{"id":250,"date":"2014-05-27T19:00:46","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=250"},"modified":"2014-05-28T08:07:19","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T08:07:19","slug":"euro-court-finds-turkey-guilty-in-freedom-of-thought-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=250","title":{"rendered":"Euro court finds Turkey guilty in freedom of thought case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Hurriyet Daily News<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/covcasbulletin-info.hhd.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/court-gavel.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-251\" src=\"https:\/\/covcasbulletin-info.hhd.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/court-gavel.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"365\" height=\"220\" srcset=\"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/court-gavel.jpg 626w, https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/court-gavel-300x180.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 365px) 100vw, 365px\" \/><\/a>(<span id=\"ctl00_ctl01_ctl00_lblAgency\" class=\"Agency\">STRASBOURG, France<\/span>) The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has found Turkey guilty of violating the right to the freedom of expression, in a case regarding an article written by a law professor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mustafa Erdo\u011fan, a constitutional law professor, published an article in a quarterly law journal criticizing Constitutional Court judges for their 2001 decision to shut down the Virtue Party (FP), a forerunner of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The article suggested that the judges were incompetent and questioned their impartiality.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Three of the judges opened judicial proceedings against Erdo\u011fan and Haluk K\u00fcr\u015fad Kopuzlu, the publisher of the Liberal Thinking journal, claiming that the article was a serious personal attack on their honor and integrity. As a result, Turkish courts ruled from 2002 to 2004 that the article\u2019s intimation that the judges lacked independence and competence amounted to defamation. Erdo\u011fan and Kopuzlu were therefore ordered to pay damages to each respective judge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Freedom of expression<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Yesterday\u2019s ECHR ruling stated that the verdict amounted to a violation of freedom of expression. \u201cThe Court found that the national courts\u2019 decisions complained of by the applicants amounted to interference, prescribed by Turkish law, in the exercise of the applicants\u2019 right to freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cSome of the remarks made in the article were harsh they were largely value judgments, set out in general terms, with sufficient factual basis. They could not be considered gratuitous personal attacks on the three judges,\u201d said the court.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The ECHR held that Turkey was to pay Erdo\u011fan pecuniary damage in Euros equivalent to the damages paid by him after the claims lodged by the three judges, and 7,500 euros extra in non-pecuniary damages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Hurriyet Daily News (STRASBOURG, France) The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has found Turkey guilty of violating the right to the freedom of expression, <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=250\" title=\"Euro court finds Turkey guilty in freedom of thought case\">[more &gt;&gt;&gt;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","category-turkey-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}