CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE TÃœRMEN

I voted with the majority in finding a violation of Article 10. The case concerns three articles published in the monthly magazine Eşitlik , Özgürlük ve Barış için Devrim for which the owner and the editor-in-chief were convicted and ordered to pay a fine.

I agree that the convictions of the applicants for the first two articles constitute a breach of Article 10 of the Convention. However, I disagree with the majority as regards the third article entitled “The Butcher of Justice is once again at work”.

The article was published at a time when violent unrest prevailed in Turkish prisons. The then Government had tried to find a solution by separating prisoners living in overcrowded prison cells and this had met with fierce and violent resistance from the inmates.

In such a context, to depict the then Minister of Justice as “Butcher of Justice”, with a past “tainted by blood”, clearly made him the potential target of physical violence.

In the Sürek (no. 1) judgment of 8 July 1999, where the impugned publication had referred to incumbent and past Prime Ministers of Turkey and had labelled them as a “murder gang” and “hired killers of imperialism”, the Grand Chamber expressed the opinion that labels such as these, together with the identification of persons by name, “stirred up hatred for them and exposed them to the possible risk of physical violence” (see Sürek v. Turkey (no. 1) [GC], no. 26682/95, § 62, ECHR 1999 ‑ IV) . On that ground the Grand Chamber found that there had been no violation of Article 10.

In the light of the Sürek (no. 1) judgment, the majority opinion that there has been a violation of Article 10 in the present case seems to be a major departure from the Court ’ s case-law and not a justified one.

I firmly believe that the interference by the authorities in respect of the third article does not constitute a violation of Article 10.