This judgment may be subject to editorial revision. ÇELİK v. TURKEY (no. 1) JUDGMENT 1 In the case of Çelik v. Turkey (no. 1), The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting as a Chamber composed of: Françoise Tulkens, President, Ireneu Cabral Barreto, Vladimiro Zagrebelsky, Danutė Jočienė, Dragoljub Popović, András Sajó, Işıl Karakaş, judges, and Sally Dollé, Section Registrar, Having deliberated in private on 16 December 2008, Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date: PROCEDURE 1. The case originated in an application (no. 39324/02) against the Republic of Turkey lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a Turkish national, Mr Murat Çelik (“the applicant”), on 3 September 2002. 2. The applicant was represented by Mrs S. Ballıkaya Çelik, a lawyer...
CONSEIL DE L’EUROPE COUNCIL OF EUROPE COUR EUROPÉENNE DES DROITS DE L’HOMME EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS SECOND SECTION CASE OF ÇELİK v. TURKEY (no. 1) (Application no. 39324/02) JUDGMENT STRASBOURG 20 January 2009 FINAL 20/04/2009 This judgment may be subject to editorial revision.
ÇELİK v. TURKEY (no. 1) JUDGMENT 1 In the case of Çelik v. Turkey (no. 1), The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting as a Chamber composed of: Françoise Tulkens, President, Ireneu Cabral Barreto, Vladimiro Zagrebelsky, Danutė Jočienė, Dragoljub Popović, András Sajó, Işıl Karakaş, judges, and Sally Dollé, Section Registrar, Having deliberated in private on 16 December 2008, Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date: PROCEDURE 1. The case originated in an application (no. 39324/02) against the Republic of Turkey lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a Turkish national, Mr Murat Çelik (“the applicant”), on 3 September 2002. 2. The applicant was represented by Mrs S. Ballıkaya Çelik, a lawyer practising in Istanbul. The Turkish Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent. 3. On 5 November 2007 the President of the Second Section decided to give notice of the application to the Government. It was also decided to examine the merits of the application at the same time as its admissibility (Article 29 § 3). THE FACTS I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE 4. The applicant, a lawyer, was born in 1966 and lives in Istanbul. He was a member of the board of directors of the Istanbul Bar Association and Istanbul department director of the Contemporary Lawyers Association at the time of the lodging of the application. The applicant also pursued various activities for the furtherance of human rights protection in Turkey.
2 ÇELİK v. TURKEY (no. 1) JUDGMENT A. The alleged ill-treatment 5. In his application form the applicant submitted that, on 18 February 1999, a client of his and Ms Several Demir, a certain Ms S.P., committed suicide in prison in protest. When they went to pick up her body at the morgue, together with the deceased’s brother, a police officer approached them and told them that Mr A.Ç., the deputy police chief of the Istanbul Security Directorate, would like to express his condolences and invited them to the Security Directorate to meet him. At the police station the applicant and Ms Demir were asked to wait outside while Mr A.Ç. received the deceased’s brother, Mr A.P. After a while they were also received. The applicant claimed that there were seven or eight other policemen in the room and that, as soon as they entered the room and sat down, Mr A.Ç. asked, in a stern tone, why they were interested in this incident. When the applicant stated that they were the deceased’s lawyers, Mr A.Ç. became angry and told them in a rude manner that the dead people do not have lawyers. The a...