ISTANBUL - ÖHD, İHD, TİHV and TOHAV have applied to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to put on their urgent agenda the violation decisions regarding the "aggravated life imprisonment" given by the ECtHR against Abdullah Öcalan, Hayati Kaytan, Emin Gurban and Civan Boltan.

 

Association of Lawyers for Freedom (ÖHD), Human Rights Association (İHD), Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TİHV) and Society and Legal Studies Foundation (TOHAV) applied to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which is responsible for supervising and ensuring the execution of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for the PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan, Hayati Kaytan, Emin Gurban and Civan Boltan. According to the news of the Mesopotamia Agency (MA), in the application made to the Committee of Ministers; The Committee demanded that the violation decisions given by the ECtHR regarding four people being sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment without the possibility of conditional release are in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to be included in the agenda of all weekly and periodic meetings.

In the application, which is a first for four names at the level of institutions, it was determined that, despite the decisions of Abdullah Öcalan (2), Hayati Kaytan, Emin Gurban and Civan Boltan given to life imprisonment without the possibility of conditional release in Turkey, they were not included in the agenda of the Committee of Ministers.

 

Four principles of the ECtHR that have no equivalent in Turkish law

 

In the application, four principles of the ECtHR, which cannot be found in Turkish law, were included, and these principles were “legal reduction of the sentence”, “the execution of the sentence is suitable for the re-socialization of the convict and the end of his dangerous state”, “the convict has procedural safeguards during the review of the sentence”, “ the fact that the penalty is actually reducible.”

 

In the application, which drew attention to the fact that ‘’in some cases, life imprisonment continues throughout the life of the convict’ according to Turkish law, it was noted that the right of hope was not compatible with the ‘legal reducibleness of the sentence’ due to categorical conditional release bans. In the application, it was stated that the ‘right to hope’ necessitates the existence of a mechanism for the review of the sentence.

In the application, it was stated that with the Execution Law, which came into force on April 15, 2020, the expectation of a mechanism that would abolish the "stay in prison for life" execution method and enable the execution to be reviewed in certain periods, thus paving the way for release or giving rise to the hope of being released, was not met.

 

Reference to 2002 discussions

 

In 2002, when the discussions about abolishing the death penalty continued, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin at this time said; “If you execute a person, he dies once. If you give him a serious punishment, you will kill him every day’’. In the application referring to the statements of him and it was pointed out that these statements were intended to impose heavier punishments on Abdullah Öcalan and other people who were on trial for political reasons.

 

Criticism to government

 

In the application, it was stated that the “Action Plan” submitted by the government on July 24, 2015 did not contain a plan to correct the current situation of no possibility of release on probation, and included the following determinations:

 

‘’* Regarding the general measures, the Government Action Plan does not include a plan to remove any conditional release ban, legislative changes or significant measures to stop violations, far from finding a solution to the problem.

 

* It is understood that despite the Öcalan (2), Kaytan, Gurban and Boltan decisions regarding life imprisonment without the possibility of conditional release in Turkey, it was not included in the agenda of the Committee of Ministers.

 

* Efforts to abolish aggravated life imprisonment within the legislative activities have not been met by the government, and the proposals made by different political parties are not evaluated.

* The amendment made to Article 89 of the Execution Law with the Law No. 7242 does not include the possibility of release in terms of aggravated life imprisonment. The composition of the administration and monitoring boards, the inadequacy of the assurances of the convicts regarding the evaluation process and the appropriateness of the evaluation criteria are the issues that need to be discussed. The structure of the administration and observation boards consisting of prison staff, the limited involvement of the convict in the evaluation process, and the inadequacy of procedural safeguards are the first noticeable problems.

* The Constitutional Court (AYM), on the other hand, did not make a decision on the right to hope that put the issue on the agenda. In the individual application files of the AYM, it is observed that although it makes decisions following the ECtHR's decisions, the AYM refrains from making an investigation due to the findings of violations of the right to hope against Turkey. When the Constitutional Court makes a decision in parallel with the decisions of the ECtHR, legal arrangements can be made.

 

* Requesting data on aggravated life sentences from Turkey is a necessity in order to see the table, since access to data and statistical information on the problematic in the audit process before the Committee may be possible by the official authorities in the country, and these figures are refrained from being given to the public and relevant NGOs.

 

Recommendations

 

* Öcalan (2), Gurban, Kaytan and Boltan group lawsuit will continue to be followed up with the advanced audit procedure, and the first violation decision will be immediately put on the agenda of all weekly and periodic meetings of the Committee, since the first violation decision was dated March 2014,

 

* The Committee continues to raise the relevant application issue in bilateral diplomatic relations,

 

* Committee member representations should also include the subject of the application on their agenda and follow up,

 

* In the Öcalan(2) case, considering that the Action Plan does not include concrete steps, does not include a calendar on individual or general measures, no changes have been made in the domestic law regarding the violation in the intervening seven years, on the contrary, the aggravated life sentence still in effect continues to be imposed, a new updated Action Plan requesting from the Turkish Government,

 

* Requesting the submission of individual and general measures for the other three applicants for whom a violation decision has been made, in the revised new Action Plan,

 

* Requested from the Committee by following the procedure followed in the process as Laszlo Magyar v. Hungary[1]; requesting information from the Turkish Government about the statistical informations  for the entire case group, how many people are sentenced to aggravated life sentence in the country, how many people have been sentenced to this sentence by years, in which years the relevant provisions have been finalized, and how many years the people who have been sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment have been kept in prison.

 

* Pursuant to the principles set in the ECtHR decisions, conditional release should be made possible as a rule for all convicts without any discrimination in Turkish Law.’’