issued by the Registrar of the Court  
ECHR 022 (2013)  
22.01.2013  
Conviction for speaking Kurdish during election campaigns  
breached freedom of expression  
In today’s Chamber judgment in the case of Şükran Aydin and Others v. Turkey  
(application no. 49197/06), which is not final1, the European Court of Human Rights  
held, unanimously, that there had been:  
a violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on  
Human Rights.  
The case concerned the applicants’ complaint about a law, amended in 2010, which  
prohibited the use of any language other than Turkish during election campaigns.  
The Court held in particular that, while States had discretion to determine their linguistic  
policies and were entitled to regulate the use of languages during election campaigns, a  
blanket ban on the use of unofficial languages coupled with criminal sanctions were not  
compatible with freedom of expression.  
Principal facts  
The applicants, Şükran Aydın, Ayşe Gökkan, Ayhan Erkmen, Orhan Miroğlu, and Mesut  
Bektaş, are Turkish nationals who were born in 1957, 1965, 1973, 1952 and 1966 and  
live in Diyarbakır, Şanlıurfa, Kars, Ankara and Diyarbakır respectively. Candidates (or a  
supporter in the case of Mr Erkmen) in the 2002 (Ms Aydın and Ms Gökkan) and 2007  
(Mr Miroğlu and Mr Erkmen) parliamentary elections and the 2004 municipal elections  
(Mr Bektaş), they were convicted and sentenced to prison terms and fines for having  
spoken Kurdish during the election campaigns, in breach of section 58 of Law no. 298.  
The judges finally decided to defer delivery of the judgments, or ordered a stay of  
execution of the judgments in the case of Ms Şükran Aydın and Ms Ayşe Gökkan, having  
taken into account the applicants’ personality and the circumstances of the cases.  
In the course of their trials, Ms Aydın, Ms Gökkan and Mr Erkmen submitted they had  
addressed the crowd in Kurdish because part of the population could not understand  
Turkish (Kurdish people, elderly people and women).  
Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court  
The applicants complained that their conviction and sentencing simply for speaking  
Kurdish during an election campaign had been in breach of their rights under the  
Convention. They relied on Articles 6 (right to a fair trial), 9 (freedom of thought), 10  
(freedom of expression), 11 (freedom of assembly), 14 (prohibition of discrimination) as  
well as Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 (right to free elections).  
1 Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month  
period following its delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the  
Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges considers whether the case deserves further  
examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. If the referral  
request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.  
Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for  
supervision of its execution. Further information about the execution process can be found here:  
www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution  
The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 28 November  
2006.  
Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:  
Guido Raimondi (Italy), President,  
Danutė Jočienė (Lithuania),  
Peer Lorenzen (Denmark),  
Dragoljub Popović (Serbia),  
Işıl Karakaş (Turkey),  
Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque (Portugal),  
Helen Keller (Switzerland),  
and also Stanley Naismith, Section Registrar.  
Decision of the Court  
Article 10  
The Court observed that the ban on using non official languages in election campaigning  
at the relevant time, prescribed by section 58 of Law no. 298, had directly affected the  
applicants and had thus amounted to an interference with their freedom of expression.  
The case did not concern the use of an unofficial language in the context of  
communications with public authorities2 or before official institutions3, but a linguistic  
restriction imposed on persons in their relations with other private individuals. The Court  
reiterated that Article 10 encompassed the freedom to receive and impart information  
and ideas in any language that allowed persons to participate in the public exchange of  
all varieties of cultural, political and social information and ideas.  
The Court underlined that the relevant law at the time had contained a blanket  
prohibition on the use of any language other than the official language, Turkish, in  
election campaigning. Breaches of this provision had entailed criminal sanctions ranging  
from six months to one year and payment of a fine. Moreover, Turkish courts had had no  
power to exercise judicial scrutiny in this matter and they had not gone, in the  
applicants’ cases, beyond checking records and recordings of the election rallies. While  
States had discretion to determine their linguistic policies and were entitled to regulate  
the use of languages during election campaigns, a blanket ban on the use of unofficial  
languages coupled with criminal sanctions were not compatible with freedom of  
expression.  
Furthermore, Kurdish had been the applicants’ mother tongue as well as the mother  
tongue of the population at the rallies. Some of the applicants had stressed that many  
people in the crowd, notably the elderly and women, had not understood Turkish. Free  
elections were inconceivable without the free circulation of political opinions and  
information and noted that Turkey had been the only country - on the basis of the  
material available in respect of 22 Contracting States4 - to make the use of minority  
2
As for instance in the judgments of Mentzen v. Latvia of 10 January 2002 or Fryske Nasjonale Partij and  
Others v the Netherlands (electoral context) of 12 December 1985  
3
Birk-Lévy v. France (working language in a parliamentary assembly), 21 September 2012  
4
Albania, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia,  
Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”,  
Ukraine and the United Kingdom  
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languages by candidates speaking at election meetings subject to criminal penalties. The  
Court welcomed, in this respect, the amendment of section 58 of Law no. 298 in 2010.  
The Court therefore concluded that there had been a violation of Article 10, as the  
interference with the applicants’ freedom of expression had not been “necessary in a  
democratic society”.  
In view of this finding, the Court considered that it was not necessary to examine the  
applicants’ complaint under Article 14. It also declared the remainder of their complaints  
inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded.  
Just satisfaction (Article 41)  
The Court held that Turkey was to pay each applicant 10,000 euros (EUR) in respect of  
non-pecuniary damage and EUR 1,500 each to Ms Gökkan and Mr Miroğlu, EUR 2,000  
each to Ms Aydın and Mr Bektaş and EUR 3,000 to Mr Erkmen in respect of costs and  
expenses.  
Separate opinion  
Judge Keller expressed a partly dissenting opinion, which is annexed to the judgment.  
The judgment is available only in English.  
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Decisions, judgments and further information about the Court can be found on  
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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of  
Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European  
Convention on Human Rights.  
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