The European Union-Council of Europe Joint Project on “Supporting the Effective Implementation of Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) Judgments in the Field of Fundamental Rights” held its second study visit to Strasbourg with the participation of the rapporteurs of the TCC on 4-5 July 2022.
The first day of the visit started with a welcome by Ms Könül Gasimova, Head of the Türkiye Unit from Council of Europe and continued with the presentation of the Turkish Lawyers of the ECtHR Registry on Article 10 (freedom of expression) during which in-depth discussions on the key human rights themes concerning individual applications lodged from penitentiary institutions (freedom of expression of prisoners), right to access to publications (prohibitions and restrictions) took place. The day continued with presentations of the Filtering Section lawyers focusing on admissibility questions stemming from the quality and substantiation of complaints. The last session of the day was on Article 6 (Right to a Fair Trial) where general information on the concept of fair trial was explained and discussed based on some of the leading case-law of the ECtHR.
On the second day, the lawyers of the Division of Execution of Judgements made a presentation on organisational structure, functions and actors of the execution mechanism and main execution topics against Türkiye such as unlawful detentions, domestic violence, effective investigation, and reasoned judgement. The meetings continued with presentations of different departments and institutions of the Council of Europe such as the Venice Commission and the Commissioner for Human Rights, where the respective mandate and roles of the institutions were explained with a special focus on their activities in Türkiye. Specific topics such as gender equality in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and Human Rights and Biomedicine were also covered. The topics and discussions were met with great interest by the participants, which provided them with new perspectives on these current topics.
The visit was assessed as extremely beneficial and fruitful by the TCC rapporteurs, as well as by the Council of Europe representatives and was the occasion to identify topics of interest to be handled within the scope of the Project through thematic peer-to-peer meetings to be organised.
The Joint Project on “Supporting the Effective Implementation of Turkish Constitutional Court Judgments in the Field of Fundamental Rights” is co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe. The Turkish Constitutional Court is the end beneficiary of the Project.
