PROCEDURE

The case originated in an application (no. 29483/09) against the Republic of Turkey lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a Turkish national, Mr Semir Güzel (“the applicant”), on 6 May 2009.

The applicant was represented by Mr M. Beştaş and Ms M. Danış Beştaş, lawyers practising in Diyarbakır. The Turkish Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent.

On 7 January 2014 the complaint concerning alleged interference with the applicant’s right to freedom of expression and of assembly was communicated to the Government and the remainder of the application was declared inadmissible pursuant to Rule 54 § 3 of the Rules of Court.

THE FACTS

I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE

The applicant was born in 1968 and lives in Diyarbakır.

At the time of the events in question the applicant was the vice‑president of HAK-PAR (Hak ve Özgürlükler Partisi – the Rights and Freedoms Party).

On 4 January 2004 the party held its first ordinary congress at a restaurant in Ankara, where the applicant was elected by the delegates to act as the meeting’s chairman.

On 28 February 2005 a public prosecutor at the Ankara public prosecutor’s office filed an indictment with the Ankara Criminal Court of First Instance against thirteen members of HAK-PAR, including the applicant, for acting in violation of section 81 (c) of Law no. 2820 during the congress on the grounds, inter alia, that there had been banners in Kurdish and that most of the speeches given by the delegates had been in Kurdish.

The applicant acknowledged before the first-instance court that he had not intervened as the chairman when certain delegates had spoken in Kurdish. In this connection, he submitted that, as a founder member of HAK‑PAR, he believed that Kurdish should be used in all areas of life; that those who spoke Kurdish were speaking in their mother tongue; and that he believed that it was neither legal nor ethical for him to intervene to force people to speak in a language other than their mother tongue. He maintained that such speeches could not have constituted an offence, when taking into account laws that had been enacted in compliance with the conditions for membership of the European Union, and the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. In this connection, the applicant also submitted that the relevant provisions of Law no. 2820 were contrary to the Constitution.

On 7 December 2005 the first-instance court dismissed an application from the defendants to suspend the proceedings and transfer the case to the Constitutional Court for examination of the compatibility of the relevant provisions with the Constitution.

On 14 February 2007 the Ankara Criminal Court of First Instance convicted the applicant of the charges. In particular, the court considered that the applicant had, despite warnings from a government superintendent present at the congress, continued to allow certain delegates to give their speeches in Kurdish, in breach of section 81 (c) of Law no. 2820. The applicant was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment.

On 23 March 2011 the Court of Cassation quashed the judgment of the first-instance court on the ground that the latter had failed to give any consideration to whether the conditions for suspending the delivery of the judgment against the defendants, pursuant to Article 231 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, had been met.

On 6 December 2011 the Ankara Criminal Court of First Instance ordered that the criminal proceedings against the applicant and the other defendants be terminated, on the ground that the statutory time-limit prescribed under domestic law had expired.