The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Turkish prison authorities violated the rights of Emrah Uygun, who was sentenced to more than six years in prison in 2017 over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, by unjustifiably withholding a letter he wrote to his fiancée in 2018.
The court found that Turkish authorities interfered disproportionately with Uygun’s right to family and personal life, including his home and correspondence, guaranteed under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In its ruling the Strasbourg-based court said Turkish officials failed to strike a balance between security concerns and the inmate’s right to private communication.
The 10-page letter, mostly personal in nature, contained a single paragraph that prison officials deemed problematic. The court pointed out that Turkish authorities did not consider redacting the paragraph or using less restrictive measures.
“While the reasons provided by the authorities may be deemed relevant, they were not sufficient to justify the withholding of the complete letter,” the court said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as some of his family members and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following an abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Following the failed coup, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, and more than 24,000 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
In Uygun’s case the ECtHR also emphasized that neither the disciplinary board nor Turkish courts gave adequate consideration to the applicant’s limited means of contacting his fiancée, since telephone and visitation rights were also restricted under emergency laws.
While the court declined to award damages, it said the ruling itself constituted sufficient acknowledgment of the rights violation.
