Events
The applicants were sentenced to imprisonment or judicial fines for the opinions they expressed in various ways or for their actions in meetings and demonstrations in which they participated, but were placed under supervision for five years with a decision to defer the announcement of the verdict (HAGB).
Allegations
Applicants argued that the decision to grant them Leniency for various offences violated their freedom of expression and their right to organise meetings and demonstrations.
The Court’s Assessment
The Constitutional Court has previously ruled in many judgements that the HAGB decisions and the periods of supervision imposed for various expressions of opinion constitute interference and violation of some fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals, such as freedom of expression or press, or the right to organise meetings and demonstrations.
In the concrete applications, it has been accepted that the HAGB decisions issued as a result of violations of various guarantees of the right to a fair trial, including equality of arms, the right to defence, the right to the assistance of a defence counsel and the right to a reasoned decision, interfered with the applicants’ freedom of expression or the right to hold meetings and demonstrations. In this framework, it is necessary to determine whether the interventions realised by the Leniency Decisions issued as a result of the trial processes that took place separately against the applicants meet the legality criterion.
The current legal regulations are not sufficient to eliminate the problems arising from the application of the Leniency Judgement; they cannot systematically eliminate the deterrent effect on various fundamental rights of the applicants such as freedom of expression and the right to organise meetings and demonstrations. As a matter of fact, it is seen that neither the legal amendments made in the Law No. 5271 regarding the HAGB institution, nor the case law of the Court of Cassation on the subject, nor the practices of the first instance courts have been sufficient to eliminate the problems set out in detail in the judgement.
As a whole, it has been concluded that the legislation constituting the HAGB institution contains structural problems that lead to continuous violations of fundamental rights and freedoms, especially freedom of expression, and that it is not possible to eliminate these problems in a way other than the regulation of the legislator, for example through the interpretations made by the judicial bodies. In the current situation, the courts of first instance and the Court of Cassation could not prevent the violations of the constitutional rights of the applicants protected by Articles 26 and 34 of the Constitution by the HAGB institution, which was applied in all decisions subject to the application.
As a result of all the evaluations made by the Constitutional Court, the Constitutional Court has reached the conclusion that the interventions arising from the application of the HAGB institution subject to the applications at hand do not meet the legality criterion.
For the reasons explained, the Constitutional Court decided that the right to freedom of expression and the right to organise meetings and demonstrations were violated.
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