TURKEY
| CASE No. TK/66 - MERVE SAFA KAVAKÇI |
Resolution adopted unanimously by the IPU Governing Council at its 180th session
(Nusa Dua, Bali, 4 May 2007)
The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,
Referring to the case of Ms. Merve Safa Kavakçi of Turkey, as outlined in the report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CL/180/12(b)-R.1), and to the resolution adopted at its 177th session (October 2005),
Recalling the following:
- Ms. Kavakçi was elected to the Turkish Grand National Assembly in the April 1999 legislative elections on the Virtue Party ticket. Not only was she prevented from taking the oath of office, because she wore a headscarf at the swearing-in ceremony, she was not allowed to carry out her parliamentary mandate, as the Government had revoked her Turkish nationality in May 1999 on the grounds that she had acquired United States nationality without the prior agreement of the Turkish authorities. She regained Turkish citizenship upon marrying a Turkish citizen in October 1999. According to the source, failing any decision by the Turkish Grand National Assembly to end her mandate, Ms. Kavakçi remained a member enjoying full parliamentary privileges. On 14 March 2001 the President of the Assembly nevertheless informed it that, because her Turkish citizenship had been revoked, Ms. Kavakçi "had lost her eligibility to be elected" and therefore "does not have parliamentary status".
- On 22 June 2001 the Turkish Constitutional Court dissolved the Virtue Party, inter alia owing to Ms. Kavakçi's speeches and activities; Ms. Kavakçi was therefore automatically banned from politics for five years, by virtue of Article 69, paragraph 8,* of the Constitution. By virtue of Article 84 of the Constitution, Ms. Kavakçi would have lost her parliamentary mandate at that point, had she been able to exercise it.
- On 28 May 2001 Ms. Kavakçi filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights invoking a violation of her rights under Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion) and Article 6, paragraph 1 (right to a fair and public hearing), of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and Article 3 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR (guarantee of free and fair elections); on 13 September 2005, the Court granted leave to the IPU to submit a third-party intervention under Rule 44 (2) of the Court's Rules of Procedure; the intervention was submitted to the Court on 4 October 2005,
Considering that, on 5 April 2007, the European Court of Human Rights concluded that Article 3 of Protocol 1 had been violated and that it was not necessary separately to examine the other complaints raised by Ms. Kavakçi; it considered also that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction for the non-pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant,
- Notes with satisfaction the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in this case and decides to close it;
- Deeply regrets, however, that Mrs. Kavakçi was unlawfully stripped of her parliamentary mandate and hence her electorate deprived of representation by a person of its choice.
* Article 69 was amended in October 2001. According to the new version, the automatic five-year ban no longer applies.
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