The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 30 August 2016 as a Committee composed of: Ksenija Turković, President, Jon Fridrik Kjølbro, Georges Ravarani, judges, and Hasan Bakırcı, Deputy Section Registrar, Having regard to the above application lodged on 1 April 2015, Having deliberated, decides as follows: THE FACTS The applicant, Mr Mansur Yavaş, is a Turkish national who was born in 1955 and lives in Ankara. He was represented before the Court by Mr H.H. Güllü, a lawyer practising in Ankara. A. The circumstances of the case The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows. 1. The applicant ran in the municipal elections of 30 March 2014 in Turkey as candidate for the People’s Republican Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – “the CHP”) for the office of mayor of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality. 2. The results announced by the...
SECOND SECTION DECISION Application no. 16576/15 Mansur YAVAŞ against Turkey The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 30 August 2016 as a Committee composed of: Ksenija Turković, President, Jon Fridrik Kjølbro, Georges Ravarani, judges, and Hasan Bakırcı, Deputy Section Registrar, Having regard to the above application lodged on 1 April 2015, Having deliberated, decides as follows: THE FACTS The applicant, Mr Mansur Yavaş, is a Turkish national who was born in 1955 and lives in Ankara. He was represented before the Court by Mr H.H. Güllü, a lawyer practising in Ankara. A. The circumstances of the case The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows. 1. The applicant ran in the municipal elections of 30 March 2014 in Turkey as candidate for the People’s Republican Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – “the CHP”) for the office of mayor of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality. 2. The results announced by the National Electoral Commission (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu – “the YSK”), showed that the applicant got 1,385,038 votes while one of his opponents, Mr İ.M.G., a member of the Justice and
2 YAVAŞ v. TURKEY DECISION Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – “the AKP”) obtained 1,416,770 votes. 3. On 6 April 2014 the CHP filed a complaint about the election results with the YSK and asked for a re-count because of electoral discrepancies and fraud. Its allegations included: (a) that the written records of 2,098 of the total 12,234 ballot boxes, mostly where the AKP candidate had been the winner, had lacked official stamps with unique serial numbers; (b) the executive authority had not been impartial because the then Deputy Prime Minister had visited the centre where the votes were being collected and counted during election night; (c) the Minister of Justice had held a joint news conference with the AKP candidate before the results were announced and expressed his support for him; (d) a sudden blackout and power cut in certain districts of Ankara had occurred on election night while the whole nation had been watching a live broadcast on the vote count and at a time when the applicant’s party had been leading; (e) the members of the ballot box committees had failed to perform their duties properly, for example they had not stamped the ballots correctly, which had resulted in some votes being declared invalid, and; (f) the website of the only independent news agency covering the elections and providing real-time updates on the results had been hacked, leaving the state-owned news agency as the only available source of information. It, in turn, had stopped updating its news for four hours when the applicant’s party had been leading. 4. On 9 April 2014 the YSK rejected the complaints and stated, inter alia, that the party had not submitted any documentary or other evidence to prove its allegations. According to the YSK, the lack of official stamps should be considered as...