and to the opinions of Judge Russo and Judge De Meyer in that case.