The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 24 June 2014 as a Chamber composed of: Guido Raimondi, President, Işıl Karakaş, András Sajó, Helen Keller, Paul Lemmens, Robert Spano, Jon Fridrik Kjølbro, judges, and, Stanley Naismith, Section Registrar, Having regard to the above application lodged on 19 January 2009, Having deliberated, decides as follows: THE FACTS 1. The applicants, whose names and places of residence are set out in the appendix, are Turkish nationals. They are represented before the Court by Ms Deniz Karakurt, a lawyer practising in Izmir. A. The circumstances of the case 2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows. 3. The applicants were the mayors of 190 municipalities at the time of lodging their application with the Court. 4. On 6 March 2008 the Parliament of Turkey adopted Law no. 5747 “on...
SECOND SECTION DECISION Application no. 4692/09 Nurgül UÇAR and others against Turkey The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 24 June 2014 as a Chamber composed of: Guido Raimondi, President, Işıl Karakaş, András Sajó, Helen Keller, Paul Lemmens, Robert Spano, Jon Fridrik Kjølbro, judges, and, Stanley Naismith, Section Registrar, Having regard to the above application lodged on 19 January 2009, Having deliberated, decides as follows: THE FACTS 1. The applicants, whose names and places of residence are set out in the appendix, are Turkish nationals. They are represented before the Court by Ms Deniz Karakurt, a lawyer practising in Izmir. A. The circumstances of the case 2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows. 3. The applicants were the mayors of 190 municipalities at the time of lodging their application with the Court. 4. On 6 March 2008 the Parliament of Turkey adopted Law no. 5747 “on establishing districts within the boundaries of metropolitan municipalities and amending various laws”, which was published in the
2 UÇAR AND OTHERS v. TURKEY DECISION Official Gazette of 22 March 2008 and entered into force on that date. Law no. 5747 stipulated, inter alia, that the legal personality of a number of municipalities, including those headed by the applicants, would be abolished and that either those administrative units would become villages/neighbourhoods and join other municipalities, or a certain number of them would together constitute new municipalities. Law no. 5747 further stipulated that the legal personality of those municipalities, as well as their authority and rights, would continue to exist until the next general local elections were held. 5. On 9 April 2008 three members of parliament from the CHP, the main opposition party, Mr H.S. Okay, Mr K. Anadol and Mr K. Kılıçdaroğlu, the party leader, made an application to the Constitutional Court of Turkey. The MPs requested the Constitutional Court to repeal certain provisions of Law no. 5747, including those applicable to the applicants’ municipalities. The MPs claimed, inter alia, that there was no public interest in abolishing the legal personality of certain municipalities and that Law no. 5747 had been adopted so that the governing party, the AKP, could win the local elections in the areas in issue. They further submitted that a referendum should have been held in the municipalities in question, in accordance with the Law on Municipalities (Law no. 5393), and that Law no. 5747 was in contravention of the provisions of the Law on Elections in Local Administrations (Law no. 2972) and the Constitution. On this last point, the MPs submitted that, according to Article 67 of the Constitution, a legislative amendment concerning elections would not be applicable to elections held within one year of the entry into force of those amendments and that the local election process of 2009 wou...