Violation Of Freedom Of Expression Due To Termination Of Employment Contract Due To Remarks Directed To The Mayor’s Wife
Events
The applicant, who worked as a sociologist in the municipality, coordinated a shelter which was closed down by a decision of the same municipality. Before the closure decision was taken, the applicant sent an e-mail to the relevant mayor and wrote to the mayor’s wife, who was a director in the same municipality, asking for help in reversing the closure decision. Despite the applicant’s attempts and efforts, the municipality decided to close down and dismiss the staff. The closure decision was the subject of controversy in the local and national press, and a columnist for a national newspaper based his allegations on the statements of an unnamed employee of the organisation.
At the time of the controversy, the applicant’s statements in a post on a mobile phone application prompted the municipality’s Inspection Board Directorate to launch an investigation. Four days after this incident, the applicant’s employment contract was terminated on the grounds that the conditions for justified termination had been met. As a result of the lawsuit filed, the labour court ruled for the reinstatement of the applicant. Upon the municipality’s appeal, the Regional Administrative Court (BAM) annulled the aforementioned decision and ruled for the dismissal of the case.
Allegations
The applicant claimed that the termination of his employment contract due to his remarks about the mayor’s wife violated his freedom of expression.
The Court’s Assessment
In the concrete case, the BAM accepted that the applicant had targeted the mayor’s wife with the expressions he used to explain that the reasons for the closure of the shelter were ridiculous and that the termination of his employment contract was justified. The wife of the mayor, whom the applicant was deemed to have targeted, was not the applicant’s employer. The BAM concluded that the termination of the contract was justified solely on the basis of the fact that the applicant was the wife of the mayor, without addressing the reason for the words and the position of the mayor’s wife within the organisation.
Applicant, having failed to obtain results from her meetings with those responsible for the closure of the shelter, met with various non-governmental organisations in order to create public opinion for the reversal of the relevant decision and tried to gather support by expressing her views on social media. Therefore, the applicant did not use the statements shown as the reason for the termination of his employment contract for personal gain or out of personal anger against his superiors and employer. However, given the vital importance of the shelters, the closure of which the applicant opposed, in terms of violence against women, the applicant’s assessments on the subject have contributed to a debate of high public interest.
Considering that the applicant worked as a coordinator at the shelter for years, it should be considered natural for him to express his opinion on the incident in question. In this sense, the fact that the words accepted to have been used by the applicant were rude or sarcastic should not overshadow the weight of his contribution to the public debate.
On the other hand, the content of the expressions used in the case and their impact on the life of the addressee must also be assessed. In the relevant message, the applicant criticises the decision of the mayor’s wife, a woman, to close the shelter. However, it is clear that the words used were not insulting words addressed to the person of the addressee, but expressions of criticism regarding the public activity being carried out. It can be accepted that the words used by the applicant were hurtful to the addressee. However, the Constitutional Court has always emphasised that officials exercising public authority have to endure more criticism and that the limits of criticism towards them are much wider.
Despite these findings, the BAM did not discuss the context of the expressions used by the applicant, the environment in which the words were shared, the fact that the mayor’s wife was the addressee of these words due to the public activity she carried out. Having concluded that the applicant’s post was of such a nature as to reach the level of insulting the mayor’s wife, BAM rejected the applicant’s case, but failed to show that the applicant’s words reached the level that justified the termination of his employment contract. BAM made an assessment without considering the manner and reason for the words subject to the application, whether there was a background to the words uttered, whether they took place in the context of a public debate.
Although the applicant declared that the posts subject to the complaint did not belong to him, the judicial bodies did not conduct the necessary research on the source of the posts. It should be noted that sanctioning individuals for posts of dubious origin may have a deterrent effect on expressions of opinion and result in the legitimisation of defamation.
As a result, BAM accepted that the statements in question constituted a just cause for termination without establishing a balance between freedom of expression and the right to protection of honour and reputation. BAM failed to show that the interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression was aimed at meeting a compelling social need in a democratic society.
For the reasons explained above, the Constitutional Court decided that the freedom of expression was violated.
You can access our other article examples and petition examples by clicking here.