It will be the first annual briefing held by the new president of the court, Sir Nicolas Bratza, a British judge, who replaced Jean-Paul Costa last year. He will present a summary of the court’s activities and its statistics for 2011. As always, Erik Fribergh, the blunt-speaking court’s registrar, will be sitting next to him to respond to questions from the press.
Turkey has been a notorious customer of this Strasbourg-based court, coming in at number two after Russia in number of cases filed in successive years in the past. It was number one in terms of the number of decisions handed down by the ECtHR against any member state of the CoE. There is something different this time for Turkey in that it has recently introduced a number of judicial reforms that may change its poor reputation into a more positive one.
Turkey has worked in earnest with the court as well as other institutions of the CoE, especially the Venice Commission, in changing its legislation and constitutional articles to reflect a better understanding of CoE norms. It is encouraging to see the enthusiasm and optimism among both Turkish and CoE officials with regard to improvements in Turkey in recent years.
I recently became aware of a new remedy suggested by Turkey to the ECtHR in recent months to find a domestic solution to decrease the number of cases filed against Turkey at the European court. Eager to reduce the backlog of cases, the ECtHR welcomed the suggestion by the Justice Ministry. The details have not yet been made public, and it is still a work in progress, but my understanding is that a pilot program will be started to introduce a new domestic remedy for citizens to seek their rights without the need to petition to the ECtHR. As part of the project, some of the ongoing cases at the European court will be heard by these new mechanisms in Turkey.
This new measure would be a similar one to the independent compensation commission set up by the Turkish government in 2004 to compensate terrorism victims. There were a total of 360,000 claims filed with this commission, and 230,000 of those claims have been settled. In July 2011 the ECtHR reported that Turkey had paid a total of 1 billion euros to terrorism victims. The ECtHR was satisfied with this domestic remedy, saying the commission was effective and the compensation reasonable. As a result, it dismissed about 150 cases in July of last year.
When the Constitutional Court starts accepting petitions from individual plaintiffs by the end of this year as part of changes made to the Constitution after a referendum held on Sept. 12, 2010, we will see a further drop in the number of cases against Turkey in the ECtHR.
What Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin announced on Wednesday is also crucial in speeding up long trial proceedings in Turkey. The excessively long proceedings in civil, criminal and administrative cases violate Article 6, paragraph 1, of the convention. Turkey was found guilty of violating this provision in 13 percent of rulings the court rendered against Turkey in 2010. If you add violations of other provisions included in the same article, which deals with fair trial, the percentage jumps to 34 percent. Between 1995 and 2010, the ECtHR delivered more than 2,200 rulings against Turkey, and almost 700 of these rulings concerned violations of the right to a fair trial. In 2010 alone the ECtHR found violations of the convention in 83 cases due to the excessive length of the proceedings.
Another systemic problem in the Turkish judicial system is long periods of pre-trial detention. Ergin’s new judicial reform package aims to make it difficult for courts to issue detention orders for suspects before trial. The package, which introduces nearly 100 amendments to the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), the Counterterrorism Law (TMK) and other laws, was designed to increase democratization in line with the standards of the ECtHR. The new reforms will influence nearly 2 million cases in Turkey.
On a separate note, I need to clarify an erroneous assumption made with regard to Turkey in many reports, including a report by CoE Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammerberg published last week. The mistake has led many to wrongly claim that an inflated number of people are currently held in detention pending trial in Turkey. The misunderstanding was caused by different calculations made in Turkey about who is considered a convict and who is not. If we are to take the ECtHR standards, individuals who were convicted in courts of first instance but who are awaiting for approval of their appeal by the Supreme Court of Appeals are considered “convicts.” In that case, the rate of inmates jailed pending trial in Turkish prisons stands at 28.4 percent, a figure much lower than the figure in a number of European countries. In contrast, the rate of inmates jailed pending trial in Italy is 41 percent, 40 percent in the Netherlands and 38 percent in Luxembourg.
Going back to the judicial overhaul in Turkey, I’m sure the ECtHR will be more than happy to see one of its biggest customers go away since Turkey, along with Italy, Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, are responsible for nearly 70 percent of all applications pending at the court. The court backlog has increased at a rate of 20,000 annually in recent years, reaching 160,000 applications pending today. As of October 2011, almost 20,000 applications coming from Turkey.
The Turkish government’s efforts to recruit and train a large number of new judges and prosecutors are also important to address shortages in human resources in the Turkish judiciary. This would help cut the lengthy trial periods and alleviate the burden on the judiciary. It has already produced results at the Supreme Court of Appeals, which for the first time has concluded more cases than the number of incoming ones. At this speed, all the pending applications before the Supreme Court of Appeals will be concluded within two-and-a-half years.
More importantly, the revamped judicial council in Turkey, called the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), seems to be very keen on putting special emphasis on the ECtHR rulings. This will help change the established practices and approaches taken by judges and prosecutors in the country. When that happens, we will not be wasting time, money and effort in repetitive applications finding their way to the ECtHR.
