SECOND SECTION
CASE OF KOP v. TÜRKİYE
(Application no. 47404/20)
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
21 March 2023
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Kop v. Türkiye,
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Jovan Ilievski, President,
 Lorraine Schembri Orland,
 Diana Sârcu, judges,
and Dorothee von Arnim, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 47404/20) 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 15 October 2020 by a Turkish national, Mr Ali Fuat Kop (“the applicant”), who was born in 1970 and is currently detained in İzmir;
the decision to give notice of the complaint under Article 10 of the Convention to the Turkish Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Mr Hacı Ali Açıkgül, Head of the Department of Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice, and to declare inadmissible the remainder of the application;
the parties’ observations;
the decision to reject the Government’s objection to examination of the application by a Committee;
Having deliberated in private on 28 February 2023,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The present application concerns the seizure by the prison administration of the applicant’s manuscript of short stories when he handed it over to be sent to his mother by post. 2. The applicant had been sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment and at the material time he was serving his sentence in İzmir prison. 3. In order to have it sent to his mother by post, the applicant handed an envelope to the prison administration which contained a 96-page manuscript of various short stories written by him. Having examined it, the letter-reading committee of the prison decided to refer the manuscript to the disciplinary board for further examination. 4. On 28 February 2020, relying on section 68(3) of the Law on the Execution of Sentences and Preventive Measures (Law no. 5275), the disciplinary board of İzmir prison decided to withhold certain parts (thirty-one pages in total) of the manuscript, which it described as the applicant’s literary work, on the grounds that the pages in question were intended to give encouragement to those convicted or in pre-trial detention for membership of the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan, an armed terrorist organisation) or to further communication within that organisation, and contained passages that were insulting to the State of the Republic of Türkiye and its officials. The disciplinary board decided to send the remaining pages of the manuscript on to its intended recipient. 5. The Karşıyaka enforcement judge and the Karşıyaka Assize Court respectively dismissed the applicant’s objections to the disciplinary board’s decision, holding that it was in compliance with the law and procedure, particularly with section 68(3) of Law no. 5275 on convicted prisoners’ rights to send and receive letters, fax messages and telegrams. 6. In a decision of 18 September 2020, the Constitutional Court examined the applicant’s individual application from the standpoint of the right to respect for correspondence and declared it inadmissible as being manifestly unfounded.

Outcome for Article 10: violation