SECOND SECTION
CASE OF YILDIZ v. TÜRKİYE
(Application no. 15591/17)
 
 
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
18 November 2025
 
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Yıldız v. Türkiye,
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Jovan Ilievski, President,
 Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir,
 Stéphane Pisani, judges,
and Dorothee von Arnim, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 15591/17) against the Republic of Türkiye lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 20 January 2017 by a Turkish national, Mr Mehmet Yıldız (“the applicant”), who was born in 1969, lives in Diyarbakır, and was represented by Mr M. Özdemir, a lawyer practising in Diyarbakır;
the decision to give notice of the complaints under Article 5 § 3 of the Convention to the Turkish Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent at the time, Mr Hacı Ali Açıkgül, former Head of the Department of Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Türkiye, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible;
the parties’ observations;
the decision to reject the Government’s objection to the examination of the application by a Committee;
Having deliberated in private on 21 October 2025,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The case concerns the pre-trial detention of the applicant on suspicion of being a member of an armed terrorist organisation. 2. On 30 April 2011 the applicant was arrested on suspicion of being a member of an armed terrorist organisation, namely the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan). On 3 May 2011 the Diyarbakır 5th Assize Court placed the applicant, along with several other individuals, in pre-trial detention on the grounds that judicial supervision measures would be insufficient owing to the existence of a strong suspicion that he had committed an offence, the nature of the offence, and the state of the evidence. 3. Objections lodged by the applicant against the decisions ordering and extending his pre-trial detention, as well as his requests for release from detention, were rejected by the competent domestic courts on account of the nature of the alleged offence, the strong suspicion that he had committed the offence in question, the severity of the potential sentence, the risk of the applicant’s absconding and tampering with evidence – without the courts giving further details relating to the applicant’s situation in these respects, as well as the seriousness of the offence, which was among those listed in Article 100 § 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (“the CCP”), known as “catalogue offences”. 4. On 17 June 2011 the Diyarbakır public prosecutor issued an indictment, accusing the applicant of aiding and abetting an illegal organisation. 5. On 29 January 2014 the applicant lodged an individual application with the Constitutional Court, complaining about his pre-trial detention. 6. On 23 May 2014 the applicant was released. On 27 May 2014 the Diyarbakır 2nd Assize Court found him guilty as charged and sentenced him to four years, eight months and seven days’ imprisonment. 7. On 12 June 2016 the Constitutional Court examined the applicant’s individual application on the merits and found no violation of Article 19 of the Constitution (provision corresponding to Article 5 of the Convention). It concluded, in particular, that:
- the state of the evidence relating to the strong suspicion that the applicant had committed the offence with which he had been charged, the fact that the offence in question was among the “catalogue offences”, the lower and upper limits of the prescribed sentence, and the risk of the applicant’s absconding were sufficient reasons for ordering and extending his pre-trial detention;
- in view of the number of defendants, the extent and nature of the offence with which the applicant had been charged, and the fact that no negligence was attributable to the courts, the length of his pre-trial detention, namely three years and twenty-three days, was not excessive. 8. On 28 June 2021 the Court of Cassation upheld the applicant’s conviction. 9. Relying on Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, the applicant complained in particular that the courts had failed to give relevant and sufficient reasons to justify his continued pre-trial detention and that the length of his pre-trial detention had been excessive.

Outcome for Article 5: violation